We’ve seen it all in documentaries and dramas. The Viking Age begins as hordes of Vikings leap ashore from their longships, in a lightning raid against defenseless clerics and lay folk, only to depart as swiftly as they arrive, loaded up with slaves and booty. These hit-and-run raids are seen to have continued for decades before visitors from Scandinavia began to trade, negotiate, and found settlements on English soil. While it can’t be denied that Viking raids were violent, the established narrative of first contact seems oversimplified in the light of contemporary evidence.
The founding narrative for popular portrayals is the “Anglo-Saxon Chronicle,” which survives in different versions. The core text, or “common stock,” was first composed in Wessex around A.D. 892 and reflects the interests of King Alfred the Great, whose career was dedicated to battling Vikings. It retrospectively reports the first atrocity by Northmen who arrived in three ships in Dorset one day between A.D. 786 and A.D. 802, and who slew a royal administrator of the kingdom of Wessex.
