Time and Treachery in the Viking era

The age of the Vikings is generally agreed to have opened with a lightening raid on the Holy Island of Lindisfarne in 793 AD, although they had been at least one smaller raid before that. In 789, a Viking ship landed in England and killed the king's representative before leaving. But traditional Viking history begins with the raid in 793.

When the monastery at Lindisfarne in northern England was sacked by the Vikings in 793, it was recorded by the Northumbrian chronicler Alcuin as an event of unspeakable brutality. Yet two and a half centuries earlier it was Alcuin’s ancestors, the heathen Saxons, who had slaughtered and raped their way through the Christian communities of Britain. The Vikings were scarcely different; they were just late to the game.

The Vikings Long Treachery:
Over the next two or three centuries the relentless Vikings raided their way across Europe. From Greenland to Algiers, from Labrador to the Volga, the Vikings made their presence felt. From Sweden they crossed the Baltic and rowed up the rivers into Russia. They ported their boats across to the Don and the Dnepr and the Volga, and sailed to the Black Sea and the farthest reaches of southeastern Europe. Rounding Gibraltar, Vikings raided the Mediterranean coasts of Iberia, Italy, and Muslim North Africa. The Vikings even had the rare distinction of taking Arabs as slaves.But, despite the conquest and slaughter, and unlike the Arabs (who were dedicated slave-traders), the Vikings did not generally take slaves during their raids. Perhaps the necessity of rapid movement by sea and the long passages through the cold northern waters discouraged the practice.

The Vikings were otherwise dedicated traders, establishing fortified mercantile settlements wherever they went. The Norse Vikings, after plundering the many rich monastic targets in Ireland and northwestern Scotland, established trading centers which became Dublin, Limerick, and other major Irish cities. In their wake they left their blond-haired genes to supplement the black hair of the Celts.

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