The 9th and 10th centurys brought many different invasions to Europe. They were from three main different people groups, the vikings from Denmark, the Magyars which was an Asiatic group that we do not have very much information about and the muslims from Arabia. The Viking invasions were most detrimental to what we would now call France. They were so destructive that they added a prayer to Catholic mass asking God to, “Deliver us from the Norsemen.” The vikings preformed lightning fast raids on villages coming from the sea. They laid waste to the villages and monasteries they raided. The Magyars were primarily a problem for what we would call Germany and continued to lay waste to it until in 955 Otto the great defeated them at the battle of Lechfeld. The muslims were a terror for all of Europe. They first conquered North Africa and Spain, then proceeded to fight battles in the rest of Europe. This had the affect of creating a constant fear of invaders in the people of Europe.
In response to this the people looked to local strongmen for protection. This created the system of Feudalism and Manorialism. The local strongman, such as a duke or lord, would watch out for invaders but because his time was occupied doing this the people would have to work on his land for three days in the week. The rest of the week they would work on land that belonged to the lord, but they would be able to keep and sell the things they grew on the land. Manorialism is the process in which a knight swears to obey the lord and the lord would give him land called a fief. In this way the invasions changed the way the land was run.