European Kingdoms

Counts of Friesland (House of Fries) (Netherlands) (Low Countries)
AD 839 - 889

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The Frisians suffered heavily from Viking attacks on the Low Countries, especially Danish Viking attacks, during the period in which England was also facing destruction and eclipse by the sheer weight of Viking attacks. There, only Wessex survived as an independent kingdom. In Frisia, independence had already been lost to the East Franks, but now Frisian dominance of the local coastal area, the Mare Fresicum, was destroyed by repeated Viking attacks. Dorostates Frisionum, the chief trading town from at least as early as the sixth century, known as Dorestad in the ninth century (modern Wijk bi Duurstede not far from Utrecht on the Lower Rhine), suffered especially.

839 - 856

885 - 889

897

Alfred the Great of Wessex experiments with warship styles for his navy. The two styles of choice are Frisian or Danish, revealing the importance of both peoples in the building of state-of-the-art warships. It seems that Frisian masters and crew make up a sizable proportion of the manpower of this new royal navy. Nine ships are involved in a not entirely successful skirmish in which three of the five officers who are important enough to be named are Frisians. Sixty-two of Alfred's navy are killed, Frisians and English (noted in that order). The Frisians and English are still one people separated only by an ocean, and speaking the same language with only dialectal differences (in the same way that the Britons of Brittany maintain close relations with the Cornish of England until early modern times).

King Louis 'the Pious' of the Frankish empire attempted to leave the empire intact for his eldest son, Lothar, but the others rebelled at the idea. The treaty of Verdun in AD 843 confirmed the official division of the empire between Charlemagne's three surviving grandsons (click or tap on map to view full sized)

916

The counts of West Frisia rule locally in the name of the archbishop of Utrecht.