Extreme Neutrality

I’m reading A Brief History of the Normans by François Neveux. So far it’s quite informative and readable, but the author, apparently following current scholarly fashion, insists on referring to the medieval expeditions of the Northmen as “migrations.” For, you see, the word “invasion” (which he always puts in condescending scare-quotes) has a “very pejorative connotation” that reflects the “pessimistic vision of Frankish, Anglo-Saxon and Irish clerics, who . . . were describing the point of view of the victims.”

But later he notes that, when trade brought diverse Scandinavian peoples into sustained interaction with “Frankish and Russian worlds,” they “discovered rich but poorly defended countries, which soon encouraged them to move from trade to plunder.” So, we are told with a happy flourish, thus began “one of the most extraordinary human adventures of the Middle Ages . . . the Viking migration.”

Now, just yesterday I re-read G.K. Chesterton’s Ballad of the White Horse with great but critical appreciation. I can see why a careful modern historian would want to challenge Chesterton’s characterization of the “Danes” as vectors of “heathen nihilism,” who ” only saw with heavy eyes/ And broke with heavy hands. ” No doubt we are right to recognize great cultural and political creativity even among unlettered warriors—and for this reason we may well view the coming of the Vikings as something less than a total disaster.

But this does not make it reasonable to call a mass movement of armed and organized men, primarily motivated by the opportunity to take things without asking, anything but an “invasion.” This is not a characterization only morose monks could find intelligible.

This mealy-mouthed terminology may not indicate over-scrupulous scholarly neutrality so much as an internalized hostility to the story Western Christendom told about itself. Call me a cynic, but I doubt it will ever become fashionable to speak of Cortes’ “migration” to Mexico.