The monks, cradled safely, because they thought, in the enjoy and peace of Lord, ended what they certainly were performing and peered curiously at these odd craft. Then they saw fierce looking men disgorging from the ships, brute-men in send byrnies and helms, with swords and axes. They didn't stop, but scaled the cliffs with a terrible purpose and built straight for the poor, peace-loving monks.

Unarmed and very untouched to martial ways, they went in worry, in this manner and that, seeking to save lots of the precious relics and gifts of the monastery. What chance had they? The Vikings were bent on an orgy of eliminating and looting.

Their swords pierced the monks' tissue, while those awful war-axes parted minds from figures and in some cases sliced through from the neck to the waist, making half-men of those that had when been Lord fearing individual beings.

Nothing was holy to these savage men. They made up altars, trampled on expensive relics, desecrated the tomb of St. Cuthbert, the founder of the monastery in 635. They installed hard, uncaring on the job the wonderful Lindisfarne Gospels, written in both Latin and Previous British, telling the reports of Matthew, Level, Luke and John.

Several monks were killed, while others were place in chains and resulted in the vessels as slaves. Yet others were removed naked and chased to the shore where several drowned, whilst enduring the crude insults of those marauders. Some lived, however, returned to the monastery, and rebuilt it.

The Anglo Saxon Chronicle shows us that before the attack on Lindisfarne, in that same year, terrible portents were seen. Immense flashes of lightening, fiery dragons traveling in the air and following these came a good famine in the land. viking shields

"Here Beorhtric [AD 786-802] took Master Offa's girl Eadburh. And in his times there came for initially 3 boats; and then the reeve rode there and desired to compel them to go to the king's town, because he didn't know very well what they certainly were; and they killed him. These were the very first boats of the Danish guys which wanted out the area of the English race." So wrote the Anglo Saxon Chronicle.