Viking Age
In England the Viking Age began dramatically on June 8, 793, when Norsemen destroyed the abbey on Lindisfarne. Monks were killed in the abbey, thrown into the sea to drown, or carried away as slaves along with the church's wealth. The Viking devastation of Northumbria's Holy Island shocked and alerted the royal courts of Europe. "Never before has such an atrocity been seen," declared the Northumbrian scholar Alcuin of York. More than any other single event, the attack on Lindisfarne cast a shadow on the perception of the Vikings for the next 1100 years. In the 1890s scholars outside Scandinavia began to rethink the achievements, artistry, technological skills and seamanship of the Vikings.