A.D. 793. This year came dreadful fore-warnings over the land ofthe Northumbrians, terrifying the people most woefully: thesewere immense sheets of light rushing through the air, andwhirlwinds, and fiery, dragons flying across the firmament. These tremendous tokens were soon followed by a great famine: andnot long after, on the sixth day before the ides of January inthe same year, the harrowing inroads of heathen men madelamentable havoc in the church of God in Holy-island, by rapine and slaughter.Anglo-Saxon Chronicle "In the same year the pagans from the northern regions came with a naval force to Britain like stinging hornets and spread on all sides like fearful wolves, robbed, tore and slaughtered not only beasts of burden, sheep and oxen, but even priests and deacons, and companies of monks and nuns. And they came to the church of Lindisfarne, laid everything waste with grievous plundering, trampled the holy places with polluted steps, dug up the altars and seized all the treasures of the holy church. They killed some of the brothers, took some away with them in fetters, many they drove out, naked and loaded with insults, some they drowned in the sea..."Simeon of Durham, Historia Regum Anglorum et Dacorum (troligen baserad på en förlorad version av Anglosaxon chronicle)