What if Harold had won at Hasting in 1066

I've got another book to read first so it's likely to be in a month or two, but it's on the list.

Thats a coincidence Paul in terms of the book, you will be update after reading what their view is on this alternate history...what would happen to Robin Hood?

This is interesting, and it's made me further excited to read new book Pagans by James Alistair Henry, which is an alternative version of present day if England had won the Battle of Hastings.

I'm looking forward to reading this thread too.

No its inspired be my love  of cats.

The vikings had some good nicknames too, there were several people with the nickname Ironside, both English and Scandinavian. There were forkbeards, silk beards, Ragnar Lodbrook's name means Ragnar hairy breaches, because he prefered his trousers made from a fabric that left some fibres hanging free like hairs.

Lucy Worsley's programe Lucy Worsley Investigates (s2, ep03) takes a good look at The Harrying of the North, which was William's response to uprisings against his rule, it's a brutal watch, but I think it's something that needs to be better known.

We would still have been Christian, although maybe there would have more and different Pagan survivals. The papcy was going through a period of change and became much more hard line, enforcing things like priestly celibacy, or trying too. If the Normans had lost its possible that we wouldn't have lost so many of our native saints to obscurity, the church was also trying to tighten up qualifications for sainthood at the time and was unsainting some.

Whilst Edward the Confessor was leaning more towards southern Europe and Normandy, I think we would of been more like the Netherlands, as for Scotland, Wales and Ireland it's hard to tell, nation building seems to have been a response to Viking incursions, but also a growing and more international church wanting everyone under its wing or yoke, whichever you prefer. We could have ended up with more of an east west split rather than the north south one we have now, Wales, Western Scotland, the Isles and Ireland and possibly parts of Devon and Cornwall could have been a more closely allied trading block, with the Europe facing eastern parts of Britain being more European, again, this seems to have been the case before the Romans came and in the decades after they left too. 

If William had been killed at Hastings then it would of ended his ambitions and thrown Normandy into chaos, it's possible that Brittany would have been larger?

Theres quite a bit of uncertainty and controvercy about the law, the Normans always said the would keep the law as it was in the time of Edward the Confessor, some laws probably did stay the same, but others certainly didn't , the harsh forest laws were certainly a Norman introduction.

I'm often suspicious of sudden changes and pivotal moments, but they do happen and I think 1066 was one. Of course there was a lot else going on at the time and the Battle of Hastings was apart of it, but the Battle of Stamford Bridge which Harold fought a few days before Hastings and won, effectively killed off the last Scandinavian king who had a claim to the English throne and was capable of reorientating us northwards again, Harold Hardrader.

Your post encouraged me to find out more about the introduction of surnames to British culture following the Norman invasion. 

I chortled when I read of typical English nicknames that abounded pre Battle of Hastings: Ethelred Unred, Somebody Ironside.

Is your name TheCatWoman inspired by history? 

Was that the campaign that Dr Lucy Worsley described on that recently repeated BBC series? I don’t recall its name.

I would miss those words if they weren’t commonly used in the English language. I am definitely attracted to the Romance family of languages. Maybe that’s a bit of French ancestry coming out.

It was the "Harrying of the North" where William I after a rebellion of some of the Northern lords went on a systematic campaign to devastate the provinces in the North. I think the domesday book provides some pretty shocking evidence here, I forget now a lot of the details. 

LOL

Edward the Confessor's mother, Emma, was Norman, so there had been some Norman influence before 1066. Ralph of Mantes, King Edward's nephew, was made Earl of Hereford, where he built a castle. Also, Edward built Westminster Abbey in the Continental, Norman, style. Edward's reign saw a level of realignment from Scandinavia towards the Frankish realm, and English attachment to the Papacy had been very strong for centuries. I rather think that in the event of an English victory at Hastings this trend would have continued, resulting in England resembling the Netherlands in language and culture, rather than the large-scale, but partial, Frenchification that did happen. The Angevin Empire and the Hundred Years War would not have happened and England would have been far more insular. Without Continental political distractions, I suspect that England's dominance over Scotland, Ireland and Wales would have been more complete.

Conversely I am a big Norman supporter

I would love to see the Bayeux tapestry, maybe one day!

Now you’re talking! 

I would need to research this in order to do justice to the question, but here we go anyway.

I imagine that England and ultimately Britain would have adopted more Germanic and Scandinavian surnames, place names and terminology for things, but I don’t think the spoken and written language could have adapted that easily, so it wouldn’t have dramatically changed. I suspect that with French being widely spoken by the elites, England wouldn’t have been able to drag itself away from some French loan words and adaptations. Christianity was widespread in Scandinavia so I suspect it might have continued to thrive in England but perhaps the state church eventually becoming the Lutheran church, rather than Church of England.

Would any of England’s extant historical or land records have survived? If the Domesday Book hadn’t been written, we mightn’t know as much as  we do today about historical place names, people and land distribution etc.  

Would we exist as we do now? Would our ancestors met or married different people? 

I know that if Harold had won, I wouldn’t have been standing at an exhibition in Northern France nearly 50 years ago, looking at the Bayeux Tapestry. I remember being fascinated by all the different scenes, and I could have stayed there all day if my parents had let me.

I see.

So if Harold had won at Hastings we wouldn't have to put up with Farage ? 

It's not a time period I've ever studied, but I'm always super suspicious of those "pivotal moment" takes on history. Would the outcome of one battle/ power struggle really have changed things forever? Harold was, if memory serves me, facing battle on many fronts and was far from secure in his claim to the throne. His forces had, I  think, already won an earlier battle and were exhausted by a long distance march back down south for the battle of Hastings. Even if there had been an unlikely (?) victory, would that have ended William's ambitions, or just prolonged things with the Normans eventually taking power anyway? Would the outcome of one battle on one day have changed history?

As I said: not my time period and I'm going a lot from somewhat dubious memory here, so happy to be educated on the subject.

Btw my mum is a big King Harold fan and we've visited his purported grave site at Waltham Abbey. My mum still darkly curses the Normans and their invasion. I have no idea why she's so bitter about it over a thousand years post invasion, but it certainly shaped our culture in the following centuries. The National Trust would be short of a few castles certainly.

I'm a bit of a dunce when it comes to history, but I do know that our language gained lots of French words due to the Norman conquest of England.

So if Harold had won, we may not have a lot of the words we commonly use now.

A single man would not be called a bachelor

Brown hair would not be called brunette

Army trainees would not be called cadets

A personal driver would not be called a chauffeur

A place where water is collected & stored would not be called a reservoir

There are many, many others - we wouldn't eat in a restaurant or choose food from a menu. We'd have had to create other words for allowance, energy, detour, elite, expatriate, gallery, hotel, identity, illusion, insult, irony, literature, machine, technique, tournament, and utensil, just to name a few.

I have a question - what was this "ethnic cleansing"? 

Interesting post. Always been fascinated by the Norman era of England, my family is likely to linked to Normandy so would have a big impact on me personally, might not have existed? Amazing how successful the Normans were over the English at the time. If Harold would have won it would have a huge impact I think on England. The Normans had a big impact on England. One area I can think would be the law, I remember quite a bit of the English civil law comes from the Normans such as the laws of tort (wrong doing). Castles, the Normans with their motte and bailey castles to control areas and subdue the English. Language like you have said, a lot of the french words we have derived from Norman french. Not mega familiar with the anglo-saxons really so not sure how things would have developed if they continued in power?