Free Northmen: The Viking Saga AD 793-1241 by John Haywood

becoming an attractive target for Viking raids. The long economic recession that followed the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the fifth century was coming to an end as political stability began to return. As trade with the north increased, Scandinavian merchants had ample opportunities to learn about western Europe’s rich, and largely unguarded, ports and monasteries. The potential spoils of raiding the west would amply repay the increased risks of sailing further afield. The violence that for so long had characterised Scandinavian society was about to spill over into the rest of Europe.

CHAPTER 2
    L INDISFARNE , A THELNEY AND Y ORK
    T HE V IKINGS IN E NGLAND 789–954

    Early in 793 the people of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Northumbria witnessed strange apparitions in the sky. Immense flashes of lightning terrified the people, and fiery dragons flew through the air. Famine followed. Bloody rain fell from a clear sky onto the northern end of St Peter’s cathedral in York, Northumbria’s capital. It was a sign, surely, that something terrible was going to come from the north. Then, on 8 June, the dreadful omens were fulfilled: Viking pirates sacked the wealthy and influential Northumbrian monastery on the island of Lindisfarne. In a letter written shortly after the attack, the distinguished Northumbrian scholar Alcuin ( c . 735 – 804) expressed his anguish and shock:
‘We and our fathers have lived in this fair land for nearly three hundred and fifty years, and never before has a such an atrocity been seen in Britain as we have now suffered at the hands of a pagan people. Such an attack was not thought possible. The church of St Cuthbert is spattered with the blood of the priests of God, stripped of all its furnishings, exposed to the plundering of pagans – a place more sacred than any in Britain. ...Who is not afraid at this?’
(trans. Stephen Allott, Alcuin of York (York, 1974)).
    If there was anyone who was not afraid, they soon would be, for this was just the beginning.
    The holy island
    Low lying and largely covered with sand dunes, Lindisfarne lies in the North Sea, just a mile off the mainland to which it is joined for a few hours twice a day at low tide by sand flats. Today Lindisfarne feels remote, especially when the tide is in and tourists cannot reach it, but it is only 5 miles by sea from Bamburgh castle, one of the main strongholds of the Northumbrian kings. It was because of its closeness to this seat of power that Aidan, an Irish monk, founded a monastery and bishopric here in 635 as a base for the evangelisation of the still pagan Angles of Northumbria. On his death in 651, Aidan was buried at Lindisfarne and was soon recognised as a saint. A veritable factory of holiness, Lindisfarne’s next eight bishops were also recognised as saints, the most famous of them being St Cuthbert (d. 687), so gentle a man that he was supposedly even befriended by the local otters.
    Monasteries were the main centres of literacy and book production in early medieval Europe and Lindisfarne was home to an outstanding scriptorium where monks ruined their eyesight producing books so intricately illuminated that later generations thought them the work of angels. Of all the monasteries in Britain only the Scottish monastery of Iona rivalled Lindisfarne’s reputation for sanctity. The relics of Lindisfarne’s many saints were its greatest treasures and the foundation of its reputation for holiness. Kings, seeking the monks’ prayers and the intercession of the saints for the benefit of their peoples’ and their own, usually rather sinful, souls gave the monastery generous grants of land. Visiting pilgrims seeking miraculous cures and spiritual merit made their lesser donations. Lindisfarne became wealthy as well as spiritually powerful. This wealth was displayed for the glory of God: silk vestments for the priests, gold and silver communion vessels, crucifixes, croziers, reliquaries and book covers all encrusted