The Battle of Stamford Bridge

Background

Edward the Confessor died in January 1066 and Harold Godwinson, the most powerful earl in England, was crowned the next day. Two rivals prepared to take the throne from him. Duke William of Normandy claimed Edward had promised it to him, and in Norway King Harald Sigurdsson, called Hardrada, the "hard ruler," pressed an older claim through a treaty between earlier kings. Harald had spent his youth as a captain of the Varangian Guard in Constantinople and had fought for thirty years. Harold's own brother Tostig, driven out of his earldom of Northumbria the year before, joined the Norwegian king. In September Harald sailed with a fleet the chronicles put at about 300 ships, perhaps 9,000 men, gathered Tostig's followers and landed on the Ouse south of York. On 20 September at Fulford he destroyed the army of the northern earls Edwin and Morcar, and York agreed to surrender and give hostages.

Harold was in the south waiting for William. When news of the landing reached him he marched his housecarls north, calling out the fyrd as he went, and covered the roughly 185 miles to Yorkshire in about five days.

The Battle

The Norwegians had arranged to collect the York hostages at Stamford Bridge, where the road crossed the River Derwent some seven miles east of the city. On the morning of 25 September Harald and Tostig went there with about two thirds of the army. It was a hot day, and the sagas say the men left their mail shirts at the ships at Riccall, ten miles away, taking only helmets, shields, spears and swords. Harold's army came through York and down the road from the west, and the Norwegians first saw it as a cloud of dust and a glitter of weapons, "like a field of broken ice."

Harald sent riders to Riccall for the rest of his men and drew up on the east bank. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle adds that a single Norwegian held the bridge with an axe against the whole English army until a man floated under it in a barrel and speared him from below. The English then crossed and attacked the Norwegian shield ring. The fighting lasted most of the day. Harald, in the sagas, fought in front of his banner "Land-Waster" without armor and was killed by an arrow in the throat. Tostig took up the banner and refused Harold's offer of peace, and the line broke around him. Late in the day Eystein Orri arrived from the ships with the reserve, in full mail after running ten miles in the heat, and his charge, remembered as "Orri's storm," briefly drove the English back before it too collapsed. Eystein was killed, and the survivors fled to the ships with the English in pursuit.

Weapons

Both armies fought on foot in the shield wall, the Norwegians behind the Viking Round Shield and the English behind round and kite shields. The weapon of the line was the Viking Spear, and the heavy blow came from the Dane Axe, a two-handed weapon carried by Harold's housecarls and by the Norwegian who held the bridge. The rank and file also had the one-handed Viking Battle Axe and the single-edged Seax. Chieftains and housecarls carried swords of the Ulfberht Sword type. The decisive difference was armor. Harold's professional troops wore the Mail Hauberk; most of the Norwegians had left theirs behind, and the sagas blame the disaster on it as much as on the surprise.

Aftermath

Harald Hardrada and Tostig were dead, and the Norwegian losses were so heavy that, by the chronicle's count, the survivors needed only 24 of the 300 ships to sail home under Harald's son Olaf, who swore peace with Harold. The battle is often taken as the end of the Viking age in England. Harold had no time to enjoy it. William landed at Pevensey on 28 September, three days after the battle, and Harold turned his tired army south. On 14 October he was killed at the Battle of Hastings, and the Norman Conquest that followed changed England for good. Historians still argue over how much the march north and the losses at Stamford Bridge weakened the English at Hastings, but the two battles, fought nineteen days apart, are inseparable.

On Screen

The battle has had little screen time beside Hastings. The two-part Channel 4 drama 1066: The Battle for Middle Earth (2009), written by Peter Harness and told from the point of view of ordinary fyrdmen, is the main dramatization and covers Fulford, Stamford Bridge and Hastings in turn. Hardrada's death and the lone axeman on the bridge are staples of documentary reconstructions, and the march from London is a set piece in most television histories of the year 1066.