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Dorestad was a medieval Frisian city on a branch of the Rhine delta near the center of modern Netherlands.
Dorestad is obliterated now, through the vagaries of geology and history; but in its day it was the pre-eminent regional city. While quite inland, it was a major trading port on an important commercial waterway.
Dorestad was wealthy. Its position on the Kromme Rijn 
assured that goods to and from all Rhine-accessible markets were likely to be traded in the city.
On the site of a Roman fort, there's no evidence of a settlement after that until the rise of the medieval city, occupied from about 675.
In 834, Vikings attacked. Open to commerce, the unwalled city was also open to plunder. The Vikings were great traders themselves who would also kill and rob. Their principal trade was any available wealth along navigable water. They raided Dorestad at least once, maybe repeatedly, and by some accounts annually for a while.
And then the course of the river changed. These great rivers, huge movements of water across flat* delta sand and clay, are unstable. Their courses change over time, unless controlled. Indeed, the delta rivers' courses can change because they're controlled. Water-management may have caused the river to deposit silt in a different way - but in any case that did happen, and another distributary began to carry more water. The tendency continued and increased. The course of the diminished Kromme Rijn, indeed, began to shift. Dorestad was left stranded. Its river, the source of wealth, was gone.
If the Vikings raided again in 863, it was their last visit. The city had apparently declined enough that pillage became unattractive.
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* "Flat" — The elevation of Nijmegen is 8 meters (26 feet) above average sea-level at the average surface-level of the River Waal (just after it splits from the Rhine, just inside the Dutch border.) The sea is 140 kilometers (87 miles) westward. The mighty Rhine — in its various paths and by various names — crosses that much land, dropping by that little.
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