Even the chronicles reflect the fact that the Vikings often attacked monasteries for their wealth, which created an obvious bias against them, and the hostile tone of these contemporary accounts has done much to create the popular image of Viking atrocities.
There are also sources of a more directly religious nature, such as the much-quoted letters of Alcuin, and Wulfstan's famous 'Sermon of the Wolf', both of which chose to interpret the Viking raids as God's punishment on the Anglo-Saxons for their sins. These include monastic chronicles, such as the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and similar Frankish and Irish Annals, which outline broadly what happened, at what date. Surviving accounts of Viking activity were almost exclusively written by churchmen. Even in western Europe, the Viking Age is often seen as part of the 'Dark Ages', from which comparatively few historical records have survived.ĭetail from the manuscript of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle In Scandinavia the Viking Age is regarded as part of prehistory because there are practically no contemporary written sources. Others are the result of early historians accepting sources which modern scholars now regard as completely unreliable.
Many popular ideas about Vikings are nineteenth-century inventions. Not a lot of evidence survives, and much of what we have is either uninformative or unreliable. Unfortunately, the value of the written evidence is limited.
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