I think E Barnacle is being a bit unfair about the Isles in between the Roman and Norman invasions. The idea that this was just a bunch of disparate peoples continually fighting whilst continental Europe was peaceful surely doesn't stand up to scrutiny. Likewise it ignores the fact that there was art, literature, organised religion and emerging countries way before the Normans arrived. This was the period of St Augustine, the Celtic Church, the Lindisfarne Gospels and Book of Kells, the writings of the Venerable Bede, and of course in particular the emergence of both the Scottish and English kingdoms which were relatively early established European states. European influence in the form of the Danish and Norse invasions were hardly stabilising and the arrival of the Normans hardly brought a civilising force compared with what had been before. The harrowing of the north in particular was savage.