War · 793–1066 CE
Vikings raid Lindisfarne
Lindisfarne (Holy Island), Northumberland (England)
In 793 Norse raiders plundered the island monastery of Lindisfarne, killing or enslaving many monks; the scholar Alcuin wrote that such terror had never before appeared in Britain. Over the next two and a half centuries Scandinavians raided, traded and settled from Ireland to the Russian rivers, where Rurik's successors founded Kievan Rus', served the Byzantine emperors, received Normandy in 911 and settled Iceland and Greenland.
The age is traditionally closed by Harald Hardrada's death at Stamford Bridge in 1066.
Why it mattered
Viking raiding, trading and settlement reshaped early medieval Europe, founding new states and linking the North Atlantic and the Baltic to Constantinople.
Elsewhere
Around 1021 Norse Greenlanders were at L'Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland, a date fixed by tree rings; excavated by Helge and Anne Stine Ingstad from 1961, it is the only confirmed Norse site in North America outside Greenland, almost five centuries before Columbus.
Related
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