The Lindisfarne Gospels
A carpet page from the Lindisfarne Gospels, made on the Northumbrian island around AD 700 — roughly a century before the Viking raid that made it famous.
The manuscript is the high point of Insular art: interlace worked at a density that repays a magnifying glass, made by a community that had turned a windswept tidal island into a centre of European learning. When Norse raiders struck Lindisfarne in 793 the shock across Christendom was partly about what was there to lose. The monks eventually carried the book inland; it survived, the monastery did not. Read the full story in our article on Viking Raids: From Lindisfarne to the Siege of Paris.
Public domain — source (Wikimedia Commons). Free to reuse under the stated licence.
