sourced story
8 June 793Reputable source · 2 sourcesWell documented

Vikings sack the monastery at Lindisfarne

Three ships, a murdered official, and the raid later chroniclers marked as the start of it all

On the timeline · around 8 June 793 · The First RaidsBefore LindisfarneThe First RaidsVikings sack the monastery at Lindisfarne770 CE780 CE790 CE800 CE810 CE

Quick facts

Location
Lindisfarne, Northumbria
Date
8 June 793
Killed
Beaduheard, the royal reeve, and monks of the abbey
Contemporary witness
Alcuin of York

What happened

In June 793 three ships landed near the abbey of Lindisfarne, off the Northumbrian coast. The local reeve, Beaduheard, rode out assuming the crews were Norse traders who had missed their intended landing, and was killed the moment he reached them. The raiders then sacked the abbey, killing monks or throwing them into the sea and carrying off portable wealth. Lindisfarne held relics and treasure built up over more than a century as one of Northumbria's most important religious houses, which made it an easy, rich target with no defenders.

Why it matters

News of the attack on so prominent a monastery spread through Latin Christendom and gave contemporaries a fixed point to date the start of Viking raiding. The scholar Alcuin, writing from the Carolingian court within months, treated it as evidence of divine punishment, which is why this raid, rather than an earlier or larger one, became the conventional marker later historians still use to open the Viking Age.

How we know

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records the raid under the year 793, and a surviving letter from Alcuin to King Aethelred of Northumbria, written the same year, reacts to the attack directly.

Sources

See something wrong? . Corrections with a source get fixed fastest.

Part of a timelineThe Vikings26 events · Raiders, traders, and settlers who reshaped Europe and reached North America centuries before ColumbusView all →