In Our Time - The Battle of Stamford Bridge

Episode Date: June 2, 2011

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Battle of Stamford Bridge.In the first week of 1066 the English king, Edward the Confessor, died. A young nobleman, Harold Godwinson, claimed that Edward had nominated him his successor, and seized the throne. But he was not the only claimant: in France the powerful Duke of Normandy, William, believed that he was the rightful king, and prepared to invade England.As William amassed his forces on the other side of the Channel, however, an army led by the Norwegian king Harald Hardrada invaded from the North Sea. Harold quickly marched north and confronted the Norsemen, whose leaders included his own brother Tostig. The English won an emphatic victory; but barely three weeks later Harold was dead, killed at Hastings, and the Norman Conquest had begun.With: John HinesProfessor of Archaeology at Cardiff UniversityElizabeth RoweLecturer in Scandinavian History of the Viking Age at Clare Hall, University of CambridgeStephen BaxterReader in Medieval History at King's College LondonProducer: Thomas Morris.

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. Thanks for downloading the In Our Time podcast. For more details about In Our Time and for our terms of use, please go to BBC.co.com.uk forward slash radio 4. I hope you enjoy the programme. Hello, behind a car park in a picturesque village a few miles east of York is a diminutive obelisk, a monument to a bloody battle which took place 945 years ago.

A placated space informs visitors that the Battle of Stamford Bridge was fought here, or somewhere in the neighbourhood on September the 25th, 1066. Nobody knows exactly where the Battle of Stamford Bridge took place, but we do know that it was one of the most significant events of a year that changed Europe forever. It was a decisive victory for the Anglo-Saxon King Harold, who fought off a Viking invading force.

But even as his English soldiers were putting the Scandinavians to flight in the north, the French were invading the south coast. Within a few weeks, Harold was dead at Hastings, and the Norman conquest had begun. So what effect did Stamford Bridge have on the later events of 1066? And why did it take place at all? With me to discuss the Battle of Stamford Bridge are John Hines, Professor of Archaeology at Cardiff University,

Elizabeth Rowe, lecturer in Scandinavian History of the Viking Age at the University of Cambridge, and Stephen Baxter, reader in medieval history at King's College London. John Hines, at the beginning of 1066, England's king, was Edward the Confessor. How prosperous and stable was the world, the country at that time? If we can

imagine the point of view of an active and alert adult in, shall we say, the beginning of 1065 a year before all of the great events of 1066, I think somebody in that position could really have thought of the country as having

seen a period of stability and prosperity if those terms had been available to them. First of all, if we look at the situation economically, important, of course, to remember that agriculture was absolutely the foundation of any form of subsistence economy that they had at this time. We have records from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle in the 11th century that tell us when things were going very, very bad, bad we had, bad weathers, harvest, fail and so on, and it's perfectly clear that although something like that did happen early on in Edwards' reign,

they'd been through a good period and things were really looking quite well. We've also got very good records from the, interestingly, the doomsday accounts in 1086, 1087. They're always comparing the situation then with the situation in the time of Edward. And again, those give an impression of a very busy, a very active place in the countryside. It wasn't just agriculture, though. The towns were thriving relatively. We can see this through proxy evidence in the form of the foundation of churches. for instance in towns, a great rash of building of very major churches in towns in the middle of the 11th century.

Probably the most significant and outstanding example of all would be Edward the Confessor's own reconstruction of the old monastery on Thorny Islands, St Peter's, as what we now know of as Westminster Abbey. So things economically going very well in that way. politically though it would be quite easy to see that things were just about to go wrong the fault lines were emphatically there Edward died in January 1066 and he was childless was it felt at the time that he'd nominated a successor

well classically of course it depends who you ask in these things the Normans clearly felt that the succession to the kingship was promised to William, Duke of Normandy. This may have happened as early as the early 1050s, which was a period when Edward was attempting to establish himself more strongly against some of the rival warlords in England, in particular a family of Earl Godwin and his sons, the Godwin's sons.

And then again we're told, according to the Norman sources, at as late as 1064, Harold may have been Harold Godwold, may have been sent over to Normandy precisely to confirm this particular promise that William would succeed. Alternatively, though, there are English sources, no doubt, stemming from Harold himself, which give an alternative story that, effectively, on his deathbed, William asked Harold to look after his wife and to look after his country and that this was interpreted as in effect a nomination of how all this is successor to the Crown of England at that time. Elizabeth Rowe, for much of Israel and Edward faced the possibility of threats from abroad and threats from inside the kingdom.

Can you just give us one or two of the worse of these threats? Well, actually, England was relatively secure while Edward was alive. the major internal threat was that from the north of England, the earldom of Northumbria had traditionally not been a friend of Wessex and the South. And in fact, there was a rebellion of the north in 1065. And Tostig, who had been the Earl of Northumbria, was forced out, despite his being a very powerful earl and part of this very powerful son. of Earl Godwin. As regards the rest of Europe, though,

really there were very few threats because of Edward's family relationships to the Normans. His mother, Emma, was a Norman, and he had spent his exile from England in Normandy, so Normandy was full of his friends and relations. In France, King Philip was underage, certainly no threat to England there. Flanders supported England in part as a counterweight against their rivals in Normandy

and also Tostig, the Earl of Northumbria, who had been exiled by Edward, was married to the sister of Count Baldwin. So again, you see a situation much more of allies and supporters than of threats. Scotland, King Malcolm, had made peace with Edward and was Tostock's ally in Wales. The power of King Griffith had been crushed a few years earlier. The Vikings even hadn't been attacking. And so here we get to the area of Europe that could indeed pose a threat to England. But John just said that things were, in his opening statement, that things were about to blow, as it were, in England.

I had a feeling, maybe, please tell me that I'm wrong, you know an awful lot more on either, that there was a sense of warlords, not only in the north, and there was a sense of this being held together just under Edward the Confessor, partly because of his piety, perhaps, you tell me. I don't know if it, no, I wouldn't say that it was his piety, but in this part of the Middle Ages, it really was personal alliances that functioned as political ones. And one of the major forms that political alliances took was, were marriage alliances.

And so we see that Edward has been married to a daughter of Earl Godwin. And so therefore, as long as the Godwinsons were his relatives by marriage, they were going to support the king. They certainly had their disagreements between them. but as long as Edward was the king and he was married to their family, it was clearly in everybody's interests to support the king who was, after all, part of the Anglo-Saxon ruling dynasty, a family that had been in power for a very, very long time. But didn't the Godwinners oppose Edward?

Didn't they take him on? And didn't he exile them? That does it suggest to me we've got an easy-going country? You exile the most powerful family in England, and then they sail around Ireland and then they sail up the Thames with the fleet and insist they're taken back. It doesn't seem to be like calm waters. I don't know.

No, it's true. But every time that there is a rebellion of Godwin or his family, a reconciliation has to take place, in fact. So Godwin, I mean, probably you could trace the entire Norman claim to England from that period, maybe with all due respect to John, not in the 1050s, but in the 1040s when Earl Godwin himself was exile. And so it could be at that time that Edward was thinking about William as a possible ally, as a possible successor. But then we see in the 1050s it must have been clearer to the English that William of Normandy would not be an acceptable candidate to the rest of England.

And in fact, Edward the exile was brought back from Hungary. So you can see the king trying to find his own. English supporters. Stephen Baxter, can we talk a bit more about this Godwinner family, Harold Godwinson and Tostig, his elder brother, there were seven children. As has been indicated by Elizabeth, there were alliances throughout Europe,

clever alliances. Nevertheless, these two brothers, can you tell us something about them and why they were so powerful? Well, it really is all about their father, old Godwin, in the first instance. He'd been a henchmen of King Knut and had propelled really from nowhere, a Thaneley family from Sussex,

but had been propelled to power and became Earl of Wessex, the largest and most powerful earldom, in the 1020s. It was a time when England was being ruled by a Danish dynasty, and he was Godwinter married, one of Knut's kinswoman, and so married into the Royal Danish dynasty, and they had several children.

And really from the 1020s, until Godwinter died in 1053, this was the most powerful, Lord in England. And when Edward the confessor returned from exile in the 1040s, he didn't really have an independent regime and was heavily dependent upon Gobwinner to get things done. So Gobwin's family prospered and most of his sons got an eldom at some point in their career. And indeed Gobind's daughter, Edith, was married to Edward himself in 1045. That was the year, 1045 that Harold first acquired his eldom and his first appointment was.

East Anglia as it happens. But when Gobind had died in 1053, Harold was transferred to this rich eldom in Wessex, which spanned all the way from Cornwall to Kent and so on. And then Tostig was appointed to an aldem, surprisingly in Northumbria, in 1055. And that signalled a new direction for this family, which had until then been south-based and eastern base, but suddenly in 1055, Tostig were in the north was a new direction.

Was that deliberate expansionism, you think? Yes, this family was profoundly ambitious and wanted to acquire as much as it possibly could. But there was deep resentment, I think, in parts of England to this appointment. Resentment from a rival family of earls who had ruled in the Midlands, a place we call of Mercia. So the earls of Mercia were furious about this appointment. And a guy called Alfgar went ballistic,

and rebelled and brought in some Vikings from Ireland and a contingent from Wales to protest about this. But there was also a family in the north based at Bamber which was also half expecting to acquire this eldom. So there was bitter resentment. And insofar as there were divisions within England, yes, it was prosperous and united in a number of respects and therefore the envy of Europe.

But there were these, if you like, tectonic plates, these eldens, which when they rubbed and caused friction against them, there really could be seismic consequences. Would it be true to say that the idea of primogeniture wasn't firmly established then? Harold was not the oldest son, was he? No, that's right. But by 1053 he was the eldest surviving son.

The eldest son, a guy called Spain, had acquired an elton, but embarrassed himself and his family by having an affair with an abbess and was sent into exile in the 1040s and made his own comeback, but it never worked out for him and he died in 1051.

So, and we have been this family of these two brothers, one in the north, one in the south, you'd expect that this was a clever pincer movement by them. But in fact, they fell out spectacularly, didn't they? Yeah, that's right. And the cause of that was, or the trigger for that, was an almighty rebellion, which took place in Northumbera in 1065. We can piece together a variety of causes for this rebellion.

It appears that Tostig's governance of the North was heavy-handed, that he levied too much in taxation, that he tried to impose justice too heavily. There was probably also a general feeling that we don't want a southerner ruling us, thanks very much. but the key political mistake he made was trying to bump off some members of this House of Bamber and political murders are dangerous in the north and on the 3rd of October 1065 a big gang of Northumbria and Thanes burst into Tostick's Hall

killed 200 of his retainers, beheaded them beside the river roos and marched south demanding we went Tostig out and we want a new Earl, Morcar, the brother of the Earl of Mercia, as our leader instead. And they marched to Northampton. And it was there that Harold Goldwinson met them and said, okay, what are your demands? They were told them, they were told, Harold was told what the rebels wanted. And he now returned to King Edward and Tostig at a meeting at King's Council in Wilton. And this was a stormy meeting where Tostig accused Harold of having incited the rebel.

for his own gain, and Harold angrily denied this. But the problem was the only way these rebels were going to be confronted was if Harold mobilised an army. And having fallen out with Tostig at this meeting, he said, no, sorry. Returned to Oxford and said to the rebels, yes, okay, we'll have peace now. You, Morkar can have the Oldham of Northumbria, and Tostig will have to go into exile. And that's pretty much what happened.

Edward and Fess was furious, absolutely livid, and revealingly his biography says he was impotentia. He had no power, and Tostig was forced into exile. But how then, John Hines, with all this going on, and the King of Norway thinking that he had a right, as well as a lust to get hold of this crown for this rich plum England, how did it come about that soon after, or very, very soon after Edward died, Edward the governor-confessor died at the beginning of January in 1066,

Harold Goddinson was crowned in Westminster Abbey. The situation was quite simply that Harold was in the right place at the right time and quite knowingly and deliberately so. If Edward had been described as having gone into this state of absolute disability, his death, the signs were clear that his death was coming close. Harold's major rival in Edward's court was undoubtedly his brother Tostig. personally I'm inclined to believe what the earls of Mercia

and Northumbria now thought and that Harold probably was involved in getting his brother out of the way. There's plenty of previous history there with Harold that there was no great family love and when it came to just the real politic of the whole thing, the desire

for power would have been overwhelming so the situation is that in a certain sense as you said there's no primogeniture. The kingship of England at this point was elective in a way. Now, of course, that doesn't mean that the best candidates put their name forward and it was fairly debated and decided to be.

But it did mean that you had to be recognised by the great earls, by the great aristocratic leaders of the country as being king. Harold was able, on the day after Edward had died, he died on the eve of 12th night, on the feast itself, Edward was buried and Harold was crowned, having been recognised as king by the Witton, by the assembly of the nobles who were there, clearly prepared precisely for this eventuality. So the Witton had come together knowing that Edward was about to expire. They must have done, though probably not all of them, because it seems to be the case that after that Harold fairly rapidly set off to the north. he went up to York because no doubt there would have been further noble,

other members of the Witten, that he needed to get their recognition as well. Elizabeth Brough, what reaction was there to the swift takeover of the crown by Harold Godbenson? It was actually quite positive. He had widespread support in England. Partly, there is reason to think that he was nominated by Edward. The biotapestry, which after all is essentially a Norman production, actually shows Edward on his deathbed with his hand reaching out to the head of Harold Godwinson who's kneeling and Edward's confidants and advisors are around him. And it really looks as though there was a counsel at the death at the deathbed as to who should be the successor. So the fact that

Harold Godwinson truly appears to have been nominated by Edward definitely accounted for something, He had the support of the church. He had the support of the southern landholders. And also, he had made one of these political alliances by marriage to the earls of Northumbria and Mercia. He was the brother-in-law of Edwin and Morcar. So he had made an alliance with the earls of the north as well as the earls of the south. In addition, he was the brother-in-law of the king. And in the recent past, brothers-in-law had become king. in Anglo-Saxon England. He was an able military leader, a very astute politician, and also attacks were expected, possibly from Scandinavia, definitely from Normandy. The only other possible candidate was Edgar the Atheling, the teenage son of Edward the exile. And if you have a choice between a king of the true line of the Anglo-Saxons and an experience general, you would definitely pick the experience general in these circumstances. The only person to object to him was Tostig

and Tostig was in Flanders with his own in-laws. But Stephen Lexer Tostig wasn't going to give up, was it? So he came back with a force and tried to unseat his father. Can you tell briefly about the Tostick invasion? Sure. Well, he tried to do what

Gobwinner had done in 1052 which was to mobilize a fleet from Flanders, land in the Isle of White, drive it and sail it along the South Coast, collecting reinforcements. That plan had worked in 1052 and as you said earlier that fleet was sailed up the Thames

and forced Edward to give him his job back. I think Tostick was trying to achieve something similar and he'd do exactly the same thing, landed on the Isle of Wight and went to Sandwich which was the place where the fleet was often pulled together in this period. But at that point he heard news that Harold, his brother, had

mobilised the largest army which had ever been assembled in England and was marching it down to the south and Tostick reasonably enough got a bit scared at this point and started heading north instead. We know that he landed in Lincolnshire, in Lindsay, and sailed into the Humper, we're told Humble with 60 ships. But there seems to have been fighting

because Edwin and Morkar greeted him there with their own forces, and Tostig was forced to escape up to Scotland, we're told with just 12 of his ships left. So there had been some kind of conflict in Lincolnshire where the elves of Northumber and the Mercia had forced tostead out again.

So we've got Harold with the crown. He's assembled a big army. He fears invasions from the Norman still. He fears, there's word that something might be coming bad might be coming out of the state of Norway. His brother is still on the loose though and he's up in Scotland with Malcolm King of Scotland as it turns out waiting to ally himself

with the King of Norway turns up. Before we go on John Hines, can you just give lessons and myself a little sketch of Edward Confessor's character and Harold's character. So there's a transition here, a personal transition as well. There's a personal transition, but I think there's a chalk and cheese change in the character of the individuals that we're dealing with. Of course we can only look at them as historical figures.

What they were really like is something that's always going to be beyond us. I would actually describe Edward as not more than a puppet king for about the last 15. years of his reign, almost a conspiracy by these earls to keep this pious figure on the throne, such as it were, and then they could do what they liked under that particular panoply. In the case of Harold, one very good way of thinking of this is this is literally the era of Macbeth. This Earl Seward of Northumbria deposed Macbeth and put Malcolm onto the throne, and Shakespeare's play does give us a very good idea. idea of the ruthless nature of those warlords, their desire for power, their fixation on

obtaining power. Now, Harold seems to be motivated in that way all the time. He seems restless, certainly bold, a very courageous man, highly experienced, as Elizabeth said, in military ways. He traveled an awful lot. A very great deal of ambition in him as well. Now, I think with that, we look at the events that have been described in 1065 too, there's something that is a little bit more personal that might come out, which comes out as a very interesting question in this respect. And that is, to what degree did he respond to the events in 1065? Was he just opportunistic?

Was he cunning? I think those are very important questions. They've become particularly important when we look at the way he responded to 1066 and Williams Landing. Elizabeth Rowe, we've got the Norwegian king, Harold Hadrada, the hard driver, who also claimed to be king of Denmark, and he made preparations to invade. Can you give us some idea of the size of the invasion?

Yes. We don't have a truly reliable count of the ships that he brought, but the estimates range from about to 200 to close to 1,000, but probably 250, 300 ships are about the right number. And these would be his long ships, his warships, There also would have been hundreds and hundreds of much smaller boats to carry supplies and equipment and horses and things like that. And so these ships would have been summoned from all across Norway. All the chieftains and landowners and magnates had an obligation to provide ships and men for a certain part of the year.

And so it wasn't anything like a standing army or a standing navy, but the king could command the resources of his kingdom to assemble a navy. And also he had considerable forces of his own. He had served as a general in the Vranjian Guard under the Emperor of Constantinople and had a body of men who had traveled with him from Scandinavia through Russia into Constantinople. And so the same small army accompanied him back to Scandinavia. So he had considerable personal resources. And then in addition to his own resources, the resources of Norway, he also had the tributary areas of Orkney, for example, and Scandinavian Scotland in Ketanus,

and also allies in the Northern Isles and the Isle of Man. All these people were partly Scandinavian, entirely Scandinavian, had alliances, obligations, connections, and they all joined with him for the invasion of England. And so did Toste, although he didn't bring much to the table, he brought enough to make some sort of difference on hope. Stephen Baxter, so around late August, we're 1066, we're getting to Stamford Bridge.

The Norwegian forces landed on English soil, and then they swept up the Humber. Can you tell us what the most significant first? There was the first of the battles of 1066 on English soil then, wasn't that? Yeah, and they sail up the Humber. Terrifying sight, 2, 3, 400 major warships slipping up the Humber, and they land at a place called Rikal, which is a few miles south of,

it's on the use, a few miles south of York. And the first confrontation happens at a place called Falford Gate, which is now a suburb of York. And there Edwin and Morkar have a full-scale pitch battle against Harold Hardrada and Tostig's forces. We know very little about the course of the events, except that it was a tremendous victory for the Norwegians,

that Edwin and Morka were not, however, killed and that hostages were given to Harold and Tostig after the event. Now, hostages become very important in this story for what's coming next, because immediately after the battle at Gate Fullfoot, 150 hostages from York were given to Harold, Hardrada, but further hostages were promised from the rest of the Shire. In a few days' time, we'll meet a place called Stadford, bridge and we'll give you some more hostages.

So we've got a situation where Harold and Tostig are expecting English to turn up at a particular place a few days later. This battle took place on the 20th of September. And Harold had

heard the news of the Norwegian invasion and was marching north. So we've got the Norwegians in. They've won one battle and obviously a very tough lot. Romed across Russia and Overtou. into his ante-ma. Now, Harold heard this news,

and he had an army assembled, as I understand it, John Hines, waiting for the Normans, who were waiting for the wind to change. Yes, yes, yes, indeed. And then having heard that, he turned, and he did, from all your notes, you all think it was a very strong forced march, the 185 miles. He took this army up country. Well, I think we must be very careful,

and this is highly relevant to how, we understand the Battle of Hastings as well and the relationship between the two, the way in which the English king could draw his forces together. It certainly wasn't the case that he had just one army and they followed him around everywhere that you went. The army was brought together by a levy of men from the hundreds and from the shires, largely led by the local landowners, the Thanes of that time. And one thing that we do know about from the Battle of Stamford Bridge

where we are able to identify particularly English casualties there is that it was in fact very much the men of Morcar and Edwin from Mercia and Northumbria who were making up the army rather than the same army that Harold had had down in the south all of the time. How many did you take half an army up there? Well, he would have, he would have, what, the people who would have stayed with him, would have the people who were known as his house carls. This was his personal troops, as Elizabeth has already talked about, Harold Hardrather, in Norway would have had these close troops.

They were professional soldiers, they went with him absolutely wherever he would go to fight a battle. To make up the rest of the army, however, you would be drawing in a levy, and you could draw that in from different places. And for, since the time of Al-Rour. offered the practice had been that you as far as possible you weren't putting all of your forces. So you're collecting your forces as you go up country?

Calling them in. You're calling them in. There are muster points. Messages go out. Stephen Baxter. We just know the identity of fact of two people from the Doomsday Survey who fought at Stanford Bridge and one was from Worcestershire and the other was from Essex.

So I'm not sure about what that tells us but it does tell us that individuals in two different parts of the country. As to the logistics of getting to the north, one thing which is almost never written or considered in the extensive literature on this subject is whether ships were used. And we do know that Harold sailed around, took his fleet back to London before going north. And it's perfectly possible, actually, that he transported his fleet. Yes. Yeah, though there is a point that what Harold had been doing all summer was sitting in the Solent with his fleet expecting William to come in.

There were basically two points where the English fleet would muster, either in the Wonsom Channel sandwich, or in the soul to control. I've got to get the Stamford Bridge. We're told that he lost a lot of his ships. Yeah, fine. He goes north. They get the Stamford Bridge and what happens? Right, Stephen, can we brisk along here? Sure.

It's the 24th of September. Harold reached Tadcuster, it's about nine miles south of York. He's desperate to Chorre and achieve surprise. The next morning he slips through York itself and marches towards Stanford Bridge. Where I think he's been told, by the English that the Norwegians are expecting hostages.

So he's not expecting Harold to come with an army, they're expecting the English to turn up with hostages, and that's key to his strategy. He's probably helped by the terrain. There's a bluff at a place called Helmsley, which would conceal the view from York. And from the evidence we have, the contemporary evidence is a handful of sentences

in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which say that he descended upon Harold, hard rada by surprise. The fighting was hard, but the English were victorious. But surprise seems to be a key to this. Elizabeth Roe, what do the

Scandinavian sources, such as they are, say about, I mean, I respect your hesitations, because you keep saying, you know, look, we don't quite know this, and there aren't enough resources for that, and some of its scaldic poetry anyway, but what would does the Scandinavian say? By the time we get to the

most detailed sources, we're talking about a saga that was written not even in Norway but in Iceland in the early 13th century Snorri Sturtlesen's saga of Harold Hardrada in his haemskringglob and it seems clear

by looking at Snorri's sources which were earlier sagas of the histories of the kings of Norway that there was a tradition that had developed about the Battle of Stamford and the events leading up to it. In some ways the

sagas all seem to be saying the same thing because they're all relying on each other. But we do hear that Tostig, for example, had gone first to Denmark and then to Norway to try to gain allies, really, in order to help him win his earldom back. But also, although Scaldic poetry can be a very dubious source of information about these battles, Harold himself was a poet, had poets with him. these poets were like the journalists of the time and partly what did they say? Well, they talk in more detail

about the Battle of Fulford Gate because we have some... We want to serially, we want to concentrate on Santer Bridge. We really got to get there. But at Stamter Bridge, what happened that we know of? If there's lots, we don't know about, say that, let's move on. But what do we know happened happened?

We do seem to know that the Norwegians had left all their armor and most of their weapons at their ships. That's sure, is it? Yes, the poems by King Harold himself and also by the other poets say that they were without their armor. This was clearly a major advantage for the English.

Also, it appears that the Norwegian army felt betrayed by having been led into England, that they felt that they had been misled. They had been promised easy pickings by the king, presumably led on by Tostig, and instead they found themselves with this enormous English army cutting them to pieces. John Hines, can you briefly give us,

the final outcome was that Harold's army won. Have we any idea of the casualties? Well, it was a very conclusive victory for Harold and his army. Sources tell us that the casualties were very major. We've got to think of a battle here that's going to involve thousands of men on either side. But there were some of the Norwegian side who got away. We know that, for instance, Harold had Rado was killed.

He was killed. Tostick was killed. killed, yes, yes, but Harold's son, Olaf, her, returned to Norway and became King of Norway there, were even told that he was actually given free passage, you know, given safe passage out of the country by Harold.

But there were serious casualties, and what about the major casualties on the Norwegian side? What I'm trying to get out, Stephen News, were you any idea of the casualties on the English side? Not that could be quantified. The one thing that can be quantified is that we're told

that Olaf and Norwegians limped home with 24 ships. We've been told that there's an armada of two to 500 ships came up the U's and they went home with 24 so I mean this is the scale of the slaughter on the Norwegian side. And meanwhile

maybe this is going to be content of what you said but just to move on immediately it does seem to be immediately probably Harold heard that the wind had changed William Duke of Normandy had sailed across and he was digging in waiting for a

battle at battle. Yes. Well, he heard that he had landed in the south. It seems to be Harold's decision to fight at battle. Yeah. The chronology is that William lands on the 28th. Stanford Bridges happened on

the 25th. Three days later, William lands in pavency. How long does a message take to get to the north? One, two, three days. Anyway, by 1,000 of October, Harold suddenly given the news. I think we're to imagine, you know, that famous image of President Bush being told about 9-11 happening, you know, something like,

Harold's banqueting in York enjoying his... And oh my God, we've just beaten the Vikings. This is extraordinary, but now we've got a place William as well. And he turned and went south. And again, there's dispute. Did he take the ships and sail south? Did he march south? He got south very quickly with something of his army.

Now this is where the significance of Stamford Bridge begins to be important. What sort of army did he take back and had it been depleted fatally? And this is what I'd like to sort of convey. I'm quite certain not. I mean, even with the high casualties at the Battle of Stamford Bridge, most of the real slaughter will take place when one army has broken and there is a route and they are just being cut down. So the fact that there are massive Norwegian casualties

doesn't mean there would be truly massive English casualties too. We do know, as Stephen has already said, that there were some. It's also the case that Harold could collect armies from other, could replenish his men from other shires as he moved down to the south. It would have been that half-trop, the House Carls who were close to him, who really had to go with him.

Is that the general view around the table? Well, there's one striking omission in all the accounts we have of fighting after, for Gait, and that is that Edwin and Morkar, leaders of Mercier and of Northumbria, are not mentioned again. And, well, these are the leaders of, you know, pretty much a half of the kingdom.

And also, as we can reconstruct... So what does that signify to you? Well, it signals to me the real possibility that the rivalry between these two families, which is an old rivalry and a considerable amount of hatred between them, was still in play, that the marriage alliance with their sister

and Harold was papering over the cracks and that they failed to cohere. So they wouldn't be supporting Harold on his move south? Is that what you're suggesting? All of the evidence we have from Doomsday and other sources about participants, our Hastings, show that we don't have any clear evidence of Northumbrians or Mercians fighting. Elizabeth. There could also be tactical considerations.

The forces of Edwin and Worker were decisively defeated at Folford Gate and the Scaldic poems talk about the Norwegians being able to walk across the bog on the bodies of the dead people. So it could have been that their own forces had been seriously depleted. Also, there were 300 or more ships on the U's blocking up any ships that Morkar and Edwin would have had a Tadcaster. And so it seems as though they might have had some difficulties getting south in any case. So, John, let's talk of Harold arrived south. He has to cross. He has to cross a tower bridge,

doesn't he? Yeah, across the London Bridge. And he decides, the options are that he can stay in London, say to William, starve him out in winter and say, come here. Or he can wait a bit more, rest of it, or he can go for it and he went for it.

Have you any, have you, from the records, which I know have been sparse, I know I've been pushing it a bit, but never mind. Why he did what he did? We can only guess, but this is comes back to when I was... I mentioned before this question, is he opportunistic? Is he cunning?

Did he think, well, I managed to take Harold Hadrada up in Norway by surprise. Maybe I can do the same with William. Was morale high after a resounding victory up in Yorkshire? It is a genuine puzzle why he goes and takes William on. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is telling us consistently he wasn't quite ready for it. In some ways, William took him by surprise. battle, but I think a degree of impetuosity, coupled with the blood being up, the sense of being on a role, could well explain what Harold was doing at that time.

I find that very persuasive. To add to that, there's the extreme annoyance. William had landed in Sussex in Harold Gobwinson's heartland, and the dishonour caused by this ravaging army was a consideration. But here's one further point about Sussex. being Harold's heartland. He knew the terrain. And I think he had a sense of the best possible place to fight at an advantageous point. And one motivation for heading off on the 12th of October, 13th of October 1066 as he went south, that fateful decision was perhaps my best chances to fight him there. Another thing to keep in mind is that William having landed really needed to stay near his ships. I mean, just as Harold Hardrada brought his ships up the river, stopped short

of York, had his fighting nearer to the ships rather than in York itself. So William II needed to leave an escape route in case things should turn against him. So really, having landed, he could not seriously make major advances. So can we just encapsulate, if it's possible now, wow, I didn't realize we were that near the end. Did Stamford bridge have a decisive influence then, John? Well, it would be very easy to say whatever importance it had. It was all over in 15 days by the time you got to the Battle

of Hastings. The way I would sum it up is that I think it did but actually not so much in England more internationally in diverting Norwegian ambitions elsewhere. We've got to go. Thanks for listening. Thank you very much. Next week the origins of infectious diseases.

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