They promoted themselves as the kings of all those in northern Britain, or 'Alba'. The Scots took advantage of the presence of the Vikings, and, above all under King Cináed mac Alpín (Kenneth MacAlpine), they did so with considerable aggression and intelligence. In their place was a kingdom of Scotland, controlled by the Scots, who were the descendents of immigrants from Ireland in the fifth and sixth centuries. By the end of the ninth century they had vanished. In the eighth century, the Picts had one of the most important kingdoms in Britain. Lindisfarne was abandoned, and the monks trailed around northern England with their greatest possession, the relics of St Cuthbert, until they found a home in Durham in 995 AD. Other monasteries in Scotland and northern England simply disappear from the record. The remaining monks fled to Kells (County Meath, Ireland) with a gospel-book probably produced in Iona, but now known as the 'Book of Kells'. Iona was burnt in 802 AD, and 68 monks were killed in another raid in 806 AD.
We know no historical details of the raids in Scotland, although they must have been extensive. Over the next few decades, many monasteries in the north were destroyed, and with them any records they might have kept of the raids. Alcuin suggested that further attack might be averted by moral reform in the monastery. It is clear from the letter that Lindisfarne was not destroyed. In 793 AD, an anguished Alcuin of York wrote to the Higbald, the bishop of Lindisfarne and to Ethelred, King of Northumbria, bemoaning the unexpected attack on the monastery of Lindisfarne by Viking raiders, probably Norwegians sailing directly across the North Sea to Northumbria. Yet the most significant development of the period was an indirect result of Scandinavian involvement in the affairs of Britain - the emergence of two kingdoms of newly unified territories, England and Scotland.
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