Richard I of Normandy

William Longsword, Count of Rouen and chieftain of Normandy, had one son, Richard, with his Breton concubine Sprota. William was assassinated in 942, after which Sprota married a wealthy landowner named Esperleng. Sprota and  Esperleng also had a son, who became the Norman nobleman Rodulf of Ivry and one of Richard's strongest supporters.

When William died, Richard was only 10 years old. William's ally, King Louis IV of West Francia, installed Richard as his father's successor to Normandy. William's enemy, Count Arnolf I of Flanders, convinced Louis to take the boy with him into Frankish territory and take back Normandy. Lower Normandy was given to Hugh the Great, a powerful duke and Count of Paris.

Supporters Bernard the Dane (a counselor to William) and Osmond de Centville, Count of Vernon, and others gathered a mob of knights and peasants and marched to Louis' palace to demand the freeing of Richard. Louis claimed he only kept Richard near him to teach him, and turned Richard over to the crowd.

Still landless, but recognized by the Normans as their rightful heir to the duchy, at the age of 14 he had support from Norman and Viking leaders in France and Harald "Bluetooth" to fight a war against Louis for the return of Normandy. Louis was captured and forced to recognize Richard as the leader of a restored Normandy. Richard and Hugh made an alliance, and Hugh promised his daughter Emma of Paris to Richard as a wife, although she was a child at the time. The marriage date was put off until 960.

Louis and Arnulf were not about to give up. They convinced Holy Roman Emperor Otto I to join them in an attack on Richard and Hugh. This was a mistake: they were defeated decisively in 947. Several years of peace followed. Louis died in 954 and his 13-year-old son was not about to start a war. Richard married Hugh's daughter, but they had no children (a trend for Norman ruler first marriages, it seems, if you've been reading the past few posts). Emma died on 19 March 968.

Hugh had offered his son, Hugh Capet, to Richard to raise. In 987, Hugh Capet became king of the Franks after the death of Louis' son Lothair. Richard now had no worries about a war with the rest of France. Richard also made alliances by marrying off his children strategically. To get these children, however, he had to remarry, and that's a story for tomorrow.

Runestones

When King Harald Bluetooth chose to be baptized in the 960s, he decided to commemorate the radical change he was instigating for the Danes turning Christian by having a runestone erected. This kicked off a trend for Scandinavian nobles to have their own runestones created to memorialize themselves or others. There are about 3000 in existence now.

Harald's was not the first, however: runestones as old as the 4th century exist, and they are scattered wherever the Norse traveled and settled. The Isle of Man has several, and there is even one as far away as the Black Sea. (Curiously, this never caught on in Iceland.)

The majority of total stones (percentages differ in different locales) are Christian, and crosses appear on many, as well as one of the oldest depictions in Scandinavia of Jesus on Harald's. The conversion to Christianity altered some practices: instead of burials taking place in the family plot, folk would be buried in the church graveyard and a runestone commemorating them erected with the deceased ancestors.

Runestones carried a lot of text to get their message across. The one pictured here is called Rök, which in Old Norse means "monolith." You cannot tell from this picture, but it is a five-ton stone, eight feet tall and with five sides covered in more runes than any other. It dates from around 800.

The usual formula was to mention the person for whom it was raised, their chief accomplishments, how they died, a prayer for them, and sometimes the connection between them and the person who raised the stone. Because the Varangian Guard were mercenaries all over, especially in the Mediterranean, many runestones were raised in memory of someone who never returned home, and "he died in Greece" (generic term for anywhere in or near the Byzantine Empire) is found on many stones.

One of the largest collections of runestones devoted to a single man is found in Runriket, Rune Kingdom, in Vallentuna, Sweden. Tomorrow I will tell you about the Jarlabanke Runestones.

William Tell: The True Story

...and by "true story" I mean "the myth."

Today is the anniversary of William Tell's famous feat in which he shot an arrow through an apple on his son's head with a crossbow bolt. It happened in 1307, and here's the whole story.

In 1307, the new advocate of the Swiss town of Altdorf was an arrogant man named Gessler. He had a hat set on a pole in the town square, and all who passed were supposed to bow to the hat as a sign of respect for Gessler. One day, Wilhelm Tell and his son came into town and passed the hat without paying their respects, for which they were arrested. Gessler said they would be released if Tell—who was famous for his strength, his mountain-climbing skill, and his archery skill—could shoot an apple off his son's head. Tell drew two crossbow bolts from his quiver, and split the apple on the attempt.

Gessler asked him "Why the second arrow?" Tell admitted that, if he had missed and killed his son, the second arrow would have gone right into Gessler. Gessler had Tell re-arrested and sent to prison at Küssnacht castle. On the way there, the ship carrying him became endangered in a storm on Lake Lucerne, and Tell was unbound by the crew to help row to safety. Tell escaped the boat at a rocky site even now called Tellsplatte [German: "Tell's slab"]. Tell proceeded to Küssnacht and waited for Gessler, whom he killed with an arrow. His defiance helped inspire the rebellion that led to the Swiss Confederacy. He later fought for Switzerland in the Battle of Morgarten (1315). He died in 1354.

All this early-14th century detail comes from a history of Switzerland written about 1570 (and not published until a couple centuries later) by historian Ægidius (Giles) Tschudi, who is known to have been less than accurate in discussing his own career and family. William Tell's name is mentioned as early as 1475, but without all the detail offered by Tschudi, whose source for the story is unknown.

It also needs pointing out that the idea of a heroic archer who defies authority is seen earlier in England (Robin Hood, who supposedly harried Prince/King John in the late 12th century) and the Danish Palnatoki, who is forced in to the same contest by King Harald Bluetooth. Palnatoki also pulls more than one arrow from his quiver, intending to kill Harald if Palnatoki's son dies.

The legend of William Tell has inspired plays, operas, art and anecdotes, but his historicity is extremely doubtful.

Medieval Bluetooth

The symbol shown here is used for the modern wireless communications protocol called "Bluetooth," created by the telcommunications company Ericsson. If you are at all familiar with the Runic system, it might look familiar in a different way because of its straight lines and angles. That is because it is a combination of the Runes Hagall ("h") and Bjarkan ("b"). And the reason for using the letters B and H is because they are the initials of the 10th century King of Denmark and Norway, Harald Bluetooth.

Harald "Bluetooth" Gormsson (c.935-986) was the son of the first historically recognized King of Denmark. Harald created the largest of the Jelling Stones (his father had set up the first). These commemorative stones carry inscriptions that include the earliest reference to Denmark as a nation. He also conducted important building projects, including a half-dozen massive stone ring forts and the oldest known bridge in southern Scandinavia, the half-mile long stone Ravninge Bridge (no longer extant).

He seemed to prefer negotiating over fighting, and managed to join and keep Danish tribes together, and briefly ruled Norway (okay, that was by force, after their king was assassinated). Perhaps it was his less-aggressive nature that made him amenable to Christianity, although the stories of his conversion are varied. One says he converted on a dare, when a monk named Poppa "proved" the power of God by carrying a heavy brand from the fire without being harmed. One story says he was converted against his will when he had been defeated by Otto I (founder of the Holy Roman Empire). Another account (written centuries after Harald's death) says it was Otto II who forced him to convert. Whatever the case, Harald converted in the 960s, and took it seriously: he transferred his father's body from a pagan-style grave in an ancient mound to a church.

This commemorates Harald's conversion.

But how did this all turn into a modern wireless protocol being named after Harald's nickname? And where did the nickname come from? The commonly repeated legend is that Harald loved and ate blueberries so much that his teeth were stained blue. A different (and not as attractive) story is that at least one of his teeth was diseased and took on a dark tinge, looking "blue" to some. This ties into one of the many legends of his Christian conversion: that he suffered from toothache and converted because Christian prayer was the only thing that took the pain away.

Whatever! What we can document is that one of the developers of the Bluetooth technology was reading a historical novel about Harald on the side. He felt that his protocol would unite different devices in a way analogous to Harald uniting different tribes in Denmark, instead of having them conflict with each other. He proposed calling the protocol Blåtand, Harald's nickname in Scandinavian. Although early Ericsson documents use this name, it formally became the English word "Bluetooth™"; I have read that folk in Scandinavian countries frequently use Blåtand instead of the official English name.