Oor Wullie or Why French William came to Britain

The Portuguese went round the Cape of Good Hope in search of the spice trade. Columbus sailed west to develop trade with Japan. Cabot went back to Nova Scotia because he thought there was gold there. Why did William the Conqueror invade Britain? Because he wanted a piece of the action in the North Sea. The North Sea was at that time the busiest trading area in the world; iron ore, timber, amber, furs from Scandinavia; tin, lead, copper, wool, from Britain. All France provided was wine.
BY ignoring Cnut's empire historians miss the influence it had on the Norman invasion. There are tales of how Harold went to France to pay homage to William and tales of how Edward the Confessor naming William as his successor but none of it explains why William wanted to leave sunny France for a wet and windy Britain. If all he wanted was land, surely he'd have gone south or south east to the Riviera. How many Frenchmen retire to Cleethorpes?
Anyway, there were several claimants to the throne, was it ever different until Victoria. There was Edgar, the Atheling, with the most obvious claim, there was Harald, who had outlawed his brother. That brother and Edgar, who was Malcolm of Scotland's brother-in-law, joined up in Scotland, they could hardly go to France, could they? These two got together, convinced Malcolm to charge down into England while Harald was under threat from William. They tried their luck at Stamford Bridge. As usually happens at Stamford Bridge, the Scots lost, but then Harald had to rush down to Hastings.
I always thought that was pretty much it but it turns out that William turned on the Scots and Malcolm submitted to him at Abernethy. I went to school in Scotland but nobody thought to tell me William the Conqueror was at Abernethy. It was of course the capital of the land of the Painted People, the Picts. The local church was founded by an Irishwoman, St Brigit of Kildare - not one of the raiding Scotti from Ulster.
So what are the people of Abernethy? Viking, Norman, Irish, Scots, or Picts? Maybe just British.

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WHere did the Vikings get weapons?

Let's take a look at these Vikings. They come in boatloads, all armed with two swords and a battle axe yet it is only the nobility that can afford proper weapons in Britain and Western Europe. What's the difference? Massive iron ore deposits in Scandinavia. When you look at the North Sea area you begin to understand why it created such powerful groupings. Tin, copper, lead and a wee bit of gold from Britain, Iron ore and timber from Scandinavia and through the Baltic, down the Danube to the East.
To dismiss them as slave traders is to sell them short, just as to assume they were pure Norse. On a lengthy voyage, some crew members would die and be replaced by slaves. The first time the normal crew went ashore and stirred up the wrath of the locals, it would be obvious to the slaves that if they wanted to survive they had best grab a sword and join in with the crew.
Of course they were fierce, can you imagine sailing down past Scotland's west coast to the Irish sea among Highlanders, mad Welshmen and fight loving Irish without being fierce? There again, can you imagine a wild Highlander or Welshman or an Irishman not wanting to join in and go looking for senioritas to capture, never mind gold and loot?
The picture of Vikings we have been given by historians is of a grim death dealing masochists but in any group that is a the fanatical minority, the bulk would be adventure loving chaps, who enjoyed a good fight, like some soccer supporters today.
Let's stop thinking about people in history having different appetites and desires to us and enjoy our heritage as human beings and begin to worry about what happens when Europe has no natural resources to offer the world.
The Photo is of an Irish uncle, appropriate for this time of remembrance.

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