Thread by @DrFrancisYoung

Perhaps the weirdest theory about the origin of the Grand Dukes of Lithuania is that they were English ealdormen and thanes fleeing the Battle of Hastings in 1066. The theory arose in the 1940s from attempts to explain the rapid expansion and success of medieval Lithuania

The theory goes that Englishmen who travelled to Constantinople to serve in the Byzantine Emperor's Varangian Guard then crossed the Black Sea to the Crimea, and travelled into the interior where they formed a warrior elite ruling the Lithuanians

The first part of this theory is actually true - English expats did indeed settle in Crimea (see @caitlinrgreen's excellent account of this caitlingreen.org/2015/05/mediev…) but there is no evidence for English settlement in Lithuania

The theory belongs to a strand of thought that rejected the idea that the Lithuanians, on their own, could possibly have become as successful as they did; so they must have needed foreign assistance

Needless to say, this is really just a reflection of c20th perceptions of the Lithuanians as a 'conquered' people, and came from the same stable as the racist idea that Africans couldn't possibly have developed sophisticated civilisations without foreign assistance, etc.