... a wave of 'post-revisionism' by historians, including Alfred Smyth, who claim Sawyer's argument is flawed and paints too rosy a picture of Viking activity in England. We must now set out to forge a middle ground between these two sides (for which, Patrick Wormald reminds us, it is necessary to move away from the 1066 And All That -style temptation to see the Vikings as either a 'good thing' or a 'bad thing'), which will helpfully aid our understanding as to what really happened. Early Viking raids in the late eighth and early ninth century were, it is generally agreed, relatively sporadic and small-scale, averaging no more than fifty ships, and targeted at monasteries, such as Lindisfarne, and trading centres (Campbell). It is not until the mid-ninth century, that the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle begins to refer to the (now Danish as well as Norwegian) Viking forces as 'Micel here', which has ...

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