he volunteered to assist Hugh against the king. Religious affiliations played appear to have been factor in the political alignments of tenth-century Normandy. According to the Annales, many pagans from Scandinavia arrived in Normandy in 943, leading some Normans to revert from Christianity to paganism. Long after Hagrold's floruit, Norman secular and ecclesiastical authority in Bayeux remained precarious. Hagrold appears on record as late as 954, when Richard and Hugh are recorded to have attacked Bayeux. What came of Hagrold is uncertain. One possibility is that he and his family removed to the Irish Sea region, and that his descendants were the Meic Arailt, a family that contested control of this region with the Meic Amlaíb branch of the Uí Ímair. On the other hand, the evidence concerning the Meic Arailt seems to indicate that this family—represented in the second generation by Gofraid mac Arailt and Maccus mac Arailt—was merely a branch of the Uí Ímair itself. Later interpretations Whilst the historical accounts of Flodoard are generally reliable, the same cannot be said of the treatment of the tenth century by Dudo. In the latter's tenth- or eleventh-century Gesta Normannorum, Hagrold is depicted as a Danish king who arrived in Normandy to aid the young the Count of Rouen during his minority. Dudo's use of Hagrold in this context seems to be an attempt to explain the presence of fiercely independent pagan Vikings in Normandy without compromising the myth of a cohesive Norman state and a Norman religion. Like Dudo, William of Jumièges, in his eleventh-century Gesta Normannorum ducum, identifies Hagrold as a Danish king, and conflated him with the latter's contemporary namesake, Haraldr Gormsson, King of Denmark. According to Gesta Normannorum ducum, Haraldr/Hagrold came to Normandy after having been ejected from Denmark by his son, Sveinn. In actuality, there is no evidence that Haraldr ever went to Normandy. Instead, sources such as the eleventh-century texts Encomium Emmae reginae and Gesta Hammaburgensis ecclesiae pontificum state that he sought assistance from the Slavs. Citations References Primary sources Secondary sources 10th-century Danish people 10th-century Normans Viking rulers Norman warriors Germanic pagans 10th-century Vikings