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Vikings raid Lindisfarne
The attack many date as the start of the Viking Age
Norse raiders attacked the monastery on Lindisfarne, off the coast of northeast England. Chroniclers of the time were shocked, and the raid is widely used to mark the beginning of the Viking Age.
Lindisfarne, also called Holy Island, lies off the Northumbrian coast. It had been a monastery since 635, when King Oswald of Northumbria gave the island to Aidan, an Irish monk from Iona. By 793 it was the centre of Christianity in Northumbria and a famous holy site.
The raid reached Christian Europe as a shock. Alcuin of York, a scholar at Charlemagne's court, wrote that pagans had desecrated God's sanctuary and shed the blood of saints around the altar. Many people asked why St Cuthbert, the island's saint, had not protected his own church.
Coastal monasteries held treasure but had no defenders, which made them easy targets for raiders arriving by sea. The Lindisfarne community kept going through later threats, but the monks left the island for good in 875, carrying Cuthbert's coffin inland. His relics were enshrined at Durham in 995.
Calling 793 the start of the Viking Age is a convention. Britannica describes the raid as the beginning of the Viking Age in Europe, yet Norse activity may have begun earlier than any surviving record shows. The date marks the first widely remembered blow rather than the first contact.