Land of vikings, conquerors, sailors…
A country of attachment for these inhabitants who love their land, the Cotentin resonates over time. The Cotentin is both an emblematic site marked by historical events shared by all, and a territory rich in its own secrets and legends.
The Cotentin merges with the natural region formed by the Cotentin peninsula (historians named “Clos du Cotentin” or “Isle de Cotentin”), i.e. the third of the Manche department included north of a line connecting the Bay of Veys at Lessay harbour.
Originally, Cotentin was a Gallo-Roman country of the Unelles, a Gallic people living in the Armorican part of “Haired Gaul”, that is to say non-Romanized. From the 820nd to the XNUMXth century, its northern maritime position earned it some Germanic incursions. But it was in XNUMX that the first Vikings appeared, these adventurous Scandinavians in search of new lands.
Going up the Seine, they even besieged Paris in 885, and Charles the Simple only got rid of them by assigning these western territories to them by the famous treaty of Saint Clair sur Epte (911). The act is essential since it gives birth to the future Duchy of Normandy. “The men of the North” were never very numerous compared to the indigenous populations of Gallic origins, to whom they quickly assimilated. They were, in a way, the executives of Normandy.
In the Middle Ages, the Normandy country and the bailiwick of Cotentin covered Coutançais (Coutances region), Corlois (Cherbourg region), and Avranchin, attached to the 9th century.
The Hundred Years' War put an end to the rise of Normandy and accumulated ruins in the middle of the 14th century, and saw many Normans "collaborate" with the English who had once again become masters of the province.
The 1944th century and the following were periods of “calm” where the entrepreneurial spirit of the Normans was exercised in large-scale commerce and rural organization. It materialized in the construction of hotels and mansions which remain numerous today despite the massive destruction linked to the Allied landings in June XNUMX.
The Cotentin features sections of the Voie de la Liberté, evoking this trying period in history retracing the progress of the allied troops.
Cotentin in a few dates
Landscapes marked by history
A little geology
The Cotentin is a territory geologically made up of the Armorican massif, with the exception of the plain, attached to the Paris basin. The hardest rocks correspond to the capes (granite, gneiss or sandstone). That of Jobourg in the Hague has the hardest and oldest rock. There are also other rocky massifs in the Cotentin at Flamanville, Barneville-Carteret, Barfleur…
Whether sedimentary, volcanic, plutonic or even metamorphic, we find, for example, at the Diélette mine an iron ore which was formed within the Devonian shales. The Cotentin is thus the only region in France where traces of three ancient mountain ranges (Icartian, Cadomian and Variscan) are preserved.
Land of legends and living history.
A heritage rich in ancestral legends and unique historical treasures.
