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Caption: Norman (or Viking) axeman, 10th century

This Norman (or Viking) axe man holds a Danish style battle axe. Vikings were also called ‘Norman’ — men of the north — by the Dark Ages French. A large group of Vikings occupied and settled on the north-western coast of France in what became Normandy, the area from where many of the French settlers to New France came from in the 17th century and where the Canadian Army landed on D-Day on 6 June 1944. Print after Viollet-Leduc from the Bayeux tapestry.