It is well known that traumatic events often interrupt the human ability to describe them.  Traumatic memories do not allow rational discourse, but only “rupture and fragmentation” lacking continuity and closure.  Theorists of narrative and trauma (Felman, Laub, Gomel, Roth) suggest that narratives attempt to deal with traumatic events by imposing history where rational understanding fails; the experience of an Auschwitz survivor such as Primo Levi reaching for Dante’s Divine Comedy to make sense of his horror is a prime example.  Such narrative strategies are not limited to modern traumas. The Carolingian world of the mid-and late ninth century watched itself be torn apart by invasion and civil wars, as Scandinavian raiders, and the sons of Louis the Pious, sought to plunder and control Francia.  Literate observers attempted to make sense of what seemed to them to be hell on earth; they reached like Levi for grand narratives that could help them articulate their trauma where reason had failed.  This essay examines several responses to the warfare of the ninth century, including Angilbert’s poem on the civil of 845, the rhythmic poem known as the ‘Battle of Fontenoy’ , and Abbo’s Bella Parisiacae urbis, which describes in epic form the events that took place during the siege of Paris in 888-889 by Vikings.  While it has been long-established that medieval writers chose to see current events as part of scriptural history unfolding, these poets also desperately attempt to see the violence as an essential part of “sacrificial history”, in which certain shared trauma and violence is necessary to generate nationhood; yet, their poetry also reveals the grotesquerie that results when witnessed violence cannot be made sensible to the narrative strategies at hand, and dismantles its own narrative fabric.