How would English culture develop if the Normans are defeated?

How would English culture develop if Harold Godwinson somehow is able to keep his throne from William (Normandy) and Harald III (Norway)?
 
In many ways governmental-wise the Normans adopted many institutions the English had already developed and just stamped their own names and people onto things. Witness how counties were literally called shires in native English, for example.
 
We might not have football for one thing. I have never found any record of it existing prior to the Bastard hoping across the water. Be a bit hard to imagine sporting culture without it.
 
Much less old French influence, for better or for worse.

Also, does “not having a century’s worth of men dying in a war to claim France” count as an effect on culture? Because the Godwinsons were not ever going to start a Hundred Years‘ War...
 
Not sure about Russia, but definitely likely to have dynastic ties with Scandinavia and the Holy Roman Empire.
There likely will be changes in the Church too, since the Pope backed the attempted overthrow of the the Saxon regime. There might have been a later movement against control of bishoprics by Rome, possibly leading to separatism. The fact that Britain is an island and hard to invade might encourage this. The struggle between the Pope and the Emporers in the high middle ages might well have found support in Britain.
 
More Scandinavian influence than French influence
I am not 100% certain of this. More Scandinavian influence than OTL? Yes certainly. But more Scandinavian influence than French? I don't know. France was a very important country that is very close and would certainly influence England. It did already, or else William would not have a claim to the English throne. Ennland with or without would the Normans will be influenced by France, although, yes, without the Normans it would be significantly less and England would be able to focus outside of France, like Scandinavia or the HRE (especialy the NW coasal areas).
 
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I am not 100% certain of this. More Scandinavian influence than OTL. Yes certainly. But more Scandinavian influence than French? I don't know. France was a very important ciuntry that is very close and would certainly influence England. It did already, or else William would not have a claim to the English throne. Ennland with or without would the Normans will be influenced by France, although, yes, without the Normans it would be significantly less and England would be able to focus outside of France, like Scandinavia or the HRE (especialy the NW coasal areas).

Well, a lot of this depends - how does a Norman failure to take England impact France in the near-to-mid term?
 
I am not 100% certain of this. More Scandinavian influence than OTL. Yes certainly. But more Scandinavian influence than French? I don't know. France was a very important ciuntry that is very close and would certainly influence England. It did already, or else William would not have a claim to the English throne. Ennland with or without would the Normans will be influenced by France, although, yes, without the Normans it would be significantly less and England would be able to focus outside of France, like Scandinavia or the HRE (especialy the NW coasal areas).

No Normans also means no Harrowing of the North and the north of England and York especially would remain important centres of trade which will continue to engage in Scandinavia.
 
No Normans also means no Harrowing of the North and the north of England and York especially would remain important centres of trade which will continue to engage in Scandinavia.
Absolutely and there will still be connections to Scandinavia, but France is closer and more important/rich than Scandinavia. France will influence England, no matter what. But yes, Scandinavia will be far more influential in nonorman England than it was in Norman England.
 
There is general assumption on this board that England would have been more focused on North Sea than Channel and Atlantic : while not totally untrue, it tends to be really exaggerated.

Late Anglo-Saxon politics really had interest on Channel shores since the Xth and Æthelstan's reign. It was more or less overshadowed by contemporary events in England, but the relation of the Wessex kings and pretender with Normandy (you had Normans in England decades before William's conquest) but as well the campaign of Harold in Flanders does highlight real relations with the continent that didn't existed as such with Scandinavia.
But while French influence isn't going to leave anytime soon in Anglo-Saxon England, it would certainly be balanced ITTL by a known strong relation with continental HRE, especially northern Germany: economically and politically England knew at this point a similar process to what happened a while ago on the mainland.
Namely political disintegration of the kingdom into smaller principalities, with earldomancies playing the part in England (following old regions as Bernicia, East-Anglia, etc. or more contemporary divisions such as western Mercia.
I could see kings of England tempering with this process but I don't think it would have been that successful on the long run.

Anglo-Saxon feudalism would not be similar to the Anglo-Norman feudalism, of course.
While Frankish and German institutional influence would certainly there, it would be influencing a distinct local situation, for instance socially (which admittedly partially came from a troubled Xth and XIth centuries) with a lasting use of slavery (which did existed on non-mediterranean continental principalities, but virtually disappearing) and the noticeable presence of semi-free tenants as bordarii or sokemen.
It's arguably not clear how much Normans translated the situation into terms they were familiar with, bordarii/cotarii, and how much the situation was similar with what existed in North-Western France, tough.

The comparison with the continent could make *English feudality looking as a mix between Imperial (important potentes, distinctive principalities, important royal role) and French (lack of public fiscus, and possibility of landed redistribution) situations with still significant French influence possibly pulling something akin to what Davidian Revolution was to Scotland while, again, counterbalanced by an imperial influence (which wouldn't go in the way of an anti-feudal movement, tough).

An interesting cultural development would be that while Saxons used vernacular language in their charts (although a formalized Old English that might not have been that understandable for everyone) it might not be mirrored in Normandy and, eventually, France as it possibly did IOTL: we might see a longer use of Latin in official documents on the continent even if I do think, giving the large interaction between Saxon England and France IOTL, that this influence would still play ITTL.

Eventually, while you had only a really limited formal difference between mainland and insular churches and that Christianity in England was without a doubt Catholic without any real religious differences, late Anglo-Saxon church wasn't in the same institutional state than in the continent.
While the great reforms of the Xth and XIth century largely gave pontifical power dominance in Western Europe as well a firm independence for episcopal and monastic clergy which was still importantly influenced by great feudateuries in England : while not entirely put aside from the continental movement, Anglo-Saxon churches and monasteries would be a bit late to joining up the continental situation ITTL.

Basically, French influence (and specifically Norman) is still going to be quite strong in AS England, while not as pervasive and invasive than IOTL, and counterbalanced with German then Scandinavian influence, but for what matter the latter, much less so than often expected : it's no longer the Xth century on this regard.
 
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There likely will be changes in the Church too, since the Pope backed the attempted overthrow of the the Saxon regime.
It's debatable how much he did, and how far the support went.
Overall, it was probably more a support of William's claims than a particular beef with Harold and England, giving that Norman clerics took an active part asking the pope to act into inheritence matters.
This blog article is quite interesting on the matter. Long story short, you didn't have a real basic difference between English church and what existed on the mainland, but political difference and a poor pontifical diplomacy from Harold that held by a stance that could have worked in the Xth century, but no longer so.
 
No Norman England would mean no Angevin Empire, no 100 year war. That must be some sort of positive for France.
The Capetians might have a harder time centralizing France without the Normans and Angevins fighting over England.

Capetians' main focus would likely be still the control of Lower Seine and Lower Loire, in the continuity of their control on Upper Seine and Middle Loire, as it was in the early XIth century IOTL
While limited, their demesne was wealthy and sililar to what existed in the northern part of the kingdom, with a political and resource relative advantage to abide to this objective, with the kings able to endows the IOTL arbitral role of feudal kingship to get the best of infighting between these two houses (remember than Plantagenets and Normans couldn't stand each other, as they were competing in a similar region) : alternatively supporting Normans, Angevins and Flanders to slowly gain the upper hand in northern France would work as it did, mostly, IOTL, and while the lack of influence from the Empire on eastern (and more or less scattered) may probably mean no direct confrontation for a little while, you'd probably end up with what we would call "low intensity conflicts" between smaller players, especially given the complex nature of french feudal relations.

So, while it might not be as spectacular than IOTL, and possibly with a much slower advance in southern France (due to the absence of Plantagenet Aquitaine) if the Great Southern War is butterflied away, Capetians still have a fairly good ground to enforce their authority in the course of the XIth/XIIth/XIIIth centuries.
It's more a matter of scale than difficultly, with Normans being only one feuding principalty among others : I even tend to think it would make royal progression relatively easier in the XIth and XIIth centuries, while more on a "piece-by-piece" approach.
 
i've been trying to figure out alot of this for a long time now since one of the PODs for my ASB ATL is exactly this ;) one thing i decided on, though very unprofessionally, is that the English language is called Anglish and, naturally, doesn't have the French influences that it gained IOTL, but that basically boils down to there being more Germanic names and naming conventions in Anglish (one idea is that it would include the aristocracy using lots of Ancient Germanic names to give them that kind of dignified/pretentious Old World look while the commoners' names become more and more modern over time) and all French-derived words are excluded from Anglish (if they're used, it's solely as loanwords) but Latin-derived ones are kept such that i'm reasoning that if the French word that a given English word comes from is reasonably similar to its Latin root then it stays the same as IOTL. i've been using the Anglish Moot as a resource in this regard. another thing i'm trying to do is, potentially, use archaic spellings of English words at least to make it look more unique than OTL English. better conlangers than i can probably provide much better information on this than i have.
More Scandinavian influence than French influence and possibly closer ties to Russia.
i figured the same thing (except for Russia)--basically, without being taken over by the Normans, Britain doesn't become part of the western European cultural sphere and is instead considered part of northern Europe, or else is uniquely part of northwestern Europe and is the only part that is consistently part of that region (similar to how France is generally considered only part of western Europe) and, more specifically, is considered part of the broader definition of Scandinavia, like how Finland or Iceland are Scandinavian
 
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