Vikings sack Iona

795 · Event

Two years after Lindisfarne, the longships find Iona — the holiest island in the Gaelic world, Columba's monastery and the burial place of kings. Raided again and again over the next decade, with sixty-eight monks massacred at Martyrs' Bay in 806, the community finally splits for safety: some to Kells in Ireland, taking with them, most likely, the great gospel book that bears that abbey's name.