The Viking raid on Lindisfarne in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
The raid on the island monastery of Lindisfarne is often treated as the start of the Viking Age in England. This is how the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle remembered the year, in its Peterborough copy. The manuscript dates the raid to January, which is usually taken as a mistake for June. The date has been left out here.
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The text and translation
Hēr wǣron rēðe forebēcna cumene ofer Norðhymbra land, and þæt folc earmlīċe breġdon:
In this year fierce omens came over the land of the Northumbrians, and wretchedly terrified the people:
Word by word
- Hēr
- here, in this year
- wǣron
- were
- rēðe
- fierce, cruel
- forebēcna
- omens, portents
- cumene
- come
- ofer
- over
- Norðhymbra
- of the Northumbrians
- land
- land
- and
- and
- þæt
- the
- folc
- people
- earmlīċe
- wretchedly
- breġdon
- terrified
þæt wǣron ormēte þodenas and liġrescas, and fȳrenne dracan wǣron ġesewene on þām lifte flēogende.
these were immense whirlwinds and flashes of lightning, and fiery dragons were seen flying in the sky.
Word by word
- þæt
- these
- wǣron
- were
- ormēte
- immense
- þodenas
- whirlwinds
- and
- and
- liġrescas
- flashes of lightning
- and
- and
- fȳrenne
- fiery
- dracan
- dragons
- wǣron
- were
- ġesewene
- seen
- on
- in
- þām
- the
- lifte
- air, sky
- flēogende
- flying
Þām tācnum sōna fyliġde miċel hungor, and lȳtel æfter þām, þæs ilcan ġēares,
A great famine followed these signs at once, and a little after that, in the same year,
Word by word
- Þām
- those
- tācnum
- signs
- sōna
- at once
- fyliġde
- followed
- miċel
- great
- hungor
- famine, hunger
- and
- and
- lȳtel
- a little
- æfter
- after
- þām
- that
- þæs
- of the
- ilcan
- same
- ġēares
- year
earmlīċe hæþenra manna herġung ādileġode Godes cyriċan in Lindisfarnaēe þurh hrēaflāc and mansliht.
the raiding of heathen men wretchedly destroyed God's church at Lindisfarne through plunder and slaughter.
Word by word
- earmlīċe
- wretchedly
- hæþenra
- of heathen
- manna
- men
- herġung
- raiding, harrying
- ādileġode
- destroyed, wiped out
- Godes
- God's
- cyriċan
- church
- in
- at
- Lindisfarnaēe
- Lindisfarne
- þurh
- through, by
- hrēaflāc
- plunder, rapine
- and
- and
- mansliht
- manslaughter
What to notice
- fȳrenne dracan are fiery dragons, seen flying in the sky. The chronicler sets them beside whirlwinds and lightning as signs of what was coming.
- hæþenra manna means “of heathen men”. The English saw this as an attack by non-Christians on a holy place, more than as a raid by a foreign nation.
- Hēr opens the entry and means “here”, in the sense of “at this point in the list of years”. Chronicle entries open this way again and again.
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Sources
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, entry for 793 (Peterborough), ed. Plummer, Two of the Saxon Chronicles Parallel (1892). Public domain. The Latin date "on vi Idus Ianuarii" is left out.
Text licence: Public domain.
Language pack licence: Texts public domain / CC BY-SA 4.0; annotation CC BY-SA 4.0.
Texts: Caedmon's Hymn, Beowulf lines 1-11, Cnut's proclamation of 1020, The Battle of Maldon lines 312-313, The Wanderer lines 1-7 and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle entry for 793 (all public domain); the Lord's Prayer in Early West Saxon as standardised in Wikipedia's 'Old English' article (CC BY-SA 4.0). Wulf and Eadwacer: W. J. Sedgefield, An Anglo-Saxon Verse-Book (1922), pp. 39-40, public domain; transcribed against the printed pages. Tagging and glosses: AI (Claude; Codex for Wulf and Eadwacer), checked against Wiktionary; not yet reviewed by a person. Additional passages carry their own source credits.
The introduction and notes on this page were written by Claude (AI). Word glosses are AI-assisted, and so is the English unless the source above names another translator.