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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;+VGO.DVCKS, post: 7631112, member: 110504&quot;]Wow!&nbsp; [USER=74712]@FitzNigel[/USER], it is So Great to see this fantastic OP, and correspondingly brilliant ensuing thread, for the first time!&nbsp; <b>Bravo</b>.</p><p>Just by way of impressionistic, ultimately redundant commentary on what you said, both northern and southern Europe were profoundly polycultural during this interval, albeit in differing ways, thanks in no small part to the Vikings and their Norman descendants. </p><p>In both cases, a lot of the corresponding adaptation (which the Vikings were already adept in) was driven by utilitarian motives.&nbsp; The Vikings were trading as far as central Asia (witness the profusion of Samanid dirhams in hoards from Russia to Scandinavia) before they had a monetary economy in any formalized sense.&nbsp; ...Right, just take out the scales, and we&#039;re happy. </p><p>Same with the Normans, both in England and the western Mediterranean.&nbsp; My sense of what they did in England, in terms of minting and other elements of royal administration, is that, at the royal level, they were happy to appropriate Anglo-Saxon precedent more or less wholesale --when it suited their purposes.&nbsp; </p><p>Thank you, there&#039;s a dramatic contrast between the almost seamless appropriation of the Anglo-Saxon minting infastructure (which, as you noted, was demonstrably more advanced than in Normandy, especially by the time of the Conquest), along with the retention of existing internal, county /shire borders, on one hand; and how, among the ensuing Norman aristocracy, William I unilaterally imposed a regime which was both optimally suited to his own interests, and almost a textbook example of how feudalism was supposed to work, in theory.&nbsp; (...Since he <i>could</i>, imposing all of this, effectuvvely, from the ground up.)[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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