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46 of gold to the church, but by human sacrifices to the northern gods. His legislation, so far as it can be reconstructed from the shadowy accounts of later historians, was fundamentally Scandinavian in character, and his followers guarded jealously the northern traditions of equality and independence. His son, William Longsword, was a more Christian and Frankish type, but his death, celebrated in a Latin poem which represents the earliest known example of popular epic in Normandy, was the signal for a Scandinavian and pagan reaction. We hear of fresh arrivals on the Seine, Vikings who worshipped Thor and Odin, of an independent band at Bayeux under a certain Haigrold or Harold, and even of appeals for reinforcements from the Normans to the Northmen beyond the sea. The dukes of Rouen, says the Saga of St. Olaf, "remember well their kinship with the chiefs of Norway; they hold them in such honor that they have always been the best friends of the Norwegians, and all the Norwegians who wish find refuge in Normandy." Not till the beginning of the eleventh century does the Scandinavian immigration come to an end and Normandy stand fully on its own feet.

Not until the eleventh century also does the history of Normandy emerge from the uncertain period of legend and tradition and reach an assured basis of contemporary evidence. Throughout Europe, the tenth century is one of the most uncertain and obscure of all the Christian centuries. To the critic, as an Oxford don