In practice, the vikings’ success depended on intimate knowledge of the area on which they preyed, and careful calculation. It was not simply a matter of smash and grab. One manuscript demonstrates very well just how canny ninth-century viking raiders could be. It is a grand Gospel-book, made to the highest of standards in England in the eighth century. An inscription added to it in Old English about a hundred years later tells how it was taken as loot by ‘the heathen army’ and then bought back by an English aristocrat and his family, who in turn gifted it to Canterbury Cathedral. Where the vikings had got the book from is not clear – but despite being pagans, they evidently knew its value, and had kept it safe and undamaged so that they could profit from selling the book back to a devout Anglo-Saxon.
Kitap: Early Medieval Britain
Alba Kelime Kökeni
First, the leading kingdom in what is now Scotland began in the years around 900 to be referred to in Irish annals as Alba, an Irish word for ‘Britain’. Around the year 900, Irish chroniclers began to refer to the dominant kingdom of northern Britain as Alba. This was an Irish and Gaelic word that had long been used for Britain, and which relates to an alternative name for the island known to Bede and Roman writers: Albion.