Since 1911, the historians and linguists have been showing that only the Vikings who distinguished themselves north of the Loire and founded Normandy were well enough documented to be worthy of interest.
In the wake of Lucien Musset in France, they have never found any reason (documents, archeological sites or artefacts) to start to study seriously the actions of the Vikings south of the Loire.
Lucien Musset wrote as follows: "The Norwegian raids south of the English Channel, pure pirate ventures, left no lasting traces, on the Loire, the Garonne or the Bay of Biscay"....[1] For their part, Aquitaine historians, following in the footsteps of Charles Higounet, consider the 9th and 10th centuries as "white pages" of history.
[2] In 2008, the historian Frédéric Boutoulle[3] concluded that the sources in Gascony did not allow us to form an idea and that salvation could only come from an archaeological discovery.
They describe large-scale attacks (844,[6] 847,[7] 857,[8] 864[9]), installations (843,[10] 845,[11] an alliance with Pepin II of Aquitaine (857,[12] 864[13]), but also the first ascent of a river by a Viking fleet (the Garonne in 844) and the first siege of a Frankish city in the West (Bordeaux in 847–848).
(Carte) In 860, Andreas of Bergamo[19] wrote about the battle of Fontenoy-en-Puisaye which took place in 841: "A great massacre was made, especially among the nobles of Aquitaine [...].
In 858, Annales Bertiniani evokes: "Bernon, duke of this portion of Normandy who lived on the Seine, comes to King Charles in the palace of Verberie, and, putting his hands in his own, swears loyalty to him".
Adhémar de Chabannes tells us that in 868, Charles the Bald regained control of Aquitaine and appointed Vulgrin, already Count of Agen, as head of the counties of Périgueux and Angoulême.
This abandonment is confirmed by another source: "The Archbishop of Auch, for his part, in 879 had only three suffragists installed in the eastern seats while the west was totally deprived of pastors".
All the more so as the sources cast doubt on the idea that the men of the North behaved as vulgar plunderers of monasteries with no ambitions south of the Loire.
According to the writer Joël Supéry,[33] the Ragnar clan, originally from the Vestfold, initiated the invasions and invaded Gascony to get their hands on a trade route between Bayonne and Narbonne, a route that dispensed the clan from crossing the dangerous Strait of Gibraltar dominated by the Emir of Cordoba to access Mediterranean trade.