Prologue: The Viking Dawn
“A sword age, a wind age, a wolf age. No longer is there mercy among men.”
Völuspá Doomsday Prophecy from Snorri Sturluson’s Prose Edda
The Holy Island of Lindisfarne is an unlikely place to begin the story of an epoch of violence and blood. If anything, it seems today like a place outside of time, an inconspicuous and unimpressive bit of land sticking out of the North Sea. Covered by sparse vegetation, its rocky soil slopes gently towards the tidal coasts, unencumbered by much protection from either the northern climate or the pounding of the waves.
As early as the sixth century, the island had become home to a small enclave of monks who were looking for a spiritual haven, a place where they could retreat from the world and its distractions. Within a century, a priory had been built on the island’s southern promontory, and its suitability for quiet prayer had attracted a monk named Cuthbert, Northumbria’s future patron saint. Renowned in life for his personal warmth and holiness, Cuthbert spent twenty-three years on the island, and his tomb – thanks to numerous miracles attributed to him after his death – became a popular place for pilgrimage among England’s Anglo-Saxon population.
No other monastery better symbolized the new confidence of the late eighth century. Thanks to a series of strong rulers in both Britain and the continent, a measure of security had returned to Western Europe that hadn’t been seen since the Pax Romana. The crumbling relics of a more prosperous time lay on all sides, but farmers, craftsmen, and monks had settled in to the sure, steady rhythms of early medieval life.
Politically, England was divided among seven kingdoms, four major and three minor ones. The most powerful of the major kingdoms was Mercia, which controlled nearly the entire central portion of the island from the Welsh border to the North Sea. The other major kingdoms were Northumbria, stretching from Edinburgh to the Humber River in the north east; East Anglia, a swampy area along England’s east coast; and Wessex, which covered all of southwestern England, including Cornwall. The three petty kingdoms were Sussex on the Channel coast, Essex which controlled London, and Kent, the area around Canterbury.
Although all of England had been prospering in the eighth century, the northern regions in particular experienced a cultural flowering that was impressive enough to be remembered by historians as the ‘Northumbrian Renaissance’ six centuries before the more famous Italian one. Painting, metalwork, sculpture, and architecture all flourished, and it was during this time that the great Anglo-Saxon illuminated manuscripts were produced – among them the Lindisfarne Gospels, the Book of Kells, and the Book of Durrow.3
Throughout England, religious houses opened up schools that produced academics of such quality that when Charlemagne decided to sponsor his own school – the Palatine Academy – he staffed it with English scholars.4
Monasteries like those at Jarrow, Lindisfarne, and Iona, on the northern coasts of England and Scotland, were the main beneficiaries of this artistic flowering. Gospel books with lavish covers and gilded pages appeared along with reliquaries5 studded with precious stones, bishop’s crosiers – their symbol of office – made of delicate ivory, and vestments inlaid with gold and silver. The eighth century, which had overseen this renaissance, seemed poised to end on a note of increased prosperity and harmony. In 787 the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle reported that the farmers of England worked their fields in ‘supreme tranquility’. The contentment was such that one chronicler was carried away enough to write that ‘even the burden-bearing frame of the oxen placed their necks under the yoke in dearest love.’ The shadow of things to come, however, was revealed that autumn when a look-out spotted three unidentified ships off the coast of the Isle of Portland in southern Wessex.
Whenever ships were spotted – whether hostile or friendly – it was the duty of the coastguard to inform the king’s reeve, the chief magistrate of a district or town. The isle of Portland’s reeve, a man named Beaduheard, must have assumed the strangers were merchants and probably rode down to the beach to direct them to a manor where they would be able obtain the necessary permissions to conduct business. However we don’t know what he actually planned because before he had a chance to open his mouth, they loosed a volley of arrows, killing him and his men instantly.
Poor Beaduheard had the misfortune of making Europe’s first recorded contact with the Vikings, and his family didn’t even have the satisfaction of punishing his killers. By the time the king’s men arrived the Vikings would have been long gone, sailing further along the coast or back home with whatever they had managed to snatch off the corpses. There was nothing to be done but bury the bodies and hope the strangers didn’t return.
News of the attack spread quickly, and nervous local populations began to take defensive measures in case the raiders reappeared. On both sides of the English Channel farmers were recruited to serve in peasant ‘levies’, assemblies of local shock troops who could be called into service quickly. Some religious houses took similar precautions. In 792 the monasteries of Kent were required to contribute to raising coastal defenses against ‘pagan seamen’. The Vikings, however, were not simple pirates and soon revealed the English preparations to be hopelessly inadequate. Their previous raids had merely been probing attacks, intelligence gathering to test both the prize and the defenses. In 793 they struck in force.
Their target was not – as might be expected – one of the rich trading centers such as could be found at Dorset or Southampton. These were well-guarded and in proximity to large populations which could rally to their defense. Instead, the cunning Vikings chose the monastery of Lindisfarne – isolated, prosperous, and guarded only by the prayers of unsuspecting monks.
Over the past century, English monasteries had grown fantastically wealthy, a fact which spread to the Viking homelands either through word of mouth or through trading activity. Monasteries were natural sites for the sale of imported goods – wines for communion, high quality textiles for church vestments, and precious metals for plate and reliquaries. In addition to the fortunes accumulated through gifts by pious donors, they also acted as proto-banks since local magnates frequently used major churches as safe deposits for their own portable wealth. Raiding a monastery was the Viking equivalent of winning the lottery.
Best of all, as far as the Vikings were concerned, these rich targets were virtually unguarded. All over Europe religious houses had been built in exposed coastal areas in the belief that the sea would protect their flank – an opinion that was now proved terribly wrong. The shock of that discovery can still be felt in the writings of the time. “It was not thought possible ” wrote one cleric after the first attack, “that such an inroad from the sea could be made.”
Lindisfarne was wealthy even by monastic standards, and its selection as the Viking’s first target was no accident. It had been personally endowed by the Northumbrian king, and possessed a peerless collection of relics, including the sainted remains of the English monk Cuthbert and the equally famous Irish missionary Columba who had brought Christianity to Scotland. The lucrative pilgrim trade which had grown from the fame of these two alone had made the monastery fabulously rich. Various Viking groups had been active in the area for some time and, on June 8, 793, one of these groups, from what is today Norway, carried out a brutally efficient attack.
An anonymous Northumbrian monk recorded the event.
“The pagans from the northern regions came with a naval force to Britain like stinging hornets and spread on all sides like fearful wolves, robbed, tore and slaughtered…
No one was spared. Monks who tried to resist were hacked apart or dragged down to the beach and drowned. Reliquaries were pulled into pieces and their contents dumped on the ground. Rich tapestries adorning chapel walls were torn down, altars were smashed, and everywhere the corpses of the slain lay ‘like dung in the streets’.
The disaster sent a shockwave through Europe. If the heart of English Christianity could fall, then surely no one was safe. Anxious monks trying to make sense of the calamity claimed that there had been divine warning signs before the attack: sheets of lightning had been spotted in the skies several weeks before, supposedly accompanied by fiery dragons wheeling menacingly above the priory.
The disaster was widely attributed to the moral laxity of the English church. A few weeks after the raid a letter was circulated quoting Jeremiah 1:14 – “Then the Lord said unto me, Out of the north an evil shall break forth upon all the inhabitants of the land” – and calls for reform were made. The scholar Alcuin, writing to the Bishop of Lindisfarne with eerie clarity, identified both the cause and the proper response. “Either this is the beginning of a greater tribulation, or else the sins of the inhabitants have called it upon themselves. Truly it has not happened by chance… You who are left, stand mindfully, fight bravely, defend the camp of God…”
No amount of soul searching, however, stemmed the tide. The next year, the monasteries of Jarrow on the east coast and the Isle of Skye on the west were hit, and in 795 Iona Abbey was looted. Almost the entire community – monks, nuns, peasants, and animals – were dragged down to the seashore and slaughtered. It was a grim portent of the carnage to come. Alcuin, writing from the safety of Charlemagne’s capital, captured the anguish: “What assurance is there for the churches of Britain if St. Cuthbert, with so great a number of saints, defends not his own?”