Image via wikipedia.org
I always wondered how some south-italian people I know have blonde hair and blue eyes, just like most scandinavians, and now I know the answer.
The Normanni came to Naples and they putted themselves at the service of the Duke of Naples Sergio IV around 1030.
He decided to let them have an outpost and they founded the city of Aversa (which is BTW a beautiful place to see), just 20 chilometers north of Naples.
In the following years a scandinavian family called Hauteville, “Altavilla” italianized, come from the north to change the history of Italy.
At the time Sicily was under the Arabian dominion and being an island it was almost invincible… until Ruggero d’Altavilla, taking advantage of an inner dispute between arabians in sicily, stormed the island and conquered it, expanding also to the tunisian border.
And for the first time in centuries the center-south of Italy was finally united!
The scandinavian dominion of the new reign was something never seen in the history of Italy, it was fair and peaceful….
Even if they had to live between the pressure of the pope, the arabians and Bisantium, there was so much harmony that the muslims living in Sicily lived in peace with the cristians for a very long time. (Which was such a strange thing during the time of the crusades!)
Tancredi, the last king of the Normanni, was the Count of Lecce, the Duke of Athens and the King of Sicily.
At his death, Herny IV of Germany would reclaim the throne of the reign of Sicily because of his marriage with Costanza d’Altavilla, and that put to an end the scandinavian dynasty of Italy.
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This is fascinating! Thank you for doing the research and posting!
It came to my attention while studying the crusades… the name “normanni” was too strange
What a great page on the strong northern ties to Southern Italy and Italian heritage. My family are from Calabria. I knew of this history of course from my own family but I also see many ignorant people associate Southern Italy with everything but what it truly represents. Well-done.
Looks like Sweden and Italy are just a big family… ahahahaha
This is a really great article of the connection between the Swedish and Roman people back in the time when Rome had been a great empire for a long long time and Sweden didn’t even exist as one country, but as many little kingdoms of with some were inhabited by some travelling crusaders called the Vikings. Those famous crusaders were highly scilled sea mens who travelled the seas all the way to Rome among other places it seams. Its amazing to learn some new facts about my fore fathers thanks to you Alessio
i have spent the past year working on my swedish roots & at 1 point i was certain i was related to a man who was the king of sicily. did a lot of research & the swedes did have royalty on the isle of sicily. i found an error in my work & lost that connection but your research of a swedish colony that close to naples is fascinating & sad- sad because i was in the us navy in the late 60′s & visited naples 3 times & had NO clue that i was anywhere near my ancestral roots!! my dad is 100% swede & after WWII he got as close as copenhagen to his still living grandfather in knared, sweden (1946) but they wouldn’t let him cross to sweden. GREAT research. really enjoyed it. i DID find that my fathers mother was born in the skelleftea region but i have no clue how to try to find her family there. i appreciate all the research & stories on this site . thank you for sharing. joel in alabama, usa
as a sidenote to your research- my father had 2 sisters who moved up east in the 1920′s & BOTH married italian immigrants from the NAPLES area!! i always wondered why they were drawn to these 2 italians. maybe it was because of some long ago connection between southern italy & northern sweden! that notion just fascinates me. thanks again. joel in usa