Karl (768-814), son of Pippin, king of the Franks, completes the conquest of the Frisians, occupies Bavaria and crushes the Saxons in a long series of wars (772-804). He launches further campaigns against the Slavs and Avars in eastern Germany. By the time of his death, Karl had created a new empire in Western Europe, what came to be called the Holy Roman Empire, and he was called "Karl the Great"--in Latin Carolus Magnus, or now more commonly known as Charlemagne.

Charlemagne's court becomes the most important intellectual and cultural centre of Western Europe. Einhard (770-840), one of the most important writers of medieval Europe, writes a biography of Charlemagne, the Vita Caroli. Great Christian philosophers, like Alcuin and Paul the Deacon, worked here, while at the same time Bernlef, a blind Frisian harper, sang the old heroic songs of pagan Germany. Among these songs was likely an early form of the famous story of Beowolf, later written down in the form of a poem.

The Book of Kells, a world masterpiece of the art of illumination (book decoration) is made by monks in Ireland.

Raiding back and forth across the North Sea had occurred even as early as Roman times, but after 800 AD, the vikings of Norway, Denmark and Sweden suddenly appeared in large numbers. "Viking" simply means pirate, and these men of the north or Norsemen as they were also called, started out making hit and run raids. One or two generations later, however, they started to stay as settlers. Danes founded the Duchy of Normandy in France and settled parts of England. Norwegians occupied parts of Scotland and Ireland, and finally settled Iceland and Greenland, even reaching North America. Swedish vikings, called the Rus (from which our word Russia comes from), raided along the Don and Volga rivers, and founded the principalities of Kiev and Novgorod.

In 1066, the two battles of Stamford Bridge and Hastings are fought. In the first, the Saxon king of England, Harold, defeats a Norwegian army in northern England--the last real viking attack. Harold then rushes back south with his weakened forces to meet the Norman duke William at the Battle of Hastings. Harold is killed and defeated, and William becomes king of England, titled "William the Conqueror".

Norman invasion of England from the Bayeux Tapestry