What if Harold had won at Hasting in 1066

I've just been reading a book on the Vikings which ends at 1066 with the death of Harald Hardrader, but Harold Godwineson at Stamford Bridge, just before he had to scoot back south to Hasting to meet William of Normandy and be killed. William, known as the conquerer took over and so began a new phase in Englands history, I say England as Scotland, Wales and Ireland were not part of it and Great Britain didn't happen for  several centuries.

England had been a part of massive Scandinavian trading networks that stetched from Dublin to Constantinople and maybe further and from the Med to Greenland and America, although they never really made much of an impact on America as far as we know. The church in Rome was trying to pull everyones eyes south again and was largely successful, although how successful if the Normans hadn't been around is unknowable. 

Would we be speaking a different version of English if we had no French loan words, like pork beef and lamb, pig cow and sheep are English words and were and are sill used for the animals on the hoof, rather than on the table, which gives you some idea of the power dynamics of the time.

If Harold had won and the Harrying of the North hadn't happened would we still have what are now the ruins of the great Cistercian abbeys, such Rivelaux and Fountains? Most of Yorkshire, Derbyshire, Durham and Cumbria were more or less depopulated by Williams ethnic cleansing, leaving the north as a "desert" so sought after by the Cistercians in thier early years.

What differences can you think of and what questions do you have?

Parents
  • 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.

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  • 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.

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