This year came dreadful forewarnings over the land of the North

Thumbrians, terrifying the people most woefully. These were immense sheets of light rushing

through the air and whirlwinds and fiery dragons flying across the firmament. These

tremendous tokens were soon followed by a great famine. Not long after, on the sixth day

before the eyes of January and the same year, the harrowing inroads of even men made

lamentable havoc in the Church of God in Holy Island by rapine and slaughter.

Welcome to the history of England Episode 5 The Noble Wolf. Last time then we had an

introduction to the Vikings wherein we resolutely refused to address the sensitive side of their

nature. Today, we're going to do the same, or at least in terms of ignoring the

Viking's sensitive side. We're going to go back into our story of England, and this

time we're going to stitch the Vikings into it. Which means, as I say, we need to go back

a bit, hence the portentious quote read in dire tones. This was the entry in the Anglo-Saxon

Chronicle for 793, and it summons up some of the terror and confusion felt by the Anglo-Saxon

and the inexplicability of what had happened. After all, this was Holy Island. A place dedicated

to God, and he had God had allowed it to be trampled and destroyed what had happened.

Actually, there had been a hint of what was coming a little earlier, in 789, when a

King's Reave in Dorset had noticed three ships pulling up on the beach. He assumed

the ships had come to trade, so he went down to tell them where they should pay their

Jews to his Lord, nice and fine and dandy, sweet and pleasant. And their answer was the

same as it would be for the next hundred years, and axing his face.

But Lindisfarne was different. Lindisfarne was Holy Island, a place of sanctity. In

Charlemagne's court worked a man called Alcuin of York, I think I have mentioned him before.

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