Matthew Harffy · 2020 · survival

8 June 793, and the Norse raid Lindisfarne - the day English monks reckoned the world changed. Hunlaf is a young scribe who picks up a sword instead of turning the other cheek, and Harffy has said plainly that the shape of what follows is Seven Samurai: a handful of misfits training a village that has no idea what is coming.

1. 1
   Lindisfarne

   The holy island at low tide, and the longships coming out of a calm sea - the church stripped, the monks killed or taken, and a young scribe who has spent his life copying gospels finding he can kill a man and does.

2. 2
   Werceworthe

   Warkworth on the Coquet, where Hunlaf and the abandoned Norseman Runolf gather seven fighters and spend the winter teaching farmers to hold a shieldwall - because the raiders will come back, and everybody knows where.

3. 3
   Uuiremutha

   Monkwearmouth at the Wear mouth, the other great Northumbrian house and Bede's own - the coastline the Norse now know is undefended, and the reason a monk with a sword stops being a contradiction.