The year traditionally used to mark the beginning of the Viking Age, after the raid on Lindisfarne, is 793.
On 8 June 793, raiders attacked the monastery on Lindisfarne, an island off the northeast coast of England. Alcuin of York described the event as a shocking disaster, helping make it one of the best-documented early Viking attacks in western Europe.
The date is a convenient historical marker rather than a universally agreed instant when the Viking Age began. Scandinavian maritime activity, trade, migration and warfare already existed before 793, and later historians sometimes use different boundaries. The period is commonly placed roughly between 793 and 1066.
The Lindisfarne raid did not mean Vikings immediately conquered England. It was one early attack in a much longer period involving commerce, settlement, diplomacy and warfare across Europe and the North Atlantic.