Editing Lindisfarne (section)

==== Viking raid on the monastery (793) ====
[[File:Viking Raider Doomsday Stone front.jpg|thumb|''Lindisfarne Stone'', also known as ''Viking Raider Doomsday Stone'', Northumbrian carved gravestone, 9th-century, found in Lindisfarne. The armed warriors are perhaps Viking raiders.]]
[[File:T.homas Girtin Lindisfarne 1798.jpg|thumb|upright|''The Ruins of Lindisfarne Priory'', by [[Thomas Girtin]], 1798. The priory's rainbow arch, which survives, is shown truncated for artistic effect.]]

In 793, a [[Viking]] raid on Lindisfarne{{sfn|Graham-Campbell|Wilson|2001|loc=Salt-water bandits}}{{efn|Lindisfarne's shelving beaches provided a supposedly perfect landing for the shallow-draft ships of the Viking raiders who fell upon its unsuspecting and virtually unprotected monks in the summer of 793. This bloody assault on a "place more venerable than all in Britain" was one of the first positively recorded Viking raids on the west. Lindisfarne was supposedly a good place to attack because people in the dark ages would send their valuables to Lindisfarne, similar to a bank, for safekeeping.{{sfn|Graham-Campbell|Wilson|2001|p=21}} Viking [[longship]]s, with their shallow drafts and good manoeuvrability under both sail and oar, allowed their crews to strike deep inland up Europe's major rivers.{{sfn|Graham-Campbell|Wilson|2001|p=22}} The world of the Vikings consisted of a loose grouping of the [[Scandinavia]]n homelands and overseas colonies, linked by sea routes that reached across the [[Baltic Sea|Baltic]] and the [[North Sea]], spanning even the [[Atlantic Ocean|Atlantic]].{{sfn|Graham-Campbell|Wilson|2001|p=10}}}} caused consternation throughout the Christian west, and is often taken as the beginning of the [[Viking Age]]. There had been other Viking raids, but according to [[English Heritage]] this one was particularly significant, because "it attacked the sacred heart of the Northumbrian kingdom, desecrating 'the very place where the Christian religion began in our nation'".<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/places/lindisfarne-priory/History/viking-raid/ |title=THE VIKING RAID ON LINDISFARNE |date=30 June 2017 |publisher=English Heritage |access-date=19 July 2020 |quote=heathen men came and miserably destroyed God's church on Lindisfarne, with plunder and slaughter.}}</ref> The D and E versions of the West Saxon ''[[Anglo-Saxon Chronicle]]'' record:

<blockquote>{{lang|ang|Her wæron reðe forebecna cumene ofer Norðhymbra land, [[Tironian notes|⁊]] þæt folc earmlic bregdon, þæt wæron ormete þodenas ⁊ ligrescas, ⁊ fyrenne dracan wæron gesewene on þam lifte fleogende. Þam tacnum sona fyligde mycel hunger, ⁊ litel æfter þam, þæs ilcan geares on .vi. Idus Ianuarii, earmlice hæþenra manna hergunc adilegode Godes cyrican in Lindisfarnaee þurh hreaflac ⁊ mansliht.}}{{sfn|Jebson|2007|loc=entry for 793}}<br><br> ("In this year fierce, foreboding [[omens]] came over the land of the Northumbrians, and the wretched people shook; there were excessive whirlwinds, lightning, and fiery [[dragons]] were seen flying in the sky. These signs were followed by great famine, and a little after those, that same year on 6th ides of January, the ravaging of wretched heathen men destroyed God's church at Lindisfarne.")</blockquote>

The generally accepted date for the Viking raid on Lindisfarne is 8 June; [[Michael Swanton]] writes: "{{lang|ang|vi id Ianr}}, presumably [is] an error for {{lang|ang|vi id Iun}} (8 June) which is the date given by the ''Annals of Lindisfarne'' (p. 505), when better sailing weather would favour coastal raids."{{sfn|Swanton|2000|p=57}}{{efn|This may be confusing to modern readers. The 6 refers to the number of days before the [[Ides (calendar)|Ides]], not after. The day itself was included, and so {{lang|ang|vi id}} was 6 days before the ides, counting the ides as 1. In June the ides falls on the 13th of the month, so {{lang|ang|"vi id Jun"}} was actually 8 June. See [[Roman calendar]] for full details.}}

[[Alcuin]], a Northumbrian scholar in [[Charlemagne]]'s court at the time, wrote: "Never before has such terror appeared in Britain as we have now suffered from a pagan race&nbsp;... The heathens poured out the blood of saints around the altar, and trampled on the bodies of saints in the temple of God, like dung in the streets."{{sfn|Killeen|2012|p=30}} During the attack many of the monks were killed, or captured and enslaved.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Marsden|first=John|title=The Fury of the Northmen: Saints, Shrines and Sea-raiders in the Viking Age|publisher=Kyle Cathie|year=1993|location=London|pages=41}}</ref> 

Biographer [[Peter Ackroyd]] suggests: "The monasteries of Lindisfarne and Jarrow were not attacked at random; they were chosen as examples of revenge. The onslaught of the Christian Charlemagne on the ‘pagans’ of the north had led to the extirpation of their shrines and sanctuaries. The great king had cut down Jôrmunr, the holy tree of the Norse people. What better form of retaliation than to lay waste the foundations devoted to the Christian God? The Christian missionaries to Norway had in fact set out from Lindisfarne."<ref>Peter Ackroyd ''Foundation: The History of England from Its Earliest Beginnings to the Tudors'', ch 5 (The History of England, vol 1) Macmillan, 2011.</ref> However, the raid on Lindisfarne took place decades after Charlemagne’s campaigns against the Saxons. Neither the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle nor any surviving Norse document ascribes a motivation to the raid on the monastery. 

As the English population became more settled, they seemed to have abandoned seafaring.{{sfn|Blair|1977|p=63}}   Many monasteries were established on islands, peninsulas, river mouths and cliffs, as isolated communities were less susceptible to interference and the politics of the heartland.{{sfn|Blair|1977|p=63}} These preliminary raids, despite their brutal nature, were not followed up. The main body of the raiders passed north around [[Scotland]].{{sfn|Stenton|1987|p=239}} The 9th-century invasions came not from [[Norway]], but from the [[Danes (Germanic tribe)|Danes]] from around the entrance to the Baltic.{{sfn|Stenton|1987|p=239}} The first Danish raids into England were in the [[Isle of Sheppey]], [[Kent]] during 835 and from there their influence spread north.{{sfn|Stenton|1987|p=243}} During this period religious art continued to flourish on Lindisfarne, and the {{lang|la|Liber Vitae}} of Durham began in the abbey.{{sfn|Stenton|1987|p=95}} By 866, the Danes were in York, and in 873 the Danish army was moving into Northumberland.{{sfn|Stenton|1987|pp=247–51}} With the collapse of the Northumbrian kingdom, the monks of Lindisfarne fled the island in 875 taking with them St Cuthbert's bones (which are now buried at Durham Cathedral),{{sfn|Stenton|1987|p=332}} who during his life had been prior and bishop of Lindisfarne; his body was buried on the island in the year 698.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Richards|first=Julian|title=Blood of the Vikings|publisher=Hodder & Stoughton|year=2001|location=London|pages=24}}</ref>

Prior to the 9th century, Lindisfarne Abbey had, in common with other such establishments, held large tracts of land which were managed directly or leased to farmers with a [[life interest]] only. Following the Danish occupation, land was increasingly owned by individuals, and could be bought, sold and inherited. Following the [[Battle of Corbridge]] in 914 [[Ragnall ua Ímair|Ragnald]] seized the land giving some to his followers [[Scula]] and [[Onlafbal]].{{sfn|Richards|1991|pp=30–31}}