Holy Isle (Summer) Painting

Ah Lindisfarne, our Holy Isle, our Castle, our Protection The Parting of the Land and Sea, this tidal intersection The Famine, Whirlwinds, lightning strikes With fiery dragons, comet-like Recorded, if you take a look Upon its Rock, a Doomsday Book Of imminent disaster. The Viking Longships preyed, we prayed And sieges planned were roughly laid And Norsemen, fierce and brave, attacked The church was burned, the town was sacked St Cuthbert with his monks took fright And put up a resounding fight The Holy Island of Lindisfarne, also known simply as Holy Isle, is a tidal island off the northeast coast of England. St Aidan went out from Iona and founded Lindisfarne. Anglo-Saxon writers in northern England recalled how ‘immense whirlwinds, flashes of lightning and fiery dragons were seen flying in the air’. They thought these aerial phenomena were portents of imminent disaster. And in the year 793 the Vikings attacked. The assault on Lindisfarne attacked the sacred heart of the Northumbrian kingdom, desecrating ‘the very place where the Christian religion began in our nation’. It was where Cuthbert (d. 687) had been bishop, and where his body was now revered as that of a saint. News of the raid quickly reached Alcuin, a Northumbrian scholar living far away in the Frankish kingdom, where he was tutor to the children of the renowned King Charlemagne. Alcuin was aghast at this unprecedented atrocity. As he wrote to Higbald, bishop of Lindisfarne, this is ‘a place more sacred than any in Britain’.

Painting:Oil on Canvas

Original:One-of-a-kind Artwork

Size:36 W x 26 H x 3 D in

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