Norman immigration

I think this commenter on an earlier post about UKIP was joking:

English culture never got over the effects of the Norman invasion which has divided our society for nearly 1,000 years and caused many of the problems we experience today.

But I am not sure.

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• http://twitter.com/EstelleRW Estelle

  What do they teach them at these schools? Harold was Edward the Confessor’s brother-in-law; William of Normandy was his cousin. There were family inks with the thrones of Norway and Denmark too. I think your correspondent is confusing class divisions with national ones.

• Toocleverbyhalf

  The rot set in years before that when those faceless bureaucrats from Wessex stole Mercia’s sovereignty.

  What d’we want?

  Freedom for Hwicce.

  When do we want it?

  Well we don’t really but we might if grinning Nigel Farage ever got his hands anywhere near the levers of power…

• Junius

  ‘These are the Heroes who despise the Dutch,

  And rail at new-come Foreigners so much;

  Forgetting that themselves are all deriv’d

  From the most Scoundrel Race that ever liv’d.

  A horrid Medly of Thieves and Drones,

  Who ransack’d Kingdoms, and dispeopl’d Towns.

  The Pict and Painted Britain, Treach’rous Scot,

  By Hunger, Theft, and Rapine, hither brought.

  Norwegian Pirates, Bucaneering Danes,

  Whose Red-hair’d Offspring ev’ry where remains.

  Who join’d with Norman-French, compound the Breed

  From whence your True-Born Englishmen proceed.’

  And much, much more in similar vein from Daniel Defoe’s The True-Born Englishman

• reformist lickspittle

  There might be just a bit of truth in this – there are those who will tell you England’s “north south divide” goes back to William the Bastard’s near genocidal “Harrying of the North” about a decade after he seized power.

  And there is certainly a good argument that the Muslim world has never fully recovered from the catastrophic 1258 sack of Baghdad, a mere seven and a half centuries ago.

• SeekTruthFromFacts

  “Norwegian Pirates, Bucaneering Danes,
  Whose Red-hair’d Offspring ev’ry where remains.”

  *Red* haired Scandinavians??? What has changed in the last two centuries: Scandinavian heads or the colour vocabulary of English?

  Answers on a postcard please…