How different were they to the popular image of bookish, reclusive scholars?
Theres no primary evidence of any detail. However I feel your question is based on presumptive reasoning, as indeed you detail in your next question. Norse raiding parties would have been made up of farmers/fishermen who had a proclivity for casual warfare and had acquired a mixture of tools to carry it out. They may have been good at it but they werent super-warriors as modern fiction and (now) The 'History' Channel suggests.
The monks themselves were born from farmers/fishermen and at some time entered the priesthood, or more likely as lay brothers (and not technically clerics). Manual labour in the monastary grounds would be common place. So many of them would have fitter and more work-hardened than people today. They may not have been of martial bent and have all the tools of the trade, but neither were they soft. They wouldnt have been as simplisticly the gentle bumbling 'Friar Tucks' of the media.