What Was the Lindisfarne Raid?

Short answer

The Lindisfarne raid was a Viking attack on the English island monastery of Lindisfarne, off the Northumbrian coast, on 8 June 793. It is conventionally taken as the opening event of the Viking Age. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and a letter by the Northumbrian scholar Alcuin of York both describe the attack, in which the monastery was plundered, its treasures carried off, and many of the monks killed or enslaved. The attack shocked the Christian world and was widely seen, by contemporaries, as a punishment for sin. For the wider context, see when did the Viking Age start and end.

The island and the monastery

Lindisfarne, also known as Holy Island, is a small island off the Northumbrian coast, connected to the mainland at low tide by a causeway. It was the site of one of the most important monasteries of the Anglo-Saxon church, founded by the Irish monk St Aidan in 635 and famous as the home of St Cuthbert, who was bishop of Lindisfarne from 685 to 687. The monastery was a center of learning and of the art of illumination; the Lindisfarne Gospels, one of the great masterpieces of early medieval art, were produced at the monastery around 700, in memory of St Cuthbert.

By 793 Lindisfarne was a wealthy and prestigious monastery, with a large community of monks and a famous collection of treasures. Its location, on an island off the Northumbrian coast, was both a defensive advantage and a strategic weakness. The island could only be reached by a small boat, but it was also exposed to attack from the sea, and its treasures were well known to the seafarers who passed along the coast. The monastery had been attacked before, by Picts and by other raiders, but never on the scale of the 793 attack.

The attack

The 793 attack on Lindisfarne is described in several contemporary sources, the most important of which are the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and a letter by Alcuin of York. The Chronicle, written a few generations later, dates the attack explicitly to 793 and reports the slaughter of the monks and the carrying off of the treasures. Alcuin, who was at the court of Charlemagne when he wrote about the attack, was in touch with the Northumbrian court and was deeply shocked by the news. He wrote: “Never before has such a terror appeared in Britain as we have now suffered from a pagan race, nor was it thought that such an inroad from the sea could be made.”

The attack was a small-scale raid, not a major military operation. The Norse raiders came in a small fleet, landed on the island, and overran the monastery in a matter of hours. The monks were not warriors, and the monastery was not fortified. The raiders killed those who resisted, carried off what they could, and returned to their ships. The speed and the violence of the attack were what made it shocking; the size of the raiding party, in absolute terms, was small.

The scale of the violence at Lindisfarne was particularly disturbing to contemporaries. Monasteries were traditionally respected in warfare, and the killing of monks and the plundering of church treasures were violations of the laws of war of the early Middle Ages. The Norse had no such scruples; the wealth of the monasteries was a legitimate target, and the monks were easy victims. The attack set a pattern for the next century of Viking raiding, in which monasteries were the most frequent target.

The sources

The principal sources for the Lindisfarne raid are the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and the letter of Alcuin. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, composed in the late ninth century at the court of King Alfred, gives a brief entry for 793 describing the attack. Alcuin’s letter, written to Ethelred, the Northumbrian king, and to the priests of Lindisfarne, is more elaborate and more reflective. Other contemporary sources include the Irish annals and the Frankish chronicles, both of which record the same events. The archaeological record, in the form of a layer of burnt material at the site of the monastery, confirms the historical account.

The sources are unanimous in their interpretation of the attack as a punishment for sin. Alcuin wrote that the attack was God’s judgment on the English for their sins, and the same theme was taken up by other writers. The image of the pagan raider as the instrument of divine vengeance was a useful one for the church, which could present the attack as a warning to the faithful. Yet the same writers also recognized the practical implications of the attack: the Northumbrian kingdom was vulnerable to attack from the sea, and a response was needed.

The consequences

The Lindisfarne raid was followed within fifteen years by attacks on other famous monasteries: Iona in 795 and 802, and the Irish monasteries of the western coast. The pattern of attacking wealthy and undefended monasteries was established at Lindisfarne and continued for the rest of the Viking Age. The English kingdoms were slow to develop an effective response; the building of coastal defenses was limited, and the first major English naval victory, at the battle of Aclea in 851, was a rare exception.

The Lindisfarne attack had a more lasting effect on the monastic culture of Northumbria. The community of Lindisfarne was dispersed, the treasures were lost, and the monastery was not refounded until the late tenth century, when it was re-established as a center of Benedictine monasticism. The Lindisfarne Gospels, which had been produced at the monastery around 700, were saved and were eventually taken to Durham, where they remain in the cathedral library. The artistic culture of the original monastery was disrupted, and the recovery took generations. For the broader English response to the Viking raids, see who was Alfred the Great.

The place of 793 in the Viking Age

The choice of 793 as the opening of the Viking Age was a choice of English contemporaries and was taken up by later historians. It marks a turning point in Western consciousness: the moment when the Viking raiders became a serious threat to the Christian kingdoms of the British Isles. Yet the raiders themselves were the product of a longer process of Scandinavian expansion, and small-scale Norse raiding had been going on for some decades before 793. The Lindisfarne raid was, in this sense, less a beginning than a turning point. For the broader chronology, see when did the Viking Age start and end.