Review: A Time For Swords by Matthew Harrfy

Synopsis: Lindisfarne, AD793. There had been portents – famine, whirlwinds, lightning from clear skies, serpents seen flying through the air. But when the raiders came, no one was prepared. They came from the North, their dragon-prowed longships gliding out of the dawn mist as they descended on the kingdom's most sacred site.

It is 8th June AD793, and with the pillage of the monastery on Lindisfarne, the Viking Age has begun.  While his fellow monks flee before the Norse onslaught, one young novice stands his ground. He has been taught to turn the other cheek, but faced with the slaughter of his brothers and the pagan desecration of his church, forgiveness is impossible.

Hunlaf soon learns that there is a time for faith and prayer... and there is a time for swords.

Anglo Saxon England

Germanic tribal migrations into Britain began about the middle of the 5th century, and according to the 6th-century British writer Gildas, were invited by a British king to defend his kingdom against the Picts and Scots. Archaeology, however, suggests a more complex picture showing many tribal elements, contacts, revolts, use of mercenaries and local resistance.  By the end of the 7th century though divided into several kingdoms, there was a sense of "unity" that was eventually strengthened when all kingdoms south of the Humber acknowledged the overlordship of a single ruler, known as a bretwalda, a word first recorded in the 9th century.  The Christian Church provided another unifying influence, overriding political divisions, although it was not until 669 that the church in England acknowledged a single head.

Anglo Saxon Religion

The word pagan is a Latin term that was used by Christians in Anglo-Saxon England to designate non-Christians. There is no evidence that anyone living in Anglo-Saxon England ever described themselves as a "pagan" or understood there to be a singular religion, "paganism", that stood as a monolithic alternative to Christianity.  There was no neat, formalised account of Anglo-Saxon pagan system of worship, which focused around a belief in deities and  a variety of other supernatural entities which inhabited the landscape; and that there was clear diversity even among the pre-Christian belief systems.  Martin Carver stressed that in Anglo-Saxon England, neither paganism nor Christianity represented "homogenous intellectual positions or canons and practice"; instead, there was "considerable interdigitation" between the two.

Celtic Christianity

This was a term which broadly referred to certain features of Christianity that were common, or held to be common, across the Celtic-speaking world during the Early Middle Ages. Some writers have described a distinct Celtic Church uniting the Celtic peoples (of Cornwall,Man, Ireland, Wales, Scotland, northern England) and distinguishing them from the Roman Church, while others have classified it as simply a set of distinctive practices occurring in those areas ..... such practices being a distinctive system for determining the dating of Easter, a style of monastic tonsure, a unique system of penance, and the popularity of going into "exile for Christ".

Kingdom of Northumbria

The Anglo-Saxon countries of Bernicia and Deira were often in conflict before their eventual semi-permanent unification in 654. Political power in Deira was concentrated in the East Riding of Yorkshire, which included York, the North York Moors, and the Vale of York. The political heartlands of Bernicia were the areas around Bamburgh and Lindisfarne, Monkwearmouth and Jarrow, and in Cumbria, west of the Pennines in the area around Carlisle. The name that these two countries eventually united under, Northumbria, may have been coined by Bede and made popular through his Ecclesiastical History of the English People.

Æthelred I was the king of Northumbria from 774 to 779 and again from 790 until he was murdered in 796. His reigns were noted for the fierce rivalry for the throne, and the relative ease in which reigning monarchs has no compunction about removing rivals ... permanently. When Lindisfarne was sacked by the Vikings, Alcuin wrote letters to Æthelred, blaming the event on the sins of Æthelred and his nobility.

Lindisfarne Monastery

The Holy Island of Lindisfarne, commonly known as either Holy Island[ or Lindisfarne, is a tidal island off the northeast coast of England, which constitutes the civil parish of Holy Island in Northumberland. Holy Island has a recorded history from the 6th century AD; it was an important centre of Celtic Christianity under Saints Aidan of Lindisfarne, Cuthbert, Eadfrith of Lindisfarne and Eadberht of Lindisfarne.   Lindisfarne was also the home of the famous Gospels, thought to have been the work of Bishop Eadfrith (dc.721), and belived produced in honour of the great northern saint, Cuthbert.  In 875, after enduring eight decades of repeated Viking raids, the monks fled Lindisfarne, carrying the relics of Saint Cuthbert with them. It was post Norman conquest of England, that a priory was reestablished.

Raid on Lidisfarne

The earliest recorded planned Viking raid on Lindisfarne occurred  6 January 793 (source is the Anglo Saxon Chronicle):

A.D. 793. This year came dreadful fore-warnings over the land of the Northumbrians, terrifying the people most woefully: these were immense sheets of light rushing through the air, and whirlwinds, and fiery, dragons flying across the firmament. These tremendous tokens were soon followed by a great famine: and not long after, on the sixth day before the ides of January in the same year, the harrowing inroads of heathen men made lamentable havoc in the church of God in Holy-island, by rapine and slaughter. 

According to the 12th-century Anglo-Norman chronicler Symeon of Durham, the raiders killed the resident monks or threw them into the sea to drown or carried them away as slaves – along with some of the church treasures.

A.D. 794. ...... Ethelred, king of the Northumbrians, was slain by his own people ...... In the meantime, the heathen armies spread devastation among the Northumbrians, and plundered the monastery of King Everth at the mouth of the Wear [Jarrow]. There, however, some of their leaders were slain; and some of their ships also were shattered to pieces by the violence of the weather; many of the crew were drowned; and some, who escaped alive to the shore, were soon dispatched at the mouth of the river.

This represented one of the last raids on England for about 40 years. The Vikings focused instead on Ireland and Scotland.

This then is the world in which this coming of age / hero's journey adventure is set - 8th Century England or rather, Northumbria as the idea of a united England was still to come.  In this version of the hero's quest, a young monk, Hunlaf, struggles with his identity in the face of Viking incursions - is he " ... a warrior in the clothes of a monk ... ".  He even begins to question his religion, asking "... where was God when his flock had been violated and murdered? ...".

This is the first in a series, which the author himself says, pays homage to that great underdog film "The Magnificent Seven". Here we have a motley crew of warriors drawn from all corners of the Anglo-Saxon and Celtic world, who must pit themselves against the might of the Vikings.  Again, as in "The Magnificent Seven", each warrior much prove themselves worthy to join by feats of skill with the weapon of choice. And throughout, we follow the transition of the young, naive monk into a stout warrior.

The narrative is told in the first person of Hunlaf, who is looking back over his life, whilst penning what will become known as the Annals of Hunlaf of Ubbanford.

The Anglo-Saxon period is well known to Harffy, whose "Bernicia Chronicle" series is set in this time, so there is no doubt that he had on hand a dearth of information from which to craft his tale.

I am sure that readers of Bernard Cornwell, Edoardo Albert, Robert Low, Giles Kristian, Tim Hodkinson would enjoy this. And quite possibly fans of Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings" or Umberto Eco's "Name of the Rose".