>>34094
>Britain up to then didn't have that much contact with mainland Europe save for the occasional Viking raids.
You haven't read anything about Anglo-Saxon England, have you? The Anglo-Saxon nobility was widely in contact with the rest of Europe and archaeological finds reveal extensive trading with the rest of the world. In fact, even if you read about the history of the Norman period, you will find that the Normans are always trying to justify their rule with the "Laws of Edward the Confessor" and falling back on Anglo-Saxon modes.
In fact, think about the Domesday Book itself. Wow, what an achievement of William the Conqueror, right? Wrong. Domesday Book is an achievement of the extant apparatus of Anglo-Saxon England. The fact that in such a period as this there was a bureaucratic mechanism in place that was so widespread and efficient that it could produce something as organized and massive as Domesday Book suggests a great deal about the political and social construction of Anglo-Saxon England itself.
I really don't think the Normans had that much of an impact honestly, I think they really just continued things as the had been for hundreds of years. The largest impact that they had was on the language, really. Other than that, the Normans fought a lot of wars and conquered a lot of territory, but they lost most of it. And even with their conquests of Wales and Ireland, they didn't really undertake massive migrations to there.
The Normans are just a case of where the very upper crust of English society was replaced with a foreign invader that ultimately assimilated to the native populace and became indistinguishable to them. Indeed, you hardly hear of "Norman" being mentioned as distinct from "English" after the 1200s.