On
reasonable evidence, the Bottrill family can be traced back to Fornjot (year
500AD) who was King of Finland (Kvenland). In a society where writing was not used, early
Norse history was chronicled by the Skalds, who committed facts to memory and
handed their knowledge on orally through the Sagas to their successors to keep a
record of each man’s family history.
Fornjot
was an ancestor of Rollo, the line traced in the Inga Saga from Orkney. He was called ‘Rolf, the Ganger’ because he
was too heavy for a pony – ‘ganger’ means ‘walker’. Rollo/Rolf was more adventurous than his brother
and took early to piracy, raiding the coasts of the Baltic. Being short of water, he made the mistake of
raiding one of his own king’s settlements. Enraged, the king summoned a ‘Thing’/council,
and banished Rollo in 876AD.
Rollo
was then 26 years old and stayed for a few years in the Hebrides where he had a
love affair and a daughter. He and his
gang of pirates now raided England and France leaving chaos behind them, while
other Viking leaders colonised Iceland, Greenland and America. The prosperous Seine valley with its navigable
river was a particular magnet for plunderers.
King Charles ‘the Simple’ could not stop the crippling raids, which even
threatened Paris. But the king was not
as simple as people thought. He couldn’t
beat them, so he joined them.
In
911 the King met Rollo, the leader of the Norsemen/Normans and tentatively proposed
to cede to the “Normans on the Seine” the lands they had taken on condition
they settled down. The change of lifestyle
from pirate to farmer would be extreme, but there being little left to plunder,
the Northmen were content to accept. So
Rollo grinned, placed his hands in those of the King of France as his overlord,
and became the first Duke of the “Duchy of Normandy.”
William the Conqueror descended from Rollo. William’s great aunt, Hawise, married
Geoffroi, Duke of Brittany and their son was Eudes, Duke of Brittany, father of
Geoffrey Boterel I.
