Case file · Sighting
Fiery dragons over Northumbria
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records that in 793 'immense flashes of lightning' and 'fiery dragons flying in the air' were seen over Northumbria, followed by famine and the Viking sack of Lindisfarne.
793 CE · 55.68, -1.80 · status: account
The account
The entry is one of the most quoted prodigies in English history because it is tied to a real catastrophe: the raid on the monastery of Lindisfarne on 8 June 793, often taken as the start of the Viking Age in Britain. The chronicler reads the signs as omens of what followed.
The sceptical view
Medieval annalists described auroras, meteors and comets in the language of dragons and fiery armies. The entry was also written with hindsight, after the raid.