No sir, Jorvik!

Lies! they never conqoured wales, and when the danes invaded and kicked all zee saxons ass the Saxons came runing to us!(according to bernward cornwell! mwhaahaha)

Cornwell is an ejit, though.

You don't deny that the Normans conquered Wales, do you?

yeah well the romans conquered all!

Except Scandinavia! Granted, we had nothing of interest really...
And the romans sucked. Over-extended themselves, ridiculous "immigration" policy, became arrogant, fought pointless wars, decadence was rampant, suffered bad emperors/leaders....oh wait...this reminds me of a certain country.
And aye, danes themselves never conquered Wales, but the Normans did, and they had viking blood, but certainly weren't danish.

Hardly.

I wouldn't say the Romans sucked at all, though. They were bullies, liars, and thieves, but those same tags can be applied to any successful tribe or nation. Nor was it's collapse quite so simple.

Nothing beats quasi-historical conversation out of the blue.

Never said the reasons for the Roman Empire collapse was simple. Nobody knows what REALLY caused it. It's a mixture of a lot of different factors. But not counting in Asian empires then Rome was by far one of the most successful empires through the ages. lLasted a good 500 years which is quite a feat.

gnomy was on today!

oh my god! you logged in!!!!!

The normans were of norwegian descend. After the Vikings had sacked paris numerous times they settled in what became Normandy. That was literally only 100 or so years (i think) before 1066. William the Conqueror was very much a Norseman, I believe there are still some places in Normandy that have retained Norse names.

After the Norse settled in Normandy they adopted many of the surrounding fashions in society and warfare, most notably the use of heavy cavalry.

At the time of 1066 the Norman knight was boasted as being the best in the world.

So basically, the Normans was Norsemen who had adopted Frankish culture and mixed it with their very warlike scandinavian ways.

Norman-french was also a different language to french (although similar, obviously) and was the language of nobility and law in england for 100s of years. I believe it was someone like Edward III who made it so law cases could be spoken in english.. Can't really remember.