Lindisfarne is one of England’s most iconic early medieval sites. When the Vikings headed over, this famous monastery was their first target. For 1,000 years, its ruins were lost to history, but we’ve now uncovered some of its remains. You can help us gather the evidence and piece its story back together.
Sitting on a small tidal island opposite the famous Bamburgh Castle, King Oswald chose Lindisfarne as the place to establish a monastery in AD 635. But it was no ordinary monastery: it quickly grew to become the golden heart of the early medieval kingdom of Northumbria.
Made famous by chroniclers like Bede and Alcuin (and by the popular TV show Vikings), it’s where the Lindisfarne Gospels were illustrated, where the treasures that adorned the altars of early Medieval Europe were forged, and where thousands of miracle-seeking pilgrims came to seek healing.
Lindisfarne’s power and influence reached deep into the heart of continental Europe, and was described by Alcuin as ‘the most venerable place in Britain’. But archaeologists still have some very big questions to answer: where exactly was it, and does any evidence still survive?
Over the last four years, hundreds of crowdfunders have helped us find some tantalising evidence, including buildings, huge ovens, early medieval sculptures, namestones (some inscribed with Anglo-Saxon runes), several early Christian burials, and all manner of artefacts including coins, hairpins, and even a pair of small copper rings.
It’s clear that we’ve now located a significant part of this missing monastery, and it’s time to dig deep and investigate in detail.
Who was living on the island before, during and after the Viking raids? What can we learn about their lives? And how did they survive?
Support this dig and you can excavate alongside our team, join us in the Finds Room, or follow our progress online as we uncover one of the most iconic early medieval sites in England, and piece its story back together.
Our excavation area is located on the Holy Island of Lindisfarne, in front of the priory.
This year, Dig HQ will be the Crossman Hall, in the centre of Holy Island Village.
Our dig days usually run from 9:00 am – 5:00 pm, but Lindisfarne is NOT one of our usual digs!
Lindisfarne is a tidal island, and it is only safe to travel to and from the mainland at certain times of day. This means that our days will be governed by the tide (how romantic!).
You can check the tide timetables for September 2020 here.
We will flex our start and finish times each day to allow plenty of time for people to travel to and from the mainland.
The earliest we ever start is 09:00 am, and on days with a late morning tide we always allow at least 30 minutes from when the causeway opens to when we begin the day.
Our dig experiences include all the tools, training and one-to-one instruction you will need in order to learn and have a great time whilst you are on site with our team.
We’ve got tea breaks covered, however you will need to bring your own lunch and plenty of water.
Food, travel and accommodation are not included, however there is a list of links and helpful information provided below.
If you want to start planning your journey, check the rest of the FAQs for information about location, start times, food and accommodation.
Our finds experiences include all the tools, training and one-to-one instruction you will need in order to learn and have a great time whilst you are on site with our team.
We’ve got tea breaks covered (one of the joys of being in the Finds Room is having as much tea as you like, whenever you like!), but you will need to bring your own lunch and plenty of water.
Food, travel and accommodation are not included, however there is a list of links and helpful information provided below.
If you want to start planning your journey, check the rest of the FAQs for information about location, start times, food and accommodation.
If you’re choosing a Dig or Finds Room experience, you’ll be asked to select your t-shirt size, and start date at checkout (apart from ‘Dig for two weeks’, ‘Finds for a week’, or DigCamp, which have set start dates).
After that, you’ll receive a payment confirmation with the details you gave us.
You’ll also get a follow-up email asking for a bit more information we need to register you as part of the team. Please make sure you reply as soon as possible!
We’ll then send you an email reminder two weeks before the dig, with info about how to watch the dig online, and any final details about exactly where and when to meet us.
We’ve set our crowdfunding goal to match the level of excavation and analysis we think this site deserves. Obviously, the closer we get the better, and the more people who join in the more we can discover, but we won’t abandon our plans if we fall shy of the target – this archaeology is too important to miss!
If we don’t reach our goal, we’ll stick to our guns and do the dig anyway – we’ll just scale down the size of the excavation to suite.
For example, we’d excavate a smaller area and send fewer artefacts off for scientific analysis, but the dig would still happen and you’d still be part of our team.
That being said, we’re confident we’ll reach our goal because we know there’s incredible archaeology waiting to be found and people like YOU are willing to help us prove it!
If you’re joining us on site, you’ll receive your t-shirt when you arrive.
If you’re not joining us on site, we’ll send it to you at the end of dig season (usually October or November).
You’ll start getting all your digital goodies (like videos updates and virtual artefacts) when the dig begins.
Once the dig is over, it takes us about 12-18 months to analyse the finds and write up the official report. We’ll keep you updated with any significant developments from the lab during this time. It will be well worth the wait!
You’ll need to make sure that you can get to Lindisfarne for a morning start – remember to check the tide tables!
If you want to make shared travel plans with other Venturers, please note we will be emailing all our crowdfunders a link to our Facebook chat group, where you can make shared travel and accommodation plans together if you wish.
We will be flexing the start / finish times for each day around the tides, so don’t worry that you’ll be missing anything. If you’re staying off-island, you won’t be the only one!
And remember you’ll need to bring your own lunches, or cash to buy some from a local cafe.
ABSOLUTELY! We invite all our crowdfunders (and anyone else who is interested) to come and visit. Bring friends, bring family, and make a day out of it!
You’ll be able to come and talk to us in the trenches,and visit the Finds Room in the second week of the dig to see our discoveries.
If you’ve crowdfunded the dig, we’ll also let you know about any special events we put on closer to the time.
We can either transfer your dig days to another excavation at our discretion, or you can bequeath them to someone else… go on, pass on the archaeology love!
If we could control the weather, we’d make it… temperate! Our ideal conditions are overcast (for taking photos), and drizzly (for keeping the ground soft). Sometimes, we also like a bit of sun (for good morale!)
If the weather’s truly terrible, or obscenely hot, then remember this: archaeology isn’t only outdoors! We can always head indoors to the Finds Room to work on the artefacts… cleaning, examining and identifying the things we’ve found so far.
These FAQs should cover everything you need to know for planning your journey.
We’ll send you more specific joining instructions, with additional details about exactly where and when to meet us on Holy Island, two weeks before the dig begins.
This dig is being run in partnership with Durham University.
Crowdfunding isn’t the only way you can help. Even just sharing our campaign on social media could introduce us to someone else who wants to support the dig.
Go on… tell your friends, tell your family, tell any archaeology-lovers you know and help us spread the word!