Hello everyone and welcome back to the Viking Age podcast.

My name is Lee and this is episode 7. The Viking Age begins.

Now, before we get started, I want to mention that this episode gets a little bit dark, especially towards the end.

So it might not be the ideal thing to listen to if you

have little ones around. Just a warning. And with that, on to the history. In this episode,

we're going to talk about the first recorded Viking raids in Western Europe, which took place

in England, or rather the

area which would later become England, in the late 700 CE. These raids, well, they were small

and of only minor material impact, particularly compared to later Scandinavian activity,

nonetheless had a massive psychological impact on those

who lived through them. These first Scandinavian vikings, arriving suddenly on their longships

to wreak havoc and seek plunder, sent a shudder down the spine of early medieval Europe.

And as we now know, with the benefit of hindsight, these first minor raids were

simply the first gusty winds merely hinting at the storm to come. But let's not get ahead of ourselves

here. For now, let's head over to England in the year, 789 CE, or maybe 787, the dating's a little

bit murky, and take a brief look at the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms into which the first

vikingers were about to so rudely intrude.

Now, on the eve of the Viking Age, there was no such thing as England.

The idea of an England would only come much later, as the descendants of Alfred the Great

successfully politicked and conquered their way to a unified English kingdom in the aftermath

of the Scandinavian conquest and settlement in the north of England.

But we will cover all of that much later in the

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