Harold Godwinson had just won one of the most decisive victories of 1066. The Viking army of Harald Hardrada had been shattered, his own brother Tostig was dead, and the threat from the north appeared to be over. But while Harold was still dealing with the aftermath of the battle, another invasion force was preparing to change England forever.
The Battle of Stamford Bridge, Peter Nicolai Arbo, 1870. Public domain. Via Wikimedia Commons.
Today I want to look at the Battle of Stamford Bridge, fought on the 25th of September 1066, because it was not simply a dramatic victory for Harold. It It was also a battle that may have left part of Harold’s army exhausted and battle-weary less than three weeks before he would face William of Normandy at Hastings.The crisis had begun when Harald Hardrada, King of Norway, invaded northern England with a large fleet. He was supported by Harold Godwinson’s own brother, Tostig, who had been exiled from England the previous year after losing his position as Earl of Northumbria. Tostig had turned against Harold and was now helping a foreign king challenge him for the English throne.
Hardrada was not a minor rival. He was one of the most experienced warriors in Europe, a man who had fought across Scandinavia, eastern Europe and the Byzantine world. His claim to England rested partly on earlier agreements involving Scandinavian rulers, and in September 1066 he arrived with a substantial invasion force.
On the 20th of September, Hardrada and Tostig defeated the northern English earls Edwin and Morcar at the Battle of Fulford, just outside York. York surrendered soon afterwards, and the invaders appeared to have secured a major foothold in the north.
Harold Godwinson was in the south of England when the news reached him. For much of the summer, he had been watching the Channel, expecting William of Normandy to invade. Instead, the first major attack came from the opposite direction.
Harold responded with remarkable speed.
He gathered his forces and marched north from London towards Yorkshire. Without modern transport, moving an army such a distance was a considerable undertaking. Men carried weapons, armour and supplies, while horses, carts and pack animals moved with them. Yet Harold appears to have covered roughly 180 to 200 miles in around a week.
Hardrada and Tostig were probably not expecting him so soon.
On the 25th of September, the Norwegian army was gathered near Stamford Bridge, east of York. According to later accounts, many of the Norwegians had left their armour at the ships. They were expecting hostages and provisions rather than the sudden arrival of Harold’s army.
Then Harold’s army appeared.
Harold is also said to have offered his brother Tostig the return of his earldom if he abandoned Hardrada. Tostig is said to have asked what Harold would give the Norwegian king. Harold supposedly replied that Hardrada could have “seven feet of English ground”, or as much more as he needed because he was taller than most men.
It is a famous story, although it comes from later Scandinavian sources and should not necessarily be treated as a word-for-word record of what was actually said. What we do know is that negotiations failed.
The battle that followed was ferocious.
One of the most famous stories describes a single Norwegian warrior defending the narrow bridge over the River Derwent, holding back the English army while the rest of Hardrada’s forces prepared for battle. According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, the warrior killed a number of Englishmen before one of Harold’s soldiers finally managed to get beneath the bridge and strike him from below.
Whether every detail happened exactly as later writers described it is impossible to know, but the story reflects just how fierce the fighting became.
Once the English crossed the bridge, the main battle began. Hardrada’s men formed a defensive shield wall, but Harold’s army repeatedly attacked. Hardrada himself was eventually killed, traditionally said to have been struck by an arrow in the throat.
Tostig continued the fight.
Reinforcements arrived from the Norwegian ships, led by Eystein Orre, but they had marched rapidly towards the battlefield and were already exhausted. Scandinavian tradition later remembered their desperate attack as “Orre’s Storm”.
It was not enough.
Tostig was killed and the remaining Norwegian army collapsed. The scale of the defeat appears to have been enormous. Later tradition claimed that the invasion fleet had arrived in hundreds of ships but that only a small fraction were required to carry the survivors home. The exact figures are uncertain, but there can be little doubt that Hardrada’s invasion had been decisively crushed.
Harold Godwinson had achieved something extraordinary. In only a matter of days he had marched an army across England, surprised one of the most feared warrior kings of the age and destroyed a major invasion force.
But the victory came at a terrible moment.
Just three days after Stamford Bridge, on the 28th of September 1066, William of Normandy landed at Pevensey on the Sussex coast.
Harold now faced the situation he had feared all summer. England had been invaded from the south, but his army was hundreds of miles away in Yorkshire after fighting one of the bloodiest battles of the year.
There was no long period to recover, reorganise or replace the men who had been killed and wounded. Harold had to turn around and march south again.
Less than three weeks after Stamford Bridge, he would stand on another battlefield near Hastings.
The victory at Stamford Bridge removed one claimant to the English throne, but it may also have weakened Harold at exactly the moment William needed him to be weakest. That is what makes the battle so important. Harold won brilliantly in the north, but the struggle for England was far from over.
Next, I want to follow William of Normandy as his fleet finally crossed the Channel and landed on the south coast of England.
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