This article explains England’s first experience with the Vikings. How terrible it must have been for the poor monks to have their peaceful, God-fearing lives turned upside down before they even realized what was happening, in an agony of death and destruction. We can’t help but compare it to 9/11, but on a much smaller scale.
The monks, cradled safely, as they thought, in the love and peace of God, stopped what they were doing and peered curiously at these strange craft. Then they saw Viking axe . looking men disgorging from the ships, brute-men in mail byrnies and helms, with swords and axes. They didn’t stop, but scaled the cliffs with a terrible purpose and made straight for the poor, peace-loving monks
Unarmed and quite unused to martial ways, they ran in panic, this way and that, trying to save the precious relics and treasures of the monastery. What chance had they? The Vikings were bent on an orgy of killing and looting.Their swords pierced the monks’ flesh, while those awful war-axes parted heads from bodies and in some cases chopped through from the neck to the waist, making half-men of those who had once been God fearing human beings.
Nothing was sacred to these savage men. They dug up altars, trampled on priceless relics, desecrated the tomb of St. Cuthbert, the founder of the monastery in 635. They laid rough, uncaring hands on the beautiful Lindisfarne Gospels, written in both Latin and Old English, telling the stories of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.