Discovering the Timeless Spirit of Normandy

Dotted with villages of half-timbered houses and covered by a neat patchwork of hedgerows, the rolling green countryside of Normandy is so beautiful and peaceful that it belies a tumultuous history as some of the most coveted turf in Europe. For Americans, of course, this northwestern province of France is indelibly associated with the heroic D-Day landings of 1944.

Over preceding centuries, endless wars on Norman territory had established the seemingly ineradicable thorniness between the French and the English. Earlier still, in the ninth century, Viking raids were an incessant menace. Indeed, the word “Norman” itself is derived from “Norsemen.” Weary of the commute to Scandinavia, the invaders eventually settled down and intermarried with the Frankish inhabitants.