Viking Attack on Lindisfarne

“Never before has such terror appeared in Britain as we have now suffered from a pagan race.” So wrote the scholar Alcuin of the Lindisfarne raid, when Norse raiders struck the monastery of Lindisfarne, off the coast of Northumbria, on June 8, 793. It wasn’t the first Norse attack on English soil. Around 789, men from “Hordaland” killed a royal reeve at Portland, in Wessex. But Lindisfarne shook Christian Europe like nothing before it, and historians still date the start of the Viking age from that day.

The Lindisfarne Raid and the Domesday Stone

Lindisfarne, the “Holy Island,” was one of the most revered places in Northumbria. It was the resting place of St. Cuthbert, and Alcuin called it “more venerable than all in Britain.” The raiders killed monks, carried others off to be sold as slaves, and stripped the church of its treasures. A 9th-century carved gravestone found on the island, sometimes called the “Domesday Stone,” shows a line of armed men, and many people link it to the raid, though that connection can’t be proven. The carving at the top of this page shows the warrior side of that stone. English Heritage describes it as a troop of seven warriors, brandishing Viking-style battle-axes and swords. The other side shows Domesday, the Day of Judgment, which gave the stone its name. Excavators found it on the island in the late 19th century.

Politics Behind the Lindisfarne Raid

The raid is often pictured as hordes of pagans bursting out of the fog, but the reality was more complicated. Norse traders knew this coast. And Northumbria was in turmoil: in the years before 793 it saw kings murdered and deposed and royal heirs killed, leaving its rulers little time for defense. The raiders may well have spotted that weakness. Alcuin himself, in letters written after the attack, scolded the Northumbrian nobles for copying the raiders’ hairstyles. More on that is in our post on Viking hygiene.

Surprise at the Lindisfarne Raid

Since Vikings were trading along the coast, the monks and priests probably didn’t react to the ships as they came ashore. For them, it was probably just another trading party, something that would further improve the financial welfare of the rich area. They wouldn’t have known what was happening until the Vikings had drawn their weapons.

Vestige of Wealth

Raiding offered a much faster route to riches, especially silver, than trading furs and slaves. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle says the heathens “destroyed God’s church at Lindisfarne through brutal robbery and slaughter.” Yet the community survived, and so did its greatest treasure, the Lindisfarne Gospels, which the monks carried with them when they finally abandoned the island decades later.

Lindisfarne was only the beginning. Two years later the raiders struck Iona, off Scotland. Over the next 250 years the Norse would sail farther, raid harder, and settle everywhere from Dublin to Normandy, until the age closed at Stamford Bridge in 1066. Both ends sit on our Viking Timeline. At Asgard Alaska we want to tell the whole story, not just the raids. Join our newsletter to follow along.