The Viking chief Ragnar Lodbrok, a legendary Norse hero, was captured by Aella of Northumbria and thrown alive into a pit of adders. The Kentish people offered payment known as Danegeld to hold off the ferocious attacks. In 850 a further army, failing to follow the usual pattern of returning home over winter, encamped on the Isle of Thanet in the Thames estuary. In 835 a fleet of Viking longboats sailed up the Thames estuary and ravaged the Isle of Sheppey. After repeated raids by the Norsemen, the monks of Lindisfarne fled the monastery in AD 875, taking the venerated relics of Saint Cuthbert with them for safekeeping. Jarrow was invaded in 794 and Iona in 795, 802 and 806. Monasteries were a favoured target due to the riches which were contained in them. A royal official mistook them for merchants and was killed whilst attempting to request that they accompany him to the king's manor to pay a trading tax on the goods they were bringing into England.įurther raids followed, on 8th June 8, 793, the monastery on the island of Lindisfarne was attacked, its occupants murdered and the gold, jewellery and relics taken. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records that Norwegian Vikings sailed into Portland Bay, Dorset in 787. Viking legend relates that Erik the Red's son, Leif Eriksson, succeeded in reaching the North American continent, calling his settlement Vinland, or the "land of the grapes." Viking weapons and tools have been uncovered in Newfoundland, Canada. In around 980, Erik the Red founded a settlement on Greenland. In their longships, or dragon prows, they travelled as far east as Constantinople and the Volga River in Russia. The Vikings (from the Old Norse viking) terrorised and later settled large areas of Europe from the late 8th to the 11th century. Norse warriors from Denmark, Norway and Sweden, they were skilled sailors with advanced methods of shipbuilding. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle ruefully records fearful omens in the year 793, lightning, high winds, flying dragons, famine, "and a little after that, in the same year, on 8 June, the ravages of the heathen men miserably destroyed God's church on Lindisfarne with plunder and slaughter."īy 820, the Irish Annals of Ulster tell of similar terrifying occurrences for the year 820: "The sea spewed forth floods of foreigners over Erin, so that no haven, no landing-place, no stronghold, no fort, no castle might be found, but it was submerged by waves of Vikings and pirates." Viking Helmet The much-repeated Anglo-Saxon prayer " From the fury of the northmen O Lord deliver us" evokes the terror a Viking landing inspired in the Anglo-Saxon population. From the fury of the northmen O Lord deliver us
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