Shortly after the conclusion of this treaty Rollo was baptized, and his marriage to the Princess Gisla was celebrated with great pomp in the city of Rouen. His previous marriage to Popa does not seem to have caused him any scruple, though, as a matter of fact, he continued to regard the latter as his wife, and when Gisla died he resumed his marital relations with her, if indeed they had ever been interrupted. The princess had been to him nothing but a hostage from the king and a pledge of his good faith. But Popa, who was the mother of his son William, surnamed Longsword, he loved, and we do not hear that the fact that he had killed her father caused any serious trouble between them.

As Duke of Normandy, Rollo exhibited a political insight and a genius for administration which in those turbulent days was certainly remarkable. He had the true welfare of his people at heart, and with a firm hand he maintained justice, protecting the weak, and restraining the strong. The laws which he made he enforced with stern impartiality, and no man could plead birth or privilege before him, if he wantonly offended. The farmers were Rollo's special care; for warrior though he was, he well knew that war is destructive, and that the prosperity of a land must be founded upon productive labor. The peasantry of Normandy were not slow to discover that they were better off under their new ruler than they ever had been under the old; and they rewarded Rollo with a sincere loyalty and devotion. Their confidence in his power to right wrong, became in the course of time half superstitious; and if any of them was in peril or suffered at the hands of his enemy, it became the fashion to shout: "Ha, Rou!"—Rou being a corruption of Raoul, the French form of Rolf or Rollo. Then it was the duty of everyone who heard this cry, to hasten to the aid of the sufferer or to pursue his assailant. It has been asserted that our "hurrah" is derived from this Norman shout, but I hold this to be more than doubtful.

That Normandy was prosperous under the reign of Rollo, and that its people were contented, seems, however, to be well established. According to the legend, so great was the public security that property left on the highway could be found untouched after days and weeks; the farmer left his implements in the field without fear of losing them; and theft and robbery became comparatively rare. In a great measure this was, no doubt, due to the strict organization which Rollo introduced, and his insistence upon the personal accountability of each one of his subjects to himself. For he had learned one most important lesson from his enemy, Harold the Fair-haired. This king was the first to establish in Europe what is called the feudal system of land-tenure. He declared all land to be the property of the crown, and merely held in fief by the nominal owners. In recognition of the king's proprietorship, the latter, therefore, pledged themselves to pay a certain tribute, and to support the king in case of war, with a given number of armed men, in accordance with the size and value of their holdings. This same system Rollo is said to have introduced into Normandy, whence it spread over all Europe. Though we have now no more use for it, it proved a great and important element in the progress of civilization.

Rollo the Ganger must have been nearly eighty years old when he died in 927. His son, William Longsword, who succeeded him as Duke of Normandy, was a man of gentler disposition and in vigor and sagacity inferior to his father. Rollo's descendant in the fifth generation was William the Conqueror, who inherited in a larger measure the qualities of his great ancestor.[Back to Contents]

LEIF ERICSON[5]
By Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
(About 1000)

The story of the Finding of Wineland the Good is contained, in somewhat differing versions, in two parchment books, the one belonging to the first, and the other to the last, quarter of the fourteenth century. Both agree in attributing the discovery to Leif the Lucky, the son of Eric the Red; though the Flatey Book says that he was induced to undertake this voyage by a certain Bjarne Herjulfson, who, having been driven out of his course by storms, had seen strange lands, but had not explored them.