Some early history

Every now and then I like to look at what recent books have been added to the Internet Archive collection that you can borrow/check out.

The following is from "The growth of the Belgian Nation" by: Jan Albert Goris published in 1946:

Belgium has also at all times evinced a spirit of expansion. Although the Belgians have occasionally been reproached for being stay-at-home folks, history seems to contradict this accusation. A few years after Caesar conquered Belgium, Walloon soldiers were fighting in the ranks of the Roman legions. Later they took part in ail the big European battles, during the wars of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries. Considerable numbers of Flemings and Walloons followed William the Conqueror to England, and later the weavers of Flanders settled in Great Britain by thousands. There were Belgian migrations to Pomerania, Silesia, Hungary. And at the time of the great voyages of exploration and discovery, natives of Ghent peopled the "Flemish Isles" which later were called the Azores.

This helps explain why you'll find some people with the same surnames in England as you do in Belgium.

And as early as the 9th century, miners and iron workers came to Sweden from southern and eastern Belgium, along with neighboring areas in France. Most of the Walloons were iron workers coming from the Liege and Namur regions, along the Meuse River.