Poppa was born about 872, and died about 930. She was the wife, or mistress, of Rollo, the Viking conqueror of the lands that became known as Normandy (after the Viking Norsemen). Rollo and Poppa founded the Norman dynasty. She was the mother of William I Longsword and grandmother of Richard the Fearless, who forged the Duchy of Normandy into a great fief of medieval France.and thus the great-great-great grandmother of William the Conqueror.
Dudo of Saint-Quentin, a Norman historian (born about 965) describes her as the daughter of "Count Berengar", the dominant prince of the region, and says that she was captured at Bayeux by Rollo in 885 or 889, when she was about 13 or 17. This has led to speculation that she was the daughter of Berengar II of Neustria. Other historians speculate differently about her parentage.
Despite the uncertainty, she was a member of the Frankish aristocracy.
We don’t get to know very much about Poppa. It was all about the men conquering and establishing dynasties. More often than not, the women are recorded merely as the vessels through which lineage was perpetuated, unless some very noteworthy acts of agency were recorded.
Whatever was going on, my Ancestry DNA test shows that my DNA is 34% Scandinavian, and I can definitely trace my ancestry to back beyond William the Conqueror - who was Norman, and thus to the Vikings.
A French author, Joelle Delacroix, has written an historical novel featuring Poppa. It’s due to be released in September 2018. Link here.
Google translation of the book blurb:
"Winter 890. The fury of the men of the North falls on the city of Bayeux. Poppa, count Béranger's daughter, is taken prisoner and taken away by her ravisher Hrόlfr le Vagabond who chooses her as his companion. At first obsessed by the idea of escaping her, she ended up being conquered by this man, a Norwegian driven out of his home by King Harald and who has since wandered from ground to ground, looting here and renting himself elsewhere as a mercenary. But, Hrόlfr had a dream: there, in Francie, he became a Christian and a multitude of men recognize him as their lord. Became his wife and the mother of his children, Poppa freely shares his destiny that begins alongside the great Alfred, king of Wessex, and ends in the winter of 911, while Hrόlfr (better known in Normandy as Rollon), become Robert by the grace of baptism, takes possession of the territory granted by King Charles the Simple, thus becoming Count of Rouen and first Duke (Jarl) of the Normans."
