A question for the hive mind

[la_marquise]

How many vikings are too many? Or, more accurately, how many viking attacks can you stand within one book? I need at least two, for plot reasons, but I don't want to be boring.

Comments

[a-d-medievalist.livejournal.com]

um... not to be too pedantic and medievalist-like, but if you want to get a reasonable number, I am almost positive that the Annales Bertiniani, Fuldensis, and Xantensis (?) all have numbers in the sense of, "this year, those bastard vikings attacked again" starting in about 878. Do the Irish and/or Welsh records (and I expect various A/S monastic annals ( are there such things?) would give you a really good idea.

My gut feeling is that, if we're talking about actual raids from Scandinavia, it's about one raid per year per group, and that you wouldn't get more than two different raids per year in any case, because raiding has a purpose, and it makes sense only to raid when there's stuff to take. Who robs an empty house?

ETA: which means, I expect that I can handle an attack per year, but not in great detail.

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

This is precisely why I'm wondering, as the Welsh annals do indeed record the raids, and they are fewer than average for this period. But I do need two (not in the same place -- one is in Cornwall, in fact). There were certainly years when several of the coastal monasteries were all hit and I am hoping to get away with echoing that.
I love Ann. Xan. I always wanted to do a new modern ed. and trans. and none of my jobs would let me -- not Welsh enough. Bah, she said. That's a fascinating text.