ABSTRACT

This first reported attack on Frankish lands by the Vikings was noted by Alcuin, the English adviser to Charlemagne. He lamented this attack not with the same passion but with similar perceptionGod was punishing Christians for their sinfulness-as he had lamented the Viking attack upon Lindisfarne in his native Northumbria six years earlier. With this attack-fleeting, scarcely significant in itself, the subject of a passing moralizing reflection, and then quickly forgotten-a new chapter in Viking history begins. The target of Viking attacks were now the lands to the south, principally the lands controlled by the Franks, which, from the year 800, had been called an ‘empire’, lands stretching from Saxony to the Pyrenees and central Italy. But some attackers went beyond these lands to others, whose cultural ties were with the Moslem world of Baghdad.