The raid on Lindisfarne in 793 is often cited as the opening act of the Viking Age in Britain, a sudden violence that shocked a Christian Europe unused to attacks on its monasteries.
A raid that defined an era
The Viking attack on Lindisfarne in 793 killed and enslaved members of the monastic community and looted its treasures, and is widely treated by historians as marking the beginning of sustained Viking raiding activity against Britain, an event significant enough that the scholar Alcuin, writing from the continent, described it in letters as an unprecedented horror inflicted on a place holy men had occupied peacefully.
A gospel book made for the shrine
The Lindisfarne Gospels, an illuminated manuscript combining Insular artistic style with Mediterranean influences, was produced at the monastery, traditionally attributed to the scribe Eadfrith, and created in connection with the veneration of Saint Cuthbert, whose remains the monastery held before Viking pressure eventually forced the community to relocate them, a journey covered in more detail in this entry's companion article on Durham Cathedral.
As this entry's companion article covers
Saint Aidan's founding of the monastery as a missionary base for converting Northumbria, and the island's distinctive tidal geography, are addressed directly in this entry's companion article rather than repeated here.