The Viking raid on Lindisfarne, 8 June 793

The battle, stage by stage

1. Spring 793

   The holy island

   Lindisfarne, Holy Island, is a tidal island off the Northumbrian coast, cut off by the sea twice a day and reached at low tide across about three miles of sand (the poles of the Pilgrims' Way still mark the old route; the road causeway was built only in 1954). Since Aidan came from Iona in 635 it has been the cradle of Christianity in Northumbria and the resting place of St Cuthbert, a monastery grown rich on royal gifts within sight of the royal fortress at Bamburgh. Its church and buildings lay where the ruined 12th-century priory and St Mary's church now stand, sheltered by the rock ridge of the Heugh; excavations by Durham University and DigVentures between the priory, the Heugh and the harbor have found a cemetery of more than 100 burials and metalworking debris that may come from a smithy. Bishop Higbald leads the community. That year, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle says, whirlwinds, lightning and 'fiery dragons' were seen over Northumbria, followed by a great famine.

2. 8 June 793

   Ships from the sea

   Ships come in from the sea; no source says how many, where they sailed from or who led them, and the crews are unnamed. Alcuin later wrote that no one had thought 'such an inroad from the sea' could be made. Nor does any source say where they came ashore. Two plausible places are shown, both conjectural: the sheltered harbor of the Ouse, between the Heugh and Beblowe crag (where Lindisfarne Castle was built in the 16th century), or the beach below the Heugh, a few steps from the church. The date itself needs care: the Chronicle's D and E texts put the raid on 'the sixth of the ides of January' (8 January), which is generally read as a scribal error for June, a better season for sailing; Symeon of Durham's history gives the seventh of the ides of June (7 June), which supports June but not the exact day; 8 June is the conventional date.

3. 8 June 793

   The sack of the church

   The raiders fall on an undefended community. The Chronicle says only that 'the harrowing inroads of heathen men made lamentable havoc in the church of God in Holy-island, by rapine and slaughter' (Ingram's translation). Alcuin, writing from the Frankish kingdom, says the church of St Cuthbert was 'spattered with the blood of the priests of God' and 'despoiled of all its ornaments' (Alcuin, letter to King Æthelred). The fuller account in the 12th-century Durham histories attributed to Symeon says they trampled the holy places, dug up the altars and seized all the church's treasures; they killed some of the brothers, took some away in fetters, drove many out naked and loaded with insults, and drowned some in the sea. Alcuin mentions youths carried off as captives. The arrows from the landing places and the direction the monks were driven are schematic; no source gives numbers of dead or captured.

4. 8 June 793

   Back to the sea

   The raiders return to their ships with the treasure and their captives and put out to sea. There is no record of any pursuit or fighting: no source says the king or his men at Bamburgh, about 9 km down the coast, intervened. Which way the ships went is unknown, and the contemporary writers call the raiders only heathens or pagans who came by sea. Behind them the surviving monks return to a plundered church.

5. 793–875

   Aftermath

   Alcuin wrote to King Æthelred of Northumbria that 'never before has such terror appeared in Britain as we have now suffered from a pagan race', that 'a place more venerable than all in Britain' had been given as prey to pagans, and that the raid was a judgment on the Northumbrians' sins. To Bishop Higbald he wrote that he would go to Charlemagne and try to help 'the youths who have been led into captivity by the pagans'. The community survived on the island. In 794 raiders attacked again further south; by Symeon's account they plundered 'Ecgfrith's port' and the monastery at Donemuthe (usually taken as Jarrow), but their leader was killed by the English and a storm then wrecked their ships. A ninth-century grave marker found at the priory, the so-called 'Domesday stone', shows a procession of armed men with axes and swords on one face and, on the other, figures around a cross that may depict the Day of Judgment; English Heritage says it 'may commemorate' the raid. In 875, alarmed by the Danish army, the monks left Lindisfarne with St Cuthbert's body and the Lindisfarne Gospels and wandered seven years before settling at Chester-le-Street in 883; Cuthbert came to rest at Durham. The route of the 875 departure is drawn only schematically.