Recreating The 12th Century
The Norman era after 1066 is one of the more neglected periods of European history, and yet one of the most vibrant and fascinating.
Normannis focuses on a time when the Normans were cementing their grip across France and England, expanding gradually to increase their influence in Ireland, Scotland and Wales, and changing the face of Europe forever.
Knights began to evolve from professional soldiers into members of a developing aristocracy, with an increasingly important stake in their country’s politics. They began to introduce and codify the concepts of ‘chivalry’, developing an atmosphere across Europe of knightly idealism and courtly love.
Those returning from armed pilgrimage in Jerusalem brought new concepts and materials back with them, and Europe enjoyed a new period sometimes dubbed by historians as ‘the little renaissance’.
It is also a period which has captured the public’s imagination, the real events of the period serving as a backdrop to the Robin Hood legend, during the absentee reign of Richard Couer-de-Leon, more commonly known as the Lionheart.
This is the period that Normannis strives to bring to life- one of human drama and international politics- of the height of the Angevin dynasty and its collapse- the events that began to shape what we now think of as the nations of Europe.