0:00:28 > 0:00:32It's June, 793. For over a century,
0:00:32 > 0:00:35Northumbria has been the most powerful kingdom
0:00:35 > 0:00:37in Anglo-Saxon England.
0:00:40 > 0:00:47Over there, on the Holy Island of Lindisfarne, something shocking is about to happen.
0:00:47 > 0:00:52The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle describes it in gory detail.
0:00:52 > 0:00:57"In this year, terrible portents appeared and miserably frightened
0:00:57 > 0:01:03"the inhabitants, flashes of lighting, fiery dragons in the sky,
0:01:03 > 0:01:07"a great famine." And a little after in the same year...
0:01:07 > 0:01:12"The harrying of the heathen miserably destroyed God's church in Lindisfarne
0:01:12 > 0:01:15"by rapine and slaughter."
0:01:18 > 0:01:24Vikings - plundering, pillaging and raping on our shores
0:01:24 > 0:01:26for the very first time.
0:01:27 > 0:01:33'The attack on Holy Island in 793 sent shockwaves across the land
0:01:33 > 0:01:38'and created a powerful new mythology - the marauding Norseman.
0:01:38 > 0:01:43'From an early age, I've been fascinated with the Vikings.
0:01:48 > 0:01:53'Today I get to realise an ambition and meet a Viking.
0:01:53 > 0:01:54'Well, a part-time one -
0:01:54 > 0:01:59'Kim Siddorn is secretary of a re-enactment society.'
0:01:59 > 0:02:03So, Kim, you're the most magnificent Viking warrior.
0:02:03 > 0:02:05- Thank you!- This is a leather jerkin.
0:02:05 > 0:02:08Yes, leather jerkin and linen tunic below it.
0:02:08 > 0:02:12- And this is what?- That's seal skin, and this is horse hide, lined on the inside with silk.
0:02:12 > 0:02:15It's worth a king's ransom, this thing.
0:02:15 > 0:02:19- And what else have you got? This must be a scramasax. - This is a scramasax.
0:02:19 > 0:02:25- You can see the pattern welding here in the blade.- Extraordinary. - All the fittings on that are silver.
0:02:25 > 0:02:29- That's to sort of finish people off in battle, isn't it? - I'd eat my tea with it, actually.
0:02:29 > 0:02:32SHOUTING
0:02:34 > 0:02:37The principle defence of a Dark Age warrior...
0:02:37 > 0:02:40- Oh, the home of the warrior is his shield.- His shield.
0:02:40 > 0:02:46The shield itself is the first line of defence for the warrior.
0:02:46 > 0:02:49It also makes a convenient thing to bang - hai, hai, hai!
0:02:49 > 0:02:51MARK LAUGHS
0:02:52 > 0:02:55The sword is very much a slashing weapon -
0:02:55 > 0:02:59none of this fine point work. It's intended purely for butchering.
0:03:01 > 0:03:04It's a weapon which you'd use on a figure of eight system.
0:03:04 > 0:03:07You'd have come down across the body from your initial...
0:03:07 > 0:03:10and then across this way and then, bringing your shield up,
0:03:10 > 0:03:16lead with the sword down across the body, perhaps cleaving you in two, if a man's unclad in armour.
0:03:19 > 0:03:25And of course, the monks at Lindisfarne would have had no escape.
0:03:25 > 0:03:28It must have been such a nasty shock. They weren't expecting it at all.
0:03:28 > 0:03:31You can hear it in what they said. "500 years we've lived in this island,
0:03:31 > 0:03:37"and nothing ever like this happened before! They came into God's house and killed us all!" Silence!
0:03:41 > 0:03:46Up at Bamburgh Castle, Kim's fellow re-enactors have set up a camp
0:03:46 > 0:03:49at a festival celebrating Saxon life.
0:03:49 > 0:03:54It was this Saxon world that was rocked by the first Viking raid
0:03:54 > 0:03:59here on the Northumbrian coast, and the assaults that followed.
0:03:59 > 0:04:06Before those Viking raids, wars between the different kingdoms of England were common,
0:04:06 > 0:04:13but the appearance of a common enemy here 1,200 years ago was to alter the country's destiny.
0:04:13 > 0:04:18That early raid really changed England/Britain for ever.
0:04:18 > 0:04:24Yes, it did, it gave us the beginnings of a national identity. It was...the warring Anglo-Saxon
0:04:24 > 0:04:30kingdoms began to come together for the first time, and it was the Viking raids that did it.
0:04:32 > 0:04:39After the cataclysm that happened here in 793, wars with the Vikings
0:04:39 > 0:04:44continued for another 200 years, but one beneficial consequence
0:04:44 > 0:04:49was that in those wars, the nation of England was formed.