June 793, on the Northumbrian island of Lindisfarne is the monastery at the very heart of English Christendom.

All was calm for the monks inside as they worked, wrote and prayed. That is until a group of boats appeared on the horizon. Swift, violent, and

merciless, hordes of these mysterious men crashed onto the shoreline and unleashed hell,

desecrating the undefended Holy Island, leaving nothing behind. A survivor wrote that the pagan attackers spattered with the blood of the priests of God.

They trampled on the bodies of saints like dung in the streets.

It was carnage.

Word of this attack, an assault on Christianity sent shockwaves across Europe.

Who were these men

who fought with no fear of death

and how could they be stopped?

Music Hello everyone, welcome to After Dark, I'm Maddie.

And I'm Anthony. And today, we are talking about a topic that I am so excited about. I'm having to just calm myself down. We've been in the studio for a while with our guest today and she's so great. I'm floating up here and it's, I need to just bring it down a little bit. We're talking about Vikings and in particular Viking raids. This is something you will have seen on TV, on the big screen many, many times. And we're going to get to the bottom of some of those myths and find out what the realities are. Shieldwall. Yes, no. Continue. I'm sorry. What? It's fine. I don't think it's real, but we can ask the guest in a minute. We can certainly do that. Let me introduce this guest. The guest today is a returning guest. We're very excited to have Dr. Eleanor Barakoff back on. She is the author of many, many things, including Embers of the Hands, Hidden History of the Viking Age, which, Eleanor, what a great book. I bloody loved that. What a good read. And such a good cover. Not that I should judge the book by the cover. Have you seen the little penis on it?

No.

Yeah, yeah. There's a little penis on it. Okay, well, I'm going back to my copy later. Welcome to After Dark. Thank you very much. We are very excited to have you. We did this a little bit last episode, but let's just start with broad brushstrokes. Who were the Vikings? what do we know about them? When were they? Where were they?

Yes. So we've just got to remember that word Viking, there is a version of it in Old Norse. brushstrokes, who were the Vikings? What do we know about them? When were they? Where were they?

Yes. So we've just got to remember that word Viking, there is a version of an old Norse, Wikinger, and it means a pirate or a raider. So we are going to talk about that today, and we are not going to talk about it in a way that basically erases the violence or the raidiness of the Vikings. That is a turn of it. Thank you very much.

As we were saying last time,

that classic raid on Lindaisfand, 793 AD, CE, is a good place to sort of anchor ourselves, but there are raids before. And we know, I mean, even going back to the Romans, it's not like they're the only ones raiding around the North Sea. You know, the Romans have problems with the Saxon raiders, for

example. So it's like raidiness is a thing, and now a historical term, yeah, thank you.

We're a professional, too. Yes, exactly. I barely aren't. But then we've got to think it's not

just the whole of that period, which definitely goes into the 11th century, but then when it actually ends, you know, you can push it into, if you're looking at Greenlands, you can push it into sort of the 15th century almost in terms of when that part of the North world actually comes to an end. This is a woman after my own heart. We're getting into what we call the long 18th century, which, you know, as long as you want it to be.

And apparently, nobody mentioned the 18th century, but what you're talking about. The long years, yes, sure, shrews. Ellen is happy to extend the boundary. She definitely didn't mention the 18th century. It's always relevant. Okay, so it is always relevant because in Orkney and Shetland, in the Northern Isles, they are still speaking a form of Old Norse,

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