The West Germanic kinsmen of the Scandinavians had converted to Christianity and had begun to forget their own stories.
Professor Kenneth Harl notes that by 625 CE: In time, a number of Scandinavian traders established permanent communities in Europe and became Christianized while their families and neighbors back home continued to hold to their ancestral belief in the Norse gods. Increased need for these materials forced the Scandinavians to engage in long-distance trade with Europe and the Mediterranean which brought them into close contact with these other cultures. 1200 BCE) in which people began manufacturing tools and weapons from bronze, an alloy of copper and tin. This period is known as the beginning of the Bronze Age (c. 2300 BCE Germanic-speaking peoples migrated to Scandinavia bringing with them their religious beliefs in fierce gods who rewarded brave heroes in battle. Britain, especially, was well known for its lucrative trade centers, and the Scandinavians were aware of this through their own commerce with the region.įar from targeting Lindisfarne for its religious association, the Vikings would have chosen it for its riches.Īt the same time, however, religion did play a part in these raids, and this aspect is intimately tied in with trade and migration. The clearest cause for the Viking raids was simply the acquisition of wealth. This last suggestion gained credence with later writers and became the standard explanation for the Viking raids, but there is no more evidence for it in historical events than the wrath-of-god explanation. When these have grown up, they clamor fiercely against their fathers and their grandfathers, or more frequently against each other, for shares of property and, as they are over-many, and the land they inhabit is not large enough for them to live in, there is a very old custom by which a multitude of youths is selected by lot and expelled into the realms of other nations, to win kingdoms for themselves by fighting.
Now these people burn with too much wanton lasciviousness and with singular depravity debauch and mate with as many women as they please and so, by mingling together in illicit couplings, they generate innumerable children. 1027 CE) attributed the raids to overpopulation in Scandinavia and the generally depraved state of the “barbarians” who were forced to find new areas to inhabit overseas: A great famine followed these signs and shortly after that, on the sixth day before the Ides of January, the miserable raiding of heathens destroyed God's church on the Isle of Lindisfarne through plundering and murder. There were huge flashes of lightning and terrifying dragons were seen flying in the air. In this year, terrifying omens appeared over Northumbria and the people were wretchedly afraid. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle likewise attributes the raid to a supernatural cause. Whoever reads the Holy Scriptures and ponders ancient histories and considers the fortune of the world will find that for sins of this kind kings lost kingdoms and peoples their country and while the strong unjustly seized the goods of others, they justly lost their own. What may I say about avarice, robbery, violent judgments? – when it is clearer than day how much these crimes have increased everywhere and a despoiled people testifies to it.
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