Normandy has declared 2027 the Year of the Normans, and it has roped in Ireland, the UK and other territories to ponder the question: what did the Normans ever do for us? Expect lots of events in Wexford, Waterford, Kilkenny and Dublin, in particular.
The hook is William the Conqueror’s millennium birthday celebrations – and the stand-out happening must surely be the decision of the French to loan the 900-year-old Bayeux tapestry to the British Museum until July next year.
The much-prized medieval work of art captures the beginning of the Norman Conquest and the death of Harold, the last Anglo-Saxon King of England, at the Battle of Hastings in 1066.
The 70m long work of embroidery was produced by a team of female seamstresses in England after the battle, and returned to its country of origin for the first time since under tight security in July with an indemnity of £800 million (€930 million) against any damage.
The French refused a loan to mark the 900th anniversary of the Battle of Hastings in 1966, but Brexit and the fact that the Bayeux tapestry museum in northwest France is closed for renovations seem to have induced the president, Emmanuel Macron, to indulge in one final effort to win over British hearts and minds before he leaves office.
Light pollution was not a problem in April 1066, and so it was that everyone had a great view of Halley’s comet as it passed over England
By the time it returns to France, one estimate has it that 7.5 million people will have filed past or elbowed their way along its length. The exhibition is already sold out to the end of December, and the next tranche of tickets go on sale in October.
The tapestry is a long roll of flax linen embroidered in wool that races through a defining chapter in British history triggered by the death of the childless king, Edward the Confessor, and the game of thrones that then played out between the nobleman Harold Godwinson and William, the Duke of Normandy.
It concludes with the success of William the Conqueror at the Battle of Hastings on October 14th, 1066, when King Harold, less than 10 months on the throne, takes an arrow in the eye and dies with an estimated 4,000 of his soldiers.
The tapestry is a potted history in 58 scenes with Latin captions; an evocative series of medieval cartoons which, despite the limited means at the disposal of the Anglo-Saxon nuns who likely created it, tells a startling and brutal story of the medieval manosphere from the victor’s perspective.
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I had the good fortune to visit Bayeux en route to the Rosslare-bound car ferry in Cherbourg on a quiet day in May 2023, just as the World Health Organization had declared an end to the Covid-19 pandemic – and before tourism had revived.
Despite my leisurely stroll along its length in a darkened gallery, I must confess that the central importance to the story of the penis count across the 70m would have escaped me if I had not taken the trouble to check out some internet references on my phone.
Medieval scholars have established that there are 93 in the artwork – 88 of them belonging to horses, and another five to men. Size mattered, and William’s steed is particularly well-endowed. There is an ongoing dispute about one appendage that could be a large male member or a scabbard.
Despite the occasional bucolic scene of ploughmen digging the earth, the general vibe is very macho. Men are building boats, riding their horses hard, setting fire to houses, cutting heads off, wielding swords and spears, firing arrows, looting the valuables from the dead and generally spreading mayhem across Sussex. There are only five women featured.
You need to be sharp to spot that what might look like a leisurely attempt to start up a barbecue is in fact two Norman soldiers setting fire to a house and that the woman and child standing by as witnesses are being made homeless.
Light pollution was not a problem in April 1066, and so it was that everyone had a great view of Halley’s comet as it passed over England.
The first recorded illustration of the comet appears on the tapestry in a scene where Harold looks disturbed at the sight. It could only mean bad news, according to 11th century understanding of strange celestial objects appearing in the night sky.
Some minor damage to pigmentation appears to have occurred in the journey undertaken to Australia by one volume of the Book of Kells in 2000
As a diplomatic beau geste, the loan compares with Ireland’s extraordinary decision to lend the Book of Kells, the Ardagh Chalice, the Tara brooch and other priceless items for an exhibition called Treasures of Early Irish Art, 1500 BC to 1500 AD, to the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art in October 1977.
National histories are always something of a stitch-up – English identities in particular
Met staff were astonished at the generosity of the Irish people, and the government’s justification for it at the time was that Ireland’s image abroad needed a re-set, given the media coverage of the sectarian bloodshed in the North.
Some minor damage to pigmentation appears to have occurred in the journey to Australia by one volume of the Book of Kells in 2000, which played into Trinity College Dublin’s decision to deny it a trip back to Kells that same year.
Perhaps Trinity might reconsider if Kells invests in a climate-controlled, anti-vibration transport container such as the one that brought the Bayeux tapestry across the English Channel for the first time in more than 900 years.