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lord Tancred of Hauteville. Lead by Robert and Roger de Hauteville, they travelled

from Normandy to southern Italy as mercenary knights and adventurers. The Popes,
feeling hemmed in by the Emperors, the Byzantines and the Moslems, saw the
Normans as protectors. They offered the Normans titles to lands in Italy as an
invitation to conquer them on the Pope’s behalf, as his “Apostolic Legates”. In this
way Roger II was crowned the first king of Sicily in 1130 (his father Roger I had been
count). The new kingdom included much of southern Italy. Inevitably the Popes soon
regretted creating a strong and ambitious Norman presence in Italy.

The Normans were not the only Vikings who came south as mercenaries. Harold
Hardrada is known to us as the king of Norway whose attempted invasion of England
in 1066 distracted King Harold from stopping the successful invasion of William the
Conqueror (it was indeed the Year of Invading Norsemen). What is less well known is
how in his previous life Harold Hardrada had travelled to Kieran Rus (Russia) as a
mercenary and to Byzantium where he served in the emperor’s elite bodyguard, the
predominantly Norse Varangian Guard. The Byzantine court was said to respect their

military ferocity but hate their nightly drunken partying.
What did Roger do in Sicily?
A contemporary mosaic icon in a Palermo church shows a brown-haired, brown-eyed
Roger being crowned by Christ, with a gold fleurs-de-lis (later the symbol of the
French kings) wearing a crown of Byzantine style. As king Roger's authority was closer
to that of a Byzantine emperor or Arab emir than a European monarch. Educated by
Greeks, Arabs, Italians and Anglo-Normans at a multi-lingual court, Roger developed
a life-long intellectual curiosity. He spoke Arabic, kept a harem, and was frequently at

odds with the Roman Church. Some called him "a baptized sultan." His capital,
Palermo (in Arabic Bal'harm) was one of the wealthiest of Europe; the city’s annual
revenue exceeded that of Norman England.

Roger’s kingdom was famed for its multi-ethnic nature and tolerance in religion.
Native Sicilians, Byzantine Greeks, Jews, Muslim Arabs, Normans and Lombards lived

alongside each other. Norman feudalism was introduced in a form similar to Norman
England, though with greater royal authority. Some older Arab institutions were kept
and official documents were published in Greek, Latin, Arabic, Hebrew and Norman
French. Mosques, synagogues, Byzantine (Greek Orthodox) churches and Latin
(Roman Catholic) cathedrals existed side-by-side. The legal code permitted the
accused to be tried according to the laws of their own ethnic culture. The "Norman-
Arab" style of art and architecture flourished. It was Sicily's Golden Age. Roger
welcomed foreign scholars and supported scholarly projects. Al-Idrisi’s “Book of
Roger” and world map was one of the greatest geographical achievements of the

Middle Ages. Roger extended his kingdom, which included most of southern Italy, by