On this day in the year 1043 Runic Era (793 CE) three Viking ships raided the Isle of Lindisfarne, officially opening what is generally called the “Viking Age” culturally effecting the history of Ireland and Briton immeasurably. Thus today is known as Lindisfarne Day. These warriors began the resistance of an alien religious invasion of the Northlands and sought revenge for the slaughter of thousands of Danish and Saxon men, women and children by Charlamange. Thus the legend of the feared and mighty Norse began and their legacy would shape Northern Europe as it emerged from the Dark Ages.
Many explanations are given for why the Norsemen struck at this place and time. Population pressures in Scandinavia are often given, as is the lack of arable land in Norway and Sweden. Another explanation may be that etween the years 773 and 792, Frankish ruler Charlemagne launched at least six separate campaigns to subdue the pagan Saxons. Many of these people, rather than live under the “White Christ,” chose to flee their homeland journeying north to live among their fellow pagans in Denmark, Norway and Sweden, telling bloodthirsty tales of the Frankish subjugation of their countrymen over religion. In the autumn of 782, for example, Charlemagne ordered the beheading of 4500 Saxon leaders guilty of practicing pagan rites after their conversion to Christianity. It is theorized that perhaps some of the early Viking raids were purposely aimed at religious sites noting that some of the Lindisfarne monks were “drowned in the sea„,” perhaps in a brutal imitation of baptism.
On this date many choose to remember that governments are not always right and are often not looking after your best interest but rather theirs, that sometimes people must fight back and that correct ancestral history has often been distorted or in some cases, erased all together…
(via skekoa)
