With regard to the debate between Emma Beddington and her husband over the Norman conquest (Of course Orkney wants to leave the UK! Can York come too?, 9 July), it sometimes surprises me that more is not made of the fact that “the Normans” were actually Vikings who had only settled in northern France two or three generations prior to 1066.
We may add to that the fact that the “English” who were invaded by Vikings were originally Anglo-Saxon invaders from northern Europe. And in Yorkshire there was a Viking population derived from the overthrow of the Viking kingdom of Eorvik (York). My Northumbrian mother-in-law was born Baldersen, a common surname in Bergen, Norway. Harold’s defeat at Battle was at least partly due to a forced march from the north, where he had heavily defeated another Norwegian invader.
With regard to Scotland, the indigenous people whom the Romans called Picti were still in occupation from the Moray Firth to the Firth of Forth, but the “Scots” was the name of invaders of the south-west from Ireland.
The kingdom of the Northern and Western Isles was also Viking. This vast and complex intermixing of people of different geographical origins serves to show that the rightwing racialist position on immigration is both ignorant and illogical. Isn’t it astonishing where a trivial domestic discussion can take you?
Roy Musgrove
Crickhowell, Powys
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