(England)...I have always wanted to visit Lindisfarne, also known as Holy Island, in Northumberland (the modern-day name of ancient Northumbria), and last month I got that wish. I was armed with a volume of the Venerable Bede's The Ecclesiastical History of the English People, which in my copy also contained The Lives of St. Cuthbert and the Abbots of Jarrow and Wearmouth, both books having been written in the 8th Century and remaining in print. Bede, who mainly was based in Jarrow, no doubt came to Lindisfarne on numerous occasions, as it is not so far—even all the way back then—to travel to.
The earliest saints who came to set up a religious community in Lindisfarne came from the Scottish island of Iona, which also was called Hii, or so I learnt from the Bede's writings. That all said, Northumberland still feels somewhat distant and detached from the rest of England. It is not Scotland, certainly (although they do pay the bagpipes there, albeit instruments with no mouthpieces, as are seen north of the border), but also it does not necessarily feel English.
Maybe it is the beginning, or end, of the Viking realm, and certainly the monks and abbots of Bede's time knew all about the dangers of the men whose name translates into "those who wait in the bay," or in Scandinavian languages, the vik, as in, for example Reykjavik. Lindisfarne is not always an island, the ebbing tide revealing a causeway that until it was tarmacked not so many years ago must have been treacherous and muddy. Posters abound in the island's one village warning hapless visitors of the dangers of trying to beat the tide, which sweeps in fast.
The advice is, get out when the coast guard says, or if not, stay the night. (Even the official website, www.lindisfarne.org.uk, posts a warning.) There are two main tourist sites here, the castle at one end of the island, and the priory, a 20-minute walk to the other side. The castle sits on a rocky bluff, an imposing edifice, but even though it looks like a medieval or Dark Ages monument, it dates only to the 16th Century, probably no more than a feudal house, even if it still might have had one eye on the Scots, who often attacked, but no more than the English attacked them.
The English and Scots also used to raid their own people's livestock. Tales abound here of the Border Reivers, animal rustlers, who felt no concern at murder. One rumour has it that the men of this region on waking would first check their necks to see that they had not been slit in the night. The castle was gussied up by famed architect Sir Edwin Landseer Lutyens in the early years of the 20th Century, his companion Gertrude Jekyll being responsible for the walled garden 300 metres across the sheep-cropped grass, which was designed so that it could best be admired from the battlements. (There is a very attractive web site on her and the garden at  www.compulink.co.uk/~museumgh/jekyll.htm.)
 Inside is a rabbit-warren's array of rooms. I walked out to the end of the island, along the coast path and back to the village along an internal road lined with sheep. At no point did I get a better view of the castle than is possible from the track that is the shortest distance betwixt castle and priory and skirts the sea. In the village there are some quaint shops, a weather vane inside someone's window (that's a first for me) and a small, inviting public house called the Crown & Anchor, where I drank a pint. The priory obviously is the oldest building here, and wonderful views of the castle can be enjoyed, looking out over a small bay and the edge of the North Sea. The hulls of old boats had been in several places turned over and converted into sheds for fishing equipment.
To the left are the Farne Islands, small, inhospitable lumps of rock, a home only to thousands of sea birds and, at one time, St. Cuthbert. (The Ecclesiastical History is a fantastic work, even though the saints and monks clearly had an obsession with the correct calculation of the date of Easter; quite likely the significance of this is lost on me; perhaps they feared wars could be started over this? Perhaps they were. A king of some people or other, who was called Penda, seems to have been a particular thorn to those desiring peace.) A statue of St. Cuthbert and another saint, St. Aidan, watch over the ruins of the priory today. Further down the coast, to the south, is the different but equally impressive castle of Bamburgh. Like all Norman castles, it is a bold statement firmly announcing that the people thereabouts were defeated.
Right on the North Sea coast, the castle is memorable seen from the water's edge, its turrets reflecting in the wet sands from over the top of ranks of sand dunes. The castle guide was eccentric and explained at long length a painting that depicted the Grand Old Duke of York, even though my fellow visitors were all American and had never heard of the popular English nursery rhyme of "when he was up, he was up, and when he was down, he was down, and when he was only half way up, he was neither up nor down," etc., etc.
The castle enjoys the fame of being the first castle in the United Kingdom (well, any of the countries that later on would constitute the United Kingdom) to succumb to gun fire, rather than catapults, ladders, burning tar, etc. I walked around its edges, espying birds I had not seen for a while, such as Wheatear, Redwing and Reed bunting, and watched a game of football that was taking place in the fortress's colossal shadow, one mini-"war" amid the ghosts of several real ones.