ROLLO GENEALOGY

 The first Rollo was a Viking.

Rollo (a Latinised version of Rolf) was the name given to Gongu-Hrolf, son of Rognvald, Earl of More (a Norwegian province). Rollo angered King Harald by stealing some cattle from Oslo fjord and was declared an outlaw, even though he was the son of his friend and adviser.

Rollo took to the seas and eventually found himself with the Viking war-bands that took over Rouen and several other French towns in the area that was to become Normandy. In due course, he established himself as sole ruler, replacing the Viking assembles of free and equal men by a feudal system. Rollo's followers came to control most of the area surrounding the mouth of the Seine.

Also chronicled as Robert I "the Viking", Rollo is believed to have been born around 845/870 and to have died around 927/932.

In the year 911 Rollo laid siege to Chartres, but was repulsed by the forces of Charles III. However, the King saw the opportunity to achieve an accordance with the Vikings and he arranged a meeting with Rollo at St. Clair-sur-Epte (between Paris and Rouen). A stained glass window in the chapel that was the site of the meeting commemorates the treaty struck at the meeting. Rollo was granted Normandy as a Dukedom and the title Count of Rouen in return for his allegiance to Charles III. Rollo kept this bargain and was later baptised as a Christian.

Rollo's Vikings melded into the local culture fairly rapidly, taking local wives and concubines so that their children grew up speaking the Frankish language. In time, most traces of the old Viking ways of Scandinavia and the Danelaw of England disappeared from Normandy.

Some century and a half passed before Rollo's sixth generation descendant William the Conqueror took control of England by defeating King Harold at the Battle of Hastings in 1066. The story of the battle and its origins are depicted in the famous Bayeux Tapestry.

In the arms of England there are three "lions rampant", that is, walking and showing the full face. The first lion is that of Rollo, Duke of Normandy. The second is that of Maine, a country that had been annexed to Normandy. Those two lions were borne by William the Conqueror and his descendants. The third lion on the arms of England was added by Henry II to represent the Duchy of Aquitaine, for his wife Eleanor, Duchess of Aquitaine. The arms appear in the 1st and 4th quadrants of the British Royal Standard (depicted below).

It is thought that the Rollo family name emerged as a result of a pattern of patronymic identification (eg, Robert son of Rollo, etc.). Torstin, or Thurstan, son of Rollo was the bearer of William's standard - the Papal banner - at the Battle of Hastings.  William's nephew, Erik Rollo also accompanied him on the invasion. One of these is thought to have been the ancestor of the 'aristocratic' line of Rollos who originated the Rollo Clan in Scotland.

Einar, the son of Sigurd Rollo, Jarl of Shetland and Orkney raided Scotland some considerable time earlier than that. There were hundreds of Norman families that came over with William, both for the Battle of Hastings and afterwards. These probably included a number of ancestors of the "ordinary" British Rollo families.

A son or grandson of Erik, one of the first Anglo-Norman Rollos, was Richard or Ricardo the clerk who is thought to have gone to Scotland sometime after 1130 in the service of David I. David left the English Court to reclaim his Scottish throne. The Rollo name first appeared in Scottish records in a charter granted by Robert de Brus around 1141.

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