Recent comments in /f/history

AHorseNamedPhil t1_j1lnrey wrote

Reply to comment by MBRDASF in Why is it that the life of William the Conquerer seems to be taken from a drama tv show? by Dawnbreaker234

William the Conqueror didn't inspire Norman adventurers in the Mediterranean. They were present in the region long before William was born.

Normans had been fighting as mercenaries in the Mediterranean region both for Lombard counts and the Byzantine empire since the 900s. That was the origin as well for the branch of the Hauteville family that eventually ruled as Kings of Sicily. They had come to Italy as mercenaries / adventurers around 1035, only a few years after William the Conqueror's birth. Robert Guiscard became Duke of Apulia in 1059, six years prior to the Norman conquest of England.

The Normans had been busy carving out fiefdoms in southern Italy at the expense of the Lombards or Byzantines since William had been a child. The conquest of Sicily occured after William, but a Norman military presence had been a fact of life in southern Italy for many years prior, and they had already been carving out fiefdoms that were putting them on a trajectory for conflict over Sicily.

Side note, Robert Guiscard is the most interesting Norman warlord IMO, despite William having greater fame, and his wife Sikelgaita (although she was a Lombard, not Norman) was also a badass. She sometimes accompanied Robert on campaign, commanded at the siege of Trani, and brought reinforcements to Robert while was campaigning against the Byzantine empire. At the battle of Dyrrachium, while in full armor, she railled some of Roger's troops as they wavered following a Byzantine repulse. The Italian Normans were also playing in a far more interesting historical sandbox with a more diverse and interesting cast of characters. Byzantines! Lombard counts! The papacy! The emirate of Sicily! Plus Norman Sicily, at least early on, is fascinating in that it was one of the more tolerant medieval states & produced some interesting cultural exchange between the Normans, Greeks, and Muslims of southern Italy & Sicily.

2

AHorseNamedPhil t1_j1llzk5 wrote

Reply to comment by DarkTreader in Why is it that the life of William the Conquerer seems to be taken from a drama tv show? by Dawnbreaker234

The "Viking" link to the Normans however is quite often overstated.

It is certainly true enough that William was a direct descendant of Rollo, and that many Norse had come to settle in Normandy, but not all of these had been Vikings. Viking was a job rather than an ethnicity, and not every Scandinavian that came to Normandy did so as a Viking (sea raider / pirate). There were also merchants, fishermen, tradesmen, farmers, ect.

Second, the Norse settlement tended to be localized in certain places in Normandy like Rouen, and on the whole the native Franks of Normandy were not displaced and remained the majority. It was not too dissimilar to the later Norman conquest of England in that regard. Almost immediately there was also a great deal of interrmarriage between the Franks and the Norse, including with Rollo himself. By the time you get to 1066 that Norse minority had long since been absorbed by the Frankish majority, and the Normans spoke a dialect of French. The Normans in 1066, in short, were much more French than Norse. They also called themselves Franks.

Finally, most of the army William took with him to England wasn't even recruited in Normandy. Normans held the center of the field at Hastings but the left was composed of Bretons and the right men from other regions of France like Picardy or Boulogne, as well men as from Flanders.

1

GlacierFall t1_j1lf2jc wrote

Reply to comment by xSicilianDefenderx in Simple/Short/Silly History Questions Saturday! by AutoModerator

I hope I may answer this as a historical reenactor.

It really depends on where you were spending time, worked, which upbringing you belonged to, etc. Of course, after a while you get used to smells and perceive them less, if even.

Throughout most of history, businesses with a bad smell where often put in one place to aboid them easier, tanners for example who handled many foul smelling things. Since smells generally stick to fabric, especially wool, hair and even skin, you would probably be able to spot someone who has worked as a tanner for a long time if you stood close to them. Same went for street cleaners. People who could afford it dabbed some perfume on themselves, but they were pretty expensive (from what I know, 'The Perfume' is a good source not for facts, but for a general 'how-to').

Also more of a personal anecdote, but you surprisingly stop smelling the sweat of the people around you if you spent enough time in front of a fireplace. The smoke sticks to you and after two days you smell of mostly nothing else. After a week of reenacting especially my hair will still smell of smoke for a week, despite daily washing.

I hope that's somewhat of an answer to you :)

3

Top-Associate4922 t1_j1lbgsz wrote

Reply to Simple/Short/Silly History Questions Saturday! by AutoModerator

Are there any surviving written documents from ancient Greece or Rome? I heard that writings we know today are copies done by either medival Christian monks or Arabs. If that is true, can they be trusted to do exact copies without their own significant input or censuring? And did originals texts survived until medival periods, or was there a need to copy them every few years?

3