Editing Viking Age (section)

== Context ==
In England, the [[Sack of Lindisfarne|Viking attack of 8 June 793]] that destroyed the [[abbey]] on [[Lindisfarne]], a centre of learning on an island off the north-east coast of England in [[Northumberland]], is regarded as the beginning of the Viking Age.<ref name="Jesch2015">{{Cite book|last=Jesch|first=Judith|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=uTvLCQAAQBAJ |title=The Viking Diaspora |year=2015 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-317-48253-6|pages=8–10}}</ref><ref name="English Heritage">{{cite web|url=http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/places/lindisfarne-priory/history/ |title=History of Lindisfarne Priory |publisher=English Heritage |access-date=3 March 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160307112329/http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/places/lindisfarne-priory/history/ |archive-date=7 March 2016 |url-status=live}}</ref><ref name="Swanton">Swanton, Michael (1998). ''The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle''. Psychology Press. {{ISBN|0-415-92129-5}}. p. 57, n. 15.</ref> [[Judith Jesch]] has argued that the start of the Viking Age can be pushed back to 700–750, as it was unlikely that the Lindisfarne attack was the first attack, and given archeological evidence that suggests contacts between [[Scandinavia]] and the British isles earlier in the century.<ref name="Jesch2015"/> The earliest raids were most likely small in scale, but expanded in scale during the 9th century.<ref name="BrinkPrice2008">{{cite book|author1=Stefan Brink|author2=Neil Price|title=The Viking World|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=wuN-AgAAQBAJ&pg=PA195|year=2008|publisher=Routledge|isbn=978-020341277-0|page=195}}</ref>

In the Lindisfarne attack, monks were killed in the abbey, thrown into the sea to drown, or carried away as [[slave]]s along with the church treasures, giving rise to the traditional (but unattested) prayer—''{{lang|la|A furore Normannorum libera nos, Domine}}'', "Free us from the fury of the Northmen, Lord."<ref>Albert D'Haenens, ''Les Invasions Normandes en Belgique au IX Siecle'' (Louvain 1967) asserts that the phrase cannot be documented. It is asserted that the closest documented phrase is a sentence from an antiphon for churches dedicated to St. Vaast or St. Medard: ''Summa pia gratia nostra conservando corpora et cutodita, de gente fera Normannica nos libera, quae nostra vastat, Deus, regna'', "Our supreme and holy Grace, protecting us and ours, deliver us, God, from the savage race of Northmen which lays waste our realms." Magnus Magnusson, ''Vikings!'' (New York: E.P. Dutton 1980), {{ISBN|0-525-22892-6}}, p. 61.</ref> Three Viking ships had beached in [[Weymouth Bay]] four years earlier (although due to a scribal error the ''[[Anglo-Saxon Chronicle]]'' dates this event to 787 rather than 789), but that incursion may have been a trading expedition that went wrong rather than a piratical raid. Lindisfarne was different. The Viking devastation of [[Northumbria]]'s Holy Island was reported by the Northumbrian scholar [[Alcuin of York]], who wrote: "Never before in Britain has such a terror appeared".<ref>{{harvnb|Jones|1968|p=195}}. Simeon of Durham recorded the raid in these terms:
<blockquote>And they came to the church of Lindisfarne, laid everything waste with grievous plundering, trampled the holy places with polluted feet, dug up the altars, and seized all the treasures of the holy church. They killed some of the brothers; some they took away with them in fetters; many they drove out, naked and loaded with insults; and some they drowned in the sea."</blockquote>
Magnus Magnusson, ''Vikings!'', p. 32.</ref> Vikings were portrayed as wholly violent and bloodthirsty by their enemies. [[Robert of Gloucester (historian)|Robert of Gloucester]]'s Chronicle, c. 1300, mentions Viking attacks on the people of East Anglia wherein they are described as "wolves among sheep".<ref name="Battles2013">{{cite book |last1=Battles |first1=Dominique |title=Cultural Difference and Material Culture in Middle English Romance: Normans and Saxons |year=2013 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-136-15662-5 |page=168 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=3RfeAAAAQBAJ&pg=PT168}}</ref>

The first challenges to the many negative depictions of Vikings in Britain emerged in the 17th century. Pioneering scholarly works on the Viking Age reached only a small readership there, while linguists traced the Viking Age origins of rural idioms and proverbs. New dictionaries and grammars of the Old Icelandic language appeared, enabling more Victorian scholars to read the primary texts of the Icelandic Sagas.<ref name="Wawn2001">{{cite web |last1=Wawn |first1=Andrew |title=BBC – History – Ancient History in depth: The Viking Revival |url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/vikings/revival_01.shtml |website=www.bbc.co.uk |access-date=4 August 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080311051428/http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/vikings/revival_01.shtml |archive-date=11 March 2008 |date=2001 |url-status=live }}</ref>

In Scandinavia, the 17th-century Danish scholars [[Thomas Bartholin]] and [[Ole Worm]] and Swedish scholar [[Olaus Rudbeck]] were the first to use [[runic inscriptions]] and Icelandic Sagas as primary historical sources. During the [[Age of Enlightenment|Enlightenment]] and Nordic Renaissance, historians such as the Icelandic-Norwegian [[Thormodus Torfæus]], Danish-Norwegian [[Ludvig Holberg]], and Swedish [[Olof von Dalin]] developed a more "rational" and "pragmatic" approach to historical scholarship.

By the latter half of the 18th century, while the [[Icelandic saga]]s were still used as important historical sources, the Viking Age had again come to be regarded as a barbaric and uncivilised period in the history of the Nordic countries. Scholars outside Scandinavia did not begin to extensively reassess the achievements of the Vikings until the 1890s, recognising their artistry, technological skills, and seamanship.<ref>{{cite book |title=Northern Shores: a history of the Baltic Sea and its peoples |last=Palmer |first=Alan Warwick |location=London |publisher=John Murray |year=2006 |page=21 |isbn=978-0-7195-6299-0 |oclc=63398802}}</ref>