During the 9^th and 10^th centuries, there were a few thousand men born to be warriors and conquerors, wilder than their southern neighbours, the Anglo-Saxons. These were the Vikings.

Between 830 and 900, the Vikings plundered Hamburg and Antwerp, London and Paris, the Rhône and Bordeaux, Seville and Morocco. They even launched an assault against Constantinople. Normandy was conquered, too. Before 1016, they won Iceland and Greenland and had touched the shores of North America.

The cause of their hunger for invasion is not certain. Perhaps their overpopulated lands or their desire to change what they ate, pushed them to leave their homelands and to invade new territories. Irrespective of their reason, all the Western population of Europe trembled before these pagans who wanted to destroy all symbols of Christianity, bringing death to those who stood before them. The church would pray in those dark days: God spare us from the wrath of the Northmen

England was the country to suffer the most. The Viking attack started in 856 and by 870, only one kingdom survived, Wessex ruled by King Alfred the Great, the first ruler of all free Englishmen. All Northern and Eastern England was Danelaw, made up of several Viking kingdoms and independent boroughs. In 1017, the Danish king Canute became king of Denmark, Norway and England. England returned to Anglo-Saxon monarchs until Harold’s death in 1066 during the Battle of Hastings. The Vikings obliterated schools and monasteries and England’s nobility and clergy was reduced. William, Duke of Normandy became William the Conqueror in 1066 and established beyond question the dominance of French culture in England for several centuries.

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