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nuns : trampling the holy places, throwing down the
altars, pillaging the treasuries. "Some of the monks
they killed ; a large number they carried away captive ;
the greater part they thrust out stripped and insulted ;
a few were drowned." The witness of the chroniclers
is confirmed by a letter of Alcuin’s of 794, showing that
the news reached the Continent and created no little
panic. But the extraordinary circumstance is that the
landing was made on the 8th of January. It is true
that the North Sea is sometimes sunny and calm in
the depth of winter, but this had been a particularly
stormy season. Later Vikings chose the summer for
their excursions, and sumarlidi, "summer-sailor," was
synonymous with "pirate." Cattle and sheep, in that
age, were slaughtered in autumn, and only a few stock
beasts kept to be fed on hay through the winter ;
so that the flocks and herds on Lindisfarne (jumenta,
oves et boves) could not have been more than sufficed for
the strandhögg, the slaughter by the shore, for the
feast which was the usual finish to a raid. The raiders
had not come for cattle, but for gold and slaves ; they
knew where to get what they wanted—at a rich monastery
on an island to which help from the surrounding
country would be slow in coming ; and they knew
what to do with the slaves when they had captured
them. We are told that Scandinavia was over-populated,
and even if that was not the case, it was hardly
necessary to import labour into Denmark, still less
into Norway ; a monk or a nun from England would
be little use on a fell-side farm in Hardanger or Sogn.
There must have been recognised markets in Flanders
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