Under the Viking Yoke: A History of Early Medieval Brittany

A popularized narrative history of one of the Vikings' most fascinating conquests

I finally did the thing! After months of coffee-fueled writing sessions, my new book, Under the Viking Yoke, is officially out in the world. This project really took shape after the course on Early Medieval Brittany that I recently taught for Medievalists.net. The book follows two parallel stories—the desperate, bloody rise of a "Little Britain" and the relentless phenomenon of the so-called Vikings—until they crash together in a cinematic struggle for the soul of the Armorican peninsula. Think of it as a medieval Star Wars: an underdog rebellion led by figures like Nominoë rising against a leviathan empire, only to face an "apocalyptic" threat from the sea.

As a teaser, I’ve included my introduction below to set the stage for the inspiration behind the book and the stories you can expect to find therein. I imagine this small book will make for great coffee-table material (it even has pictures!), and will serve as a popularized entry point into this subject that has been so central to my life and research for almost 20 years. For those of you who have read my novels, this is also a great historical companion for The Saga of Hasting the Avenger.

Introduction

Some weeks ago, as of the writing of this book, I met a fellow father of a rambunctious two-year-old at a children’s park in the center of Nantes. When he learned that I was, at the time, teaching a course on the history of Early Medieval Brittany for Medievalists.net, he jumped at the opportunity to, as they say, pick my brain. According to him, his child’s school required students to learn the Breton language, and he had mixed feelings about it.

“No one ever spoke Breton in Nantes, right?” he asked me.

I shook my head and said, “No, they did not. Nantes was part of Haute-Bretagne, and their language was Gallo. A few Brythonic Bretons occupied the city here and there, but not for long.”

My answer launched us into a lengthy conversation—while keeping an eye on the kiddos, of course—about Brittany’s tumultuous history and how it came to develop its unique identity, which today revolves around its Brythonic language, buttery galettes, hard cider, and rugby. What I had to say about it left my fellow father stunned. I told him that the notion of a sovereign kingdom of Brittany dates to the early medieval period, but that it ended in the mid-tenth century following a Viking invasion and occupation that destroyed any chance it had of becoming an independent state, as, for example, Scotland had.

“Why do people still feel that Brittany is its own nation today?” he asked.

I replied: ”Because a nation that failed to construct its own state is still a nation—united by a common culture, language, and values. However, the reason it failed to create its own state mostly has to do with the fact that there was never just one Brittany.”

The modern region of Brittany is often thought of as a monolith, but that’s because, while it preserved the Brythonic language and culture it inherited from its Roman-era ancestors, it failed to preserve the Gallo language and culture that once shared the Armorican peninsula with it. Why this happened is still hotly debated among Breton historians. Some cite the early and uninhibited integration of the Gallo-speaking region with its French-speaking neighbors, such as the Angevins, as a primary cause. Gallo was, after all, a Romance language. To me, it was also the result of a centuries-long propaganda campaign by foreign rulers to appease the insular, Brythonic Bretons, who were prone to rebellion, and establish the legitimacy of their rule by identifying themselves with a glorious Brythonic past. Whatever the case, the Breton nobility abandoned both Breton languages for French in the early 12th century, and while the peninsula had ample contact with the British Isles, which may have contributed to the Bretons’ cultural attachment to their ancestry, it fell firmly under the Carolingian Empire’s and then the Kingdom of France’s acculturation. We must, however, acknowledge that the Breton nation has proven tenacious, driven by the people’s desire and the nobility’s necessity for a distinct Breton identity, which has kept the region distinct.

I think I changed that man’s life. Already suspicious of the school’s claims, he felt vindicated in his resistance to the state’s forcible instruction of his child in a language that did not belong to their community. We shared a good laugh about using a language to teach a history that doesn’t quite fit the city of Nantes. But before we parted ways, he asked me one last question: “Why Brittany? Why would an American study and teach the history of such a small and obscure backwater region?”

My initial response was, “I’m American, yes. But like Brittany, I have two identities, because I’m also French. And not just French, but French from Brittany. It could be that I see myself reflected in its early history. It’s also just a really good story.”

I am a passionate student of medieval history, and so to me it’s an intrinsically interesting topic. Admittedly, I had not started with Brittany. I’m a “Viking” guy; hence why my course and this book focus so much on the region’s experience of the so-called Viking Age. But the more I explored, the more I wanted to know. Part of the draw for me is that it is such a little-known time and place, despite being a region that proved exceptionally consequential to the development of Western Europe. The earliest Bretons defeated Childeric I, delaying the Frankish conquest of Gaul. They resisted Clovis and the Merovingians and welcomed Irish monasticism onto the continent. They played a critical role in the collapse of the Carolingian Empire in their bid for independence. And later, they played a central role in the rise and fall of the Capetians and the Angevins, and their succession crisis in 1341 gave Edward III cause to turn what had been a petty, business-as-usual fight between the kings of France and England into the Hundred Years’ War, a historical movement that transitioned feudal Europe to the era of the nation-state. It astounds me that more people don’t know their story because everywhere you look in the medieval period, the Bretons turn up. There were even Bretons at the Battle of Hastings in 1066, of all places.

If I take it a little further and focus on the storytelling aspect, the true history of early medieval Brittany—which I define as before the Assize of Count Geoffrey in 1185—is a collection of stories with all the hallmarks modern film audiences love. It’s often an underdog tale. For example, the key figure of Nominoë rises from obscurity like Luke Skywalker to lead a rebellion to freedom from a leviathan of an empire, and while Louis the Pious wasn’t his father (though he could have been, we don’t know, the Franks were not shy about having mistresses), he remained in loyal service to the emperor after he was deposed, as if he saw something to be redeemed within him. I could have called this book “Brittany Wars” because the region’s history makes for such engaging Hollywood-style storytelling, indeed. Their story is one I have been keen to explore in my historical fiction novels, albeit from the Viking Hasting’s point of view.

Most importantly—and this will be the central thesis of this book—Brittany is an ideal example of how readily reality and myth blend when national narratives and identity collide in a period when contemporary sources are scarce. The modern memory of a sovereign Breton kingdom in the early medieval period is, by and large, a fiction, first developed and propagated by a foreign nobility to legitimize their rule over a culturally and linguistically distinct group, and then resurrected by 19th-century historians who projected their longing and desire for what might have been onto their national narratives. This is something I emphasize in my courses to encourage students to carefully consider how we, as a society, have engaged with the past and continue to do so.

The purpose of this book is not to dismantle Breton nationalist narratives; on the contrary, I find them essential companions to this history. These larger-than-life stories are the bedrock of modern Breton identity, and to ignore them would be to ignore how Brittany understands itself today. My goal is to hold the legend up to the light so we can see the shape of the idealized history before we dive into the gritty, objective evidence. Using this contrast, I find, is the most effective way to teach this subject. By seeing where the myth and the reality diverge, we gain a much deeper appreciation for both. And as you will see, the true story of how we got here is worthy of being told in all its messiness, precisely because the objective reality is often weirder—and more cinematic—than the fiction.

In the pages that follow, we will journey through a narrative history—or as close to one as we can get from the evidence we have—of the rise and persistence of this “Little Britain,” the rise of the so-called Viking phenomenon, and how the two collided in spectacular fashion. It is written for the curious reader, such as my new acquaintance at the kids’ park, rather than the seasoned academic. I have written it in the same style as I deliver my course lectures—part Bill Bryson, part Mark Kurlansky, with a little Terry Jones thrown in to keep things light. Together we will trace the origins of the Breton culture that first flickered into the historical record in the middle of the 8th century, and follow its desperate, bloody fight for independence from the Frankish juggernaut throughout the 9th century. Yet, we will also witness how the story of our two Brittanies appears to have constrained their efforts to forge a political identity that could survive their own successes, and ultimately led to their demise at the hands of the Northmen.

Under the Viking Yoke is a sweeping, popularized history of the events that led to the total destruction of what might have become a sovereign Breton kingdom and its eventual, stunted rebirth: a second life as a dependent polity, forever trapped in the orbit of the French and English crowns. It is an entry point for curious readers seeking to expand their understanding of Brittany as a modern and historical entity, and I hope you will not stop here.