ABSTRACT
Most of the ninth-century bases in western Europe were established by force, but some native rulers were willing to form at least temporary alliances with the men who controlled them. Irish kings fought alongside the Dublin Vikings as well as against them, and the Loire Vikings were employed in conflicts between Franks and Bretons by both sides. Roric was granted land in the Rhine estuary because Lothar ‘could not crush him’, but his presence there did protect the Rhine and Meuse valleys from other raiders and when, in 882, another Dane, Godfred, was ‘granted’ the same territory it was presumably for the same purpose. In 911 the king of western Frankia, Charles the Simple, conceded Rouen and the lower Seine valley to Rollo ‘for the protection of the kingdom’ and a little later other Vikings, who controlled Nantes and the lower Loire, were acknowledged first by Count Robert, and in 927 by the west Frankish king.
