ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to set out, where appropriate, the evidence for exogamy and miscegenation amongst the Normans against the backdrop of other medieval people movements in early Western Europe. It shows whether the study of earlier migratory movements can help us to understand the history of the smaller-scale and shorter-lived Norman migrations, and in particular the role of exogamy and miscegenation in the process of cultural transfer. The chapter utilises the word ‘exogamy’ for a sexual relationship between a foreigner and a native that was recognised as a marital union between a man and a woman. TIn all major Norman people movements – the Scandinavian settlement of Normandy, the Norman migration to southern Italy, the Norman invasion of England and the Franco-Norman settlement of Antioch – an elite comprised mostly of men moved away from their homeland in order to settle in new lands.
