The triumph of Christianity over the Viking raiders – www.christiantoday.com

The writer of the Letter to the Hebrews reminds Christians that they are surrounded by a great “cloud of witnesses.” (NRSVA) That “cloud” has continued to grow in size since then. In this monthly column we will be thinking about some of the people and events, over the past 2000 years, that have helped make up this “cloud.” People and events that have helped build the community of the Christian church as it exists today.  
“From the fury of the Northmen deliver us, O Lord”
According to a popular tradition, this prayer – in the Latin form “A furore Normannorum libera nos, Domine” – was prayed in the churches and monasteries of Britain as Viking raids escalated in the 9th century. However, there is no evidence that this particular litany was in use at this time. 
Despite this, there is evidence that on the continent – also on the receiving end of Viking raids – one particular antiphony contained the words “Summa pia gratia nostra conservando corpora et cutodita, de gente fera Normannica nos libera, quae nostra vastat, Deus, regna,” which translates as, “Our supreme and holy Grace, protecting us and ours, deliver us, God, from the savage race of Northmen which lays waste our realms.” 
It conveys the same sentiments and speaks of fear and the destruction caused by Viking raids on Christian towns and religious communities.
The destruction caused by Viking raids in England 
Every educated Anglo-Saxon – whether monk, nun or noble – would probably have later been able to recall where they were when they first heard the news that the monastery of Lindisfarne (Northumberland) had been sacked by Scandinavian Viking raiders in 793. 
Situated at the end of a causeway, off the coast of the northern Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Northumbria, Lindisfarne was a spiritual, cultural and intellectual powerhouse. It was famous for its saintly monk, Cuthbert, who became abbot of the monastery, a bishop, and the patron saint of Northumbria. It was also at this monastery that the literary and artistic treasure of the Lindisfarne Gospels was created in the early 8th century.
Then, in 793, the place was trashed. It is often risky to draw parallels between events occurring in different periods of history. Values, ideas and outlooks do not always travel as easily as we sometimes make them do. But 793 was surely an Anglo-Saxon ‘9/11 moment’.
Far away, in Aachen (in what is now Germany), at the court of the powerful Frankish ruler Charlemagne, the Northumbrian Churchman, scholar and educationalist, Alcuin, provides us with the only significant contemporary account of the attack (since the equally famous account in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle was not penned until the 880s):
“It is nearly 350 years that we and our fathers have inhabited this most lovely land, and never before has such a terror appeared in Britain as we have now suffered from a pagan race, nor was it thought that such an inroad from the sea could be made. Behold, the church of St Cuthbert spattered with the blood of the priests of God, despoiled of all its ornaments; a place more venerable than all in Britain is given as a prey to pagan peoples.”
Contemporary Christians saw in this event the fulfilment of the Old Testament prophecy of Jeremiah 1:14: “Then the Lord said to me: Out of the north disaster shall break out on all the inhabitants of the land.” This may have inspired Alcuin’s reminder – in the same letter – of a bloody rain which had fallen from a clear sky on the north side of the church at York. To Alcuin this suggested that “from the north there will come upon our nation retribution of blood.” 
He considered it divine punishment for the sins of society. He identified sins as varied as hair fashion which imitated that of the northern pagans, luxurious clothing, and the impoverishment of the common people because of the wealth enjoyed by their leaders. Looking at it from a later age, it seems that Alcuin could not actually specify anything much more sinful about the society of the 790s than at any other period. But a divine punishment is how he interpreted it – in a manner well known from Christian history at times of disaster.
In a second letter, also written in 793, but this time to Higbald, Bishop of Lindisfarne, Alcuin wrestled with the same dilemma of explaining why “St Cuthbert, with so great a number of saints, defends not his own?” Again, Alcuin concluded that “it has not happened by chance, but is a sign that it was well merited by someone.” He strongly advised the bishop to consider what sins in himself and in his community might have caused this judgement to fall and to see they were remedied swiftly.
Although written in a later source of evidence (the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle), the first appearance of the Vikings in England actually dates not from 793 and not from the North Sea coast, but from 789 and from Portland in Dorset. However, regardless of the date of the first raid on England, by 800 the British Isles (along with many communities in north-western Europe) were under escalating attacks. These raids are also recorded as far south as coastal settlements in Spain and Portugal and in the western Mediterranean. 
Later Vikings – utilising the river systems of what are now Russia and Ukraine – raided Constantinople and settlements on the shores of the Caspian Sea. An Islamic intelligence report mentions their appearance in Baghdad – on camels! By the year 1000, Scandinavian explorers had reached North America. The impact of the Viking Age was widely felt.
In 865/6, the Chronicle records the landing in East Anglia of the “micel hæðen here” (great heathen army). Within a decade they had destroyed every independent Anglo-Saxon kingdom except Wessex (a Viking puppet-state was established in Mercia). New Viking mini-states were carved out for the newcomers in the East Midlands and Viking kingdoms were established at York and in East Anglia.  Lower-class Scandinavian settlers moved into large areas of eastern England in the wake of these elite land seizures. In places such as the East Riding of Yorkshire, 48% of place-names were Scandinavian at the time of Domesday Book (1086), with Lincolnshire and Nottinghamshire also showing similar trends. 
In time, Wessex would fight back and – in the 10th century – would defeat and absorb the Viking communities that had been established in the 9th century, to become the dominant power in a united kingdom of England.     
The early Viking raids had many causes: population increase in Scandinavia; kingdom building there which forced losers out; climatic change disrupting agriculture; changes in the Islamic Caliphate which disrupted flows of trade-silver and led to seizure of precious metals by raiding. In addition, the Frankish empire was expansionist in both its political and its religious policy. The threat of a Christian superpower on the border appears to have prompted aggressive defensive reactions from the still-pagan communities in Denmark. 
We are used to explaining the attacks on western European monasteries as being motivated by the desire to seize portable wealth from undefended communities. However, the first century of raids may have had an extra ideological motive: an attack on the very ideology of the Franks and their Christian neighbours. This remains a very controversial suggestion but may mean that the many accounts of looted monasteries may not simply be due to monks doing the record-keeping. There may, in fact, have really been a religious conflict going on: a ‘clash of civilizations’ may have been occurring with treasure houses of Christian sacred art and literature looted and burnt.
Either way, the damage was enormous. Church records in East Anglia (highly populated in the medieval period) seem to have been destroyed and are missing from later collections. In 842, three major trading centres were raided according to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: London and Rochester (Kent) in England and Quentovic on the continent. Many more attacks followed. Coastal towns and monasteries were particularly vulnerable, but Viking raids also penetrated inland, using rivers and captured horses to increase mobility. In the chaos, diocesan organisation in several areas of England appears to have collapsed.
In a remarkable document, written between 890 and 895, King Alfred of Wessex wrote his own preface to a translation of the Pastoral Care that he had overseen. In it he recounted the devastation caused by the Viking Wars and that he “remembered how, before everything was ravaged and burnt, the churches throughout all England stood filled with treasures and books…” A surviving letter to Alfred, from Fulk, Archbishop of Reims, written between 883 and 886 quotes from an earlier letter from Alfred which had described how the Anglo-Saxon Church had “fallen in ruins in many respects” and that this was in large part due to “the frequent invasion and attack of pagans.” Standards of Latin collapsed as educational centres and libraries were destroyed. 
Complicating factors
As is so often the case in history, things were rather more complex than appears at first sight. The Viking Wars are full of historical surprises which test the critical skills of the historian. 
For a start, Alcuin’s second outraged letter was written to the bishop and community of monks on Lindisfarne; so monastic life had clearly survived the assault of 793. A later, mid-10th-century source (the History of St Cuthbert) indicates that it was not until 830–45 that the relics of St Cuthbert were translated from Lindisfarne to Norham-on-Tweed. This seems to have been accompanied by a dismantling of much of the church building on Lindisfarne itself. However, this occurred two generations after the raid of 793 and, while it may have been prompted by escalating Viking activity in the ninth century, it may equally have been due to the monastic community gaining estates inland. 
By 875 the community had returned to Lindisfarne as, in this year, it relocated yet again. This is a point often overlooked in modern retellings of the raid of 793. The monks wandered for seven years before they settled in Chester-le-Street. Their benefactor in their new location was a Viking Danish king who had converted to Christianity. This became the home of St Cuthbert’s bones until they were threatened again by the Vikings in 995. They eventually were moved to Ripon and then to Durham, where they are today.    
Recent analysis of Viking raids in Ireland show that of the 113 attacks on monasteries between 795 and 820, only 26 were carried out by Vikings. In contrast, the rest were carried out by Irish kings on Irish monasteries or were even the work of monks from rival religious communities. We should not expect anything different for Anglo-Saxon England. Destruction of cultural treasures – including Christian ones – were not just the preserve of pagan Vikings. And the seizing of slaves was not restricted to Scandinavian raiders.
While our images of Viking raids usually (and understandably) imagine them as mindlessly violent, there was often calculation behind them. This does not minimise the impact on those on the receiving end, but it does remind us that actions were often considered. Alcuin promised English correspondents that he would try to use Frankish contacts to buy back monks seized. This hints at the existence of diplomatic back-channels and reminds us that Viking raids were seen as lucrative muscular free-enterprise by those carrying them out.  
A magnificent Gospel book (the Stockholm Codex Aureus), produced in Kent and now in the Royal Library in Stockholm, Sweden, contains an inscription (written c.850) recording how the book was ransomed from Vikings (from “a heathen army”) for gold, by a man named Alfred (the ealdorman – local government official – of Surrey or Kent) and his wife Werburh. It was returned to Christian use by being presented to the high altar at Christ Church, Canterbury. This suggests that those who took it were aware of its monetary value and capitalised on this. In the same way, there is evidence that Christian centres were targeted at festival times, in order to maximise the opportunity for seizing people as slaves. 
Some historians have argued that, for Christians, the key element in describing the violence of the Vikings was that it was ‘heathen violence,’ rather than its scale as such. A further twist was provided by the sea-borne nature of the attacks. Contemporary Anglo-Saxon society was geared to taking revenge, or compensation, against those who had killed members of their communities. This was straightforward with regard to the land-based Anglo-Saxon armies which conducted warfare in England. But sea-borne invaders upset the whole system. How could revenge or compensation be pursued against those whose bases could not be located? It was this sense that Vikings ‘played outside the rules’ – in addition to their pagan identity – which added to the horror and anxiety that their attacks caused. 
The extent of the destruction may have been exaggerated by Churchmen who were motivated by a greater degree of sensitivity to pagan violence than to acts committed by Christian rulers and who, additionally, emphasised the scale of destruction as a method of persuading their fellow countrymen and women to repent of their moral failings. 
Added to this, we might well argue that King Alfred had a strong incentive to magnify the scale of the disaster to more convincingly show the importance of his own achievements and to encourage Anglo-Saxons living outside Wessex to welcome the West Saxons as liberators, rather than as rivals.
Making sense of the evidence
We must not revise history too far. As one historian once remarked, concerning Erik Bloodaxe, the last Viking king of York, he was not called that because he was good with the children! Land charters of this period often note that the land was granted for “as long as the Christian faith should last in Britain,” which suggests some thought its continuation was in doubt.
Church land holdings also reduced, with the Church at Domesday Book (1086) owning 20–33% of the land in the country as a whole, but consistently less than 10% in the north and eastern Midlands – the areas most affected by the Viking attacks as they spiralled out of control in the 860s and 870s. 
In addition, there are very few surviving pre-Viking land charters, suggesting a great loss of Church libraries and records and therefore a consequent decline in the standards of literacy. Between 844 and 864, when a Kentish noblewoman promised regular provisions from her estate at Bradbourne (Kent) to the monks at St Augustine’s Abbey, Canterbury (Kent), she declared that the monks could have the entire estate if the promised supplies were unforthcoming for three successive years due to the “hæðen here” (heathen army). That such a clause was necessary is testimony to the extent of the Viking threat.
However, in Ireland, according to the records in the Irish annals, repeated attacks on the same six churches made up a quarter of all recorded 9th century Viking raids. Iona, in Scotland, was raided by Vikings at least four times between 795 and 825. The implication is clear: these communities survived acts of extreme violence to become targets of further raids. It seems that the situation was similar regarding a number of religious houses in England. Also, despite the desecration of monasteries, Christianity continued to thrive at the grassroots level and there is little evidence for a revival of paganism.  
This last point is particularly important. Despite modern archaeological discoveries, there have been very few overtly pagan Viking burials found in England. This indicates both the vibrancy of native Christianity and the willingness of Scandinavian settlers to assimilate. Given the absence of organised Christian missionary activities, this must have been due to the life and witness of their Christian neighbours, alongside the attractive nature of Christian faith and entering a community of belief that united Western Europe. 
This is rather different from the fire and the sword image of wanton pagan destruction of Christian communities. The comparative silence of the archaeological record makes a loud argument to the contrary. In the 890s, the grandchildren of the Vikings who martyred King Edmund of East Anglia, in 869, were minting coins celebrating ‘St Edmund’! In 941, Oda, the son of a member of the “micel hæðen here” (great heathen army), became a reforming Archbishop of Canterbury. Oda’s nephew, Oswald of Worcester, later became Archbishop of York.
In the north, Archbishops of York found ways of negotiating a future for the Christian community under rulers who were still pagan (or had adopted a rather mixed form of faith). There is even a tradition that, as early as the late 9th century, according to the anonymous History of St Cuthbert (which was itself written in the middle of the 10th century), the abbot of Carlisle was responsible for the selection and public proclamation of a new Viking king. This event, which appears to have occurred in the 880s, is clearly in the great tradition of saints’ lives, with St Cuthbert appearing in a vision to the abbot and claiming that the whole territory between the rivers Tyne and Wear were placed under the special authority of St Cuthbert. This seems to suggest that a pagan royal inauguration rite was made legitimate by the presence of the relics of St Cuthbert. 
This legendary account gives an intriguing insight into the relationship between the Church and the Viking army which is a long way from the image of the latter solely as despoilers of churches and suggests that some fascinating political interaction occurred between the native Northumbrian Christians and pagan Scandinavian newcomers.
All of this reveals the ability of the Anglo-Saxon Church to negotiate a way forward in a context which, at one time, would have seemed disastrous. It also testifies to the influence of unnamed Christians on pagan incomers that occurred despite the absence of written sources recording their actions. Within two generations pagan immigrants had converted to Christianity. At first, the form this took was undoubtedly complex and often compromised but, in time, what finally emerged was a Christian Anglo-Norse community in England. The cross of Christ had triumphed over the hammer of Thor.
Martyn Whittock is a historian, commentator, columnist and a Licensed Lay Minister in the Church of England. The author, or co-author, of fifty-seven books, his work includes: Daughters of Eve (2021), Jesus the Unauthorized Biography (2021), The End Times, Again? (2021), The Story of the Cross (2021), Apocalyptic Politics (2022) and American Vikings: How the Norse Sailed into the Lands and Imaginations of America (2023). His latest book (published in April) is: Vikings in the East. From Vladimir the Great to Vladimir Putin – the Origins of a Contested Legacy in Russia and Ukraine.
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