Viking raid on Lindisfarne
Norse raiders plundered the monastery of St Cuthbert on Lindisfarne off the coast of Northumbria — an attack that shocked Christian Europe and is conventionally taken as the beginning of the Viking Age.
- Date
- 8 June 793exact dateDate in the Julian calendar
- Place
- Lindisfarnetoday: Holy Island, Northumberland, United Kingdom · Western and Central Europe
- Participants
- Vikings
- Threads
- Early medieval Europe (500–1000)
- Also known as
- Sack of Lindisfarne; Разграбление Линдисфарна; Beginning of the Viking Age
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records terrible portents over Northumbria in 793 — whirlwinds, lightning and fiery dragons in the sky — followed by famine, and then, on 8 June, the heathen men who destroyed God’s church on Lindisfarne with plunder and slaughter. Monks were killed or carried off as slaves, and the treasures of one of the great centres of Insular Christianity, the home of the Lindisfarne Gospels, were looted.
Alcuin of York, then at Charlemagne’s court, wrote that such terror had never before appeared in Britain and saw the raid as a punishment for the sins of the Northumbrians. Raids on Iona, Ireland and the Frankish coast followed within a few years, and later in the 9th century the monks abandoned the island, carrying away the relics of St Cuthbert.
Connections
Related events
- Founding of Ladoga753 · Eastern EuropeScandinavians settled at Ladoga four decades before the raid that conventionally opens the Viking Age
- Calling of the Varangians862 · Eastern EuropeWhile Danes and Norwegians raided the West, Scandinavian Varangians travelled the rivers of Eastern Europe
- Great Heathen Army in England865–878 · Western and Central EuropeThe raids that began in 793 grew into a war of conquest and settlement
Adjacent events in the thread
- Saxon Wars772–804 · Western and Central Europe
- Coronation of Charlemagne25 December 800 · Western and Central Europe
Meanwhile in the world
Other regions, within 25 years of this event
Eastern Europe
- The Khazar rulers adopt Judaismbetween 740 and 861
Balkans and Anatolia
- Second Council of Nicaea24 September – 23 October 787
- Byzantine Iconoclasmbetween 726 and 730 – 11 March 843
The same period
Sources
- Wikipedia (English): Sack of Lindisfarne
- Wikipedia (English): Viking Age
- Wikipedia (Russian): Линдисфарн
- Wikipedia (Russian): Эпоха викингов
- Brink S., Price N. (eds.) The Viking World. — London: Routledge, 2008.
- Wikidata: Q133850450