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These raids continued for the entirety of the Viking Age and Vikings would target monasteries along the coast, raid the towns for their booty, and were known to set fires in their wake. While there is evidence that Viking arson attacks did occur, more recent scholarship has cast doubt on quite how severe the physical damages (rather than their ...
This monastery was attacked again in 802 and 806, when 68 people living there were killed. After this devastation, the monastic community at Iona abandoned the site and fled to Kells in Ireland. [16] In the first decade of the ninth century, Viking raiders began to attack coastal districts of Ireland. [17]
The people of Cologne had previously strengthened their walls and were spared this time. When the Vikings passed by, Cologne's churches and monasteries were still charred ruins. [23] That year, the Vikings withdrew from the Middle Rhine and settled permanently on the Lower Rhine.
The Viking world was as much populated by missionary kings, bishops and saints as it was by raiders, gods and giants.
The Great Heathen Army, [a] also known as the Viking Great Army, [1] was a coalition of Scandinavian warriors who invaded England in 865 AD.Since the late 8th century, the Vikings [b] had been engaging in raids on centres of wealth, such as monasteries.
Medieval monasteries and abbeys were frequently the target of Viking raids because they were wealthy landowners, [3] and stored vast amounts of gold and other precious materials. Vikings plundered abbeys, like Iona Abbey, for riches, food, and even their holy texts—which were, at the time, often inscribed with gold leaf.
The first monastery to be raided was in 793 at Lindisfarne, off the northeast coast, and the first recorded raid being at Portland, Dorset in 789; the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle described the Vikings as heathen men. [13] Monasteries and minster churches were popular targets as they were wealthy and had valuable objects that were portable. [14]
Viking expansion was the historical movement which led Norse explorers, traders and warriors, the latter known in modern scholarship as Vikings, to sail most of the North Atlantic, reaching south as far as North Africa and east as far as Russia, and through the Mediterranean as far as Constantinople and the Middle East, acting as looters, traders, colonists and mercenaries.