ABSTRACT
The former Frankish Empire, weakened by internal dissent among Charlemagne’s successors, came under constant attack on all of its frontiers: the Moors from the south, the Avars from the east and the Vikings from the north. The Vikings, who had begun their raids on Continental Europe in 834, returned (having briefly devoted their attention to England) with a vengence in the 870s. On 3 August 881, King Louis of the West Franks (Louis III of France), a grandson of Charles the Bald who had received the western part of Charlemagne’s empire at its partition (see Strasburg Oaths, ch. 6), returned from the South of France, where he had been helping his brother Carolman (1.19), to secure a rare and famous local victory over the Vikings at Saucourt. These Northmanni, as they are called in the poem, were later settled by Charles the Simple (another brother of the protagonist) on the Seine, where they became Christian vassals of the French King and began to speak their own brand of French, and from where a century and a half later their descendents invaded England.
