The Vikings Cometh!

On this day in 793, Vikings raided the Anglo-Saxon monastery on Lindisfarne heralding the beginning of the Viking age.

While the date of 8th of June is now generally accepted as the date, two versions of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records:

"In this year [793] 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."

However, historian and linguist Michael Swanton writes that this is likely the result of a mistranslation, and that the 8th June, which is the date given by the Annals of Lindisfarne, is closer to the truth. The fact that the summer would offer better sailing weather for coastal raids would support this.

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 ... 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."

This scene was built by Dan Harris as part and is from the model that we have nicknamed LEGOfarne.

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