Why Did the Vikings Invade England?

During the 700s, the Vikings began to raid English monasteries and churches to trade and sell. The Anglo-Saxons at the time had never seen such merciless men. In the Anglo-Saxon chronicles, the Vikings are described as sea-borne pagans, as all of the Vikings came on huge war-ships from what we would now refer to as Scandinavia. The Vikings had originally come from Sweden, Denmark and Norway, and they were certainly genuinely vicious people. The first raids came in the late 700s, and began as just bloody, frightening raids.The first recorded were of unprotected monasteries on the south coast of England- Lindisfarne, in 793 Jarrow, in 794 and Iona, in 795. And although these raids were terrifying for the Anglo-Saxons, they were yet unaware of the blood-shed and fear to come In 835, Kent was attacked, and no stone was left unturned in the Vikings search for valuable treasure. Everything was a mess and the Saxons were panicking, but this Kentish raid unexpectedly lead to a full-scale in vasion 30 years later. By the 840s, the Vikings were heavily involved in over-seas barter and raiding, and had travelled all over most of Europe.But this, it would seem, was not enough. The land in Scandinavia could not suffice to feed the over-populated region, whereas the land in England was healthy, and ready to be used- or stolen. The Vikings would have known where the majority of the unprotected churches and monasteries were in Europe and Russia, and they used this to their advantage. Casual raids became expected by the 850s and eventually converted to huge invasions and settlements, which of course would intend England. By 860, the Vikings were settled in Britain- arriving in hundreds and thousands from the two main routes they used to raid and invade