She would have been brought up listening to the boasts of warriors, the tales of heroes and the myths of Woden, Freyja and Thor. She was a warrior princess. However, Bede states that at 33 – the age at which Christ died and halfway through her own life – Hild embraced Christianity. She had wanted to travel abroad to a monastery in Gaul, but she was seen as an asset to the conversion efforts in northern England and made abbess in Hartlepool. She was following in great footsteps, as her predecessor, Heui, was the first woman in Northumbria to become a nun and found a monastery in AD 640.50
