Page:A short history of social life in England.djvu/81

 CHAPTER V Circa 1066 — 1204

"SAXON AND NORMAN AND DANE ARE WE"

HILE the Danes were settling themselves into their new English homes, plundering parties of Viking pirates were wresting from France her sea-coast territory in the north-east, known to history as the Northman's Land or Normandy. The same power of assimilation that had enabled the Danes to merge themselves in the English now characterised the Northmen in France. Like their brethren across the English Channel, they became Christian, they learnt to speak in the language of their adopted country,