The island the vikings chose: A short history of Sheppey

If you’re joining the Jiutopia UK camp this October, there’s a good chance you’ve never heard of Sheppey before. Most people haven’t. It sits quietly in the Thames Estuary, about 42 miles from central London, and it rarely makes headlines.

That wasn’t always the case.

A safe harbour for invaders

In the ninth century, Sheppey was attacked by Viking raiders, and in 855 a Viking army spent the winter on the island. The first time the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records them doing so there. They didn’t just pass through. The island provided a strategic base from which Viking forces could operate in the region.

The name itself, Sceapige in Old English, means Sheep Island, a nod to the flocks that grazed here long before anyone thought of the place as strategically important.

But it was. Centuries later, in 1667, a Dutch fleet captured the fort at Sheerness during the Raid on the Medway, making Sheppey one of the very few parts of England to fall to a foreign power since 1066.

For an island many people now describe as forgotten, that’s a remarkable amount of history to carry.

Why this matters for a training camp

There’s something fitting about training BJJ on a piece of land that people have fought over for over a thousand years. Sheppey has always been a place where people arrived to prepare, to rest before something demanding, and to test themselves against whatever came next.

That’s not so different from what happens at a camp. You show up, you put in the work on the mats, and you leave a little more capable than when you arrived. The island has hosted that kind of preparation for a very long time. It just used to look a bit different.

What the island looks like today

Modern Sheppey is a lot quieter than its history suggests. The island is home to around 40,000 people, split between the built-up northern half, with towns like Sheerness, Minster and Queenborough, and a southern half that’s mostly marshland and small hamlets. It’s the kind of place with rolling fields, sandy coastline, and old churches, not the battleground its past might suggest.

That contrast is part of what makes it an interesting place to train. A calm, unassuming setting with a surprisingly loaded past, much like anyone’s first few months on the mats can feel from the outside.

Join us on Sheppey

Jiutopia’s UK camp runs from October 16 to 18, 2026, on an island that’s seen Vikings, invasions, and centuries of quiet resilience in between. Spots are capped at 40 participants, and if you’re bringing a training partner, the FRIEND15 code gets you both a discount.