Lo, it is nearly 350 years that we and our fathers have inhabited this most lovely land,

and never before has such terror appeared in Britain as we have now suffered from a pagan race,

nor was it thought that such an inroad from the sea could be made.

Behold, the Church of St. Cuthbert,

spattered with the blood of the priests of God, despoiled of its ornaments, a place more venerable

than all in Britain is given as prey to pagan peoples. Alcuin of York.

My name is Lee, and I'm thrilled to welcome you to the Viking Age podcast. The excerpt you just

heard was taken from a letter written by the Monk and Scholar Alquin following the infamous Viking

raid on the monastery of Lindisfarne in the north of what later became England in 793 CE.

In its apocalyptic tone and laser focus on the violence and pagan religion of the

Raiders, it is typical of the surviving written records, which document the explosion of

Scandinavians onto the Western European stage, beginning around 800 CE.

Reading through the annals and histories of the time, it's all too easy to imagine this horde of

homicidal maniacs descending unheralded from the north, groups of devil worshippers delighting

in the murder of monks, women and children, carrying off everything not nailed down and burning

whatever remained to the ground. This image, which was first recorded by the monks of

Western Europe, and later embellish and expanded by the Icelandic saga writers of the 12th and 13th

centuries, really remains with us to this day. In our popular imagination, the Viking Age

consists primarily of hordes of bloodthirsty heathens arriving on their long ships

crowned with horned helmets, brought axes in hand to slaughter, rape, pillage, and burn their

way through whatever poor village or monastery they happen to come across.

Indeed, based upon the mountains of admittedly historically dodgy, books, movies, and television series,

...