One peaceful morning as I was ploughing my field, something on the sea caught my eye. I had a closer look and saw the striped sail of a Viking ship.
A Viking raid!
I ran down the hill, shouting to everyone else and all the time I was heading in the direction of the monastery because I knew the monastery would be the first place where the Vikings would go. I ran into the monastery’s courtyard and shouted “The Vikings, the Vikings.” But they already knew and were in the church behind the strong oak doors.
I ran to the cliff edge and saw the Vikings had just landed and as there was a few of us, we started to throw some stones down, but they had bows and arrows and they got them out, so we ran to the woods. When we got there we turned round and saw the first few Vikings were on top and more coming all the time, so we ran further into the wood.
I went back to the edge of the wood and climbed up a tree and saw the Vikings surround the monastery. Then they attacked, but not all of them. Some came in the direction of the forest, one stayed near my tree and the others went in. I could see the one near me was a young man, so I jumped on him and knocked him unconscious and put his clothes on. Then, being brave, I went into the monastery and saw the Vikings trying to break down the oak doors and finally they got in.
Someone pushed me in and I saw dead monks lying about. I was walking up to the altar when someone put some jewels in my hands and ran off, but I just couldn’t stand it, so I dropped the jewels and ran out of the church and saw the stables were on fire. I grabbed a burning stick and threw it in the church and the wood caught fire at once, but as I was running away, the Vikings from the wood came back and one of them had seen what I had done. He raised his axe and was just about to bring it down when someone threw a spear at him. It was one of my friends who had come back from the wood and had overpowered some Vikings and got their weapons. Now all the other people who had gone in the wood threw their spears and killed the other Vikings.
I went over and thanked them, then went down to the Viking ship, killed the Vikings there and set fire to the ship.
That was one invasion by the Vikings repulsed.
Teacher’s Comments
Good 8.5/10 merit.
(c) M. Robert Gibson
First written 1975-01-23
History essay
Disclaimer
This is a school essay.
It was written well before the internet. It is full of inaccuracies and assumptions; bad punctuation; bad grammar and a woeful lack of research, but, it is also a first draft. It was also hand-written in an exercise book, none of your fancy electronic gizmos back then.
And don’t forget, it was written by a schoolboy in a time before political correctness.
It is published here for purely selfish vanity reasons, so read it at your own peril and do not expect any great revelations.
M. Robert Gibson 