Hello and welcome back to the Viking Age podcast.

My name is Lee, and this is episode 8, the North Way at the dawn of the Viking Age, part one.

It's been a while since I did an intro. I missed you guys.

Anyway, last time we started our coverage of the Viking Age proper with a bang, discussing the first

of the Viking rages which were to engulf Western Europe.

Of these first attacks, it was the raid on Lindisfarne in 793 CE, which truly shocked

the consciousnesses and roused the ire of the chroniclers and other churchmen whose written

records of the events have survived the chroniclers and other churchmen whose written records of the events

have survived the centuries and continue to inform us about these acts today.

Nearly as soon as the raiders cast off to return to Norway, the peoples of Western Europe

began to dust themselves off and ask why? What had caused these pagans to arrive unheralded on their shores to spread destruction

and seek plunder? Well, 1,200 years later, we are still asking that question, and we really don't have

a clear-cut, foolproof, or, to be honest, even a particularly satisfying answer.

As we concluded with last time, for the religious chroniclers of the day, the cause of the

attacks by these Northmen on monasteries and church sites was crystal clear. They were

simply the chosen form of God's wrath.

Their Western European flocks had strayed from the ways of God, whether by cutting their

hair in pagan styles, or more likely having sex in ways and with people which offended the

Almighty.

Now, this particular grievance comes up again and again and again, and really medieval

churchmen were seriously obsessed with sex.

But anyway, for these sins and no doubt countless others, God had brought the might of the

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