Real Vikings - 10. 1066 and the Last Vikings

Episode Date: May 11, 2026

A Varangian warrior, Harald Hardrada, lays claim to the throne of England. In Normandy, Duke William sets out his case for seizing the disputed crown. It will spell disaster for Harold Godwinson, the sitting ruler of the Anglo-Saxon realm. The year 1066 will usher in the ultimate Norse showdown, bringing down the curtain on the Viking Age…A Noiser podcast production. Narrated by Iain Glen.Featuring Eleanor Barraclough, Stefan Brink, Lars Brownworth, William Fitzhugh, Levi Roach, Elizabeth Rowe, Pragya Vohra, Davide Zori.Written & produced by Jeff Dawson | Executive Producer: Joel Duddell | Research by Emmie Rose Price-Goodfellow | Fact check by Grant Jones | Sound Supervisor: Tom Pink | Sound design by Jacob Booth | Additional editing by Anisha Deva | Compositions by Oliver Baines, Dorry Macaulay, Tom Pink | Mix & mastering: Cian Ryan-Morgan | Recording Engineer: Tom Rouse at Jungle Studios.Thanks for listening to Real Vikings. Head to noiser.com, home of the Noiser podcast network, to discover your next immersive history podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It's summer, 1038, were in Sicily beneath the city walls of Syracuse. Amid the stifling heat and incessant flies, a band of warriors sneaks up, climbing round the rocks and scrub, swords and shields at the ready. They are members of an elite fighting unit, the Varangian Guard, the finest shot troops in the known world, personal hit squad of the Byzantine Emperor Michael VIII. And they are poised to storm the citadel of Sicily's Muslim emir, dislodging the unsuspecting Saracens from their stronghold in the middle of the Mediterranean. Command of the Varangians goes to an immense figure, not just by reputation but in literal stature, some say seven feet tall.

Hailing from far away Norway, he is the great-great-grandson of the legendary Viking king, Harold Fairhair. Not that his men know it, for this soldier has never revealed his true identity. To them, he is Harold Sigurdsen, though history will record him by his nickname, Harold Hadrada. The presence of Norsemen in the Mediterranean is not a recent development, as we know from previous episodes. But neither the pagan Vikings of old nor the Christian ones of new have been able to establish a toehold in the Islam. caliphate. Until now. The word hadrada means hard ruler, a reputation Harold won't acquire till much later. But with the surfeit of Harold's in this episode, be warned, it's a useful means of distinguishing him. He will acquire other epithets, the thunderbolt of the north, for instance,

though some prefer another more poignant one, the last Viking. For Harold Hadrada, the though he doesn't know it yet, is going to have a significant role in a watershed moment in history, far from the bit part that is often assigned. That year will be 1066, and it will mark arguably the end of the Viking Age. I'm Ian Glenn, and from the Noyser Podcast Network, this is part 10, the final chapter of real Vikings. By the mid-11th century, as we had left it in the previous episode, England is effectively a Scandinavian realm. It has had two recent Danish kings, Sven Falkbeard and Canute. Before that came the Dane law, with half of England assigned as a de facto Norse province.

English society has been heavily influenced as a consequence. Its people and its culture, especially in the north, are a fusion. Anglo-Norse. Under Canute, England has become the jewel in the crown of a vast North Sea Empire, the most populous and wealthiest of his domains. Dr. Pragyavora In becoming King of England, Knut forms a link between Scandinavia and England, and it's a formal political, dynastic link that hasn't existed before. We've had cultural ties before we've had migration and assimilation, but this is the kind of knitting together of dynasties that we haven't seen.

The downside for Canute is that as king of England, Denmark and Norway, he's had to spread himself thin. For a while, Canute delegates rule of Norway to his common-law English wife, Elfkifu. She had governed alongside their son, another Sven. Meanwhile, Arthur Canute, from the King's official marriage to Queen Emma, is regent of Denmark. It has left things balanced precariously with regard to the empire's succession. Emma, if you recall, is now Queen of England for a second time. She's been married previously to the late Anglo-Saxon King Ethelred.

The two sons they had together are currently holed up in Emma's native Normandy out of harm's way. So Emma herself is of Scandinavian extraction and married to both an Anglo-Saxon king of England as well as a Scandinavian king of England. And so her offspring, who are part of all of the political goings-on, are also partly English and partly Scandinavian. Throw in the exiled sons of the deposed English king, Edmund Harnside, who have ended up in Hungary and things in England. going to get messy, not least because there is another ambitious player on the scene. Earl Godwin of Wessex, an Englishman who has enhanced his credentials through marriage to a Danish

noblewoman, a descendant of Sven Falkbeard. One of the things that Canute does is he reorganises the way in which England itself is carved out. So one of the biggest and most powerful lords that is created is Godwin. He is from an unknown family before Canute raises him to power, and Godwin becomes one of Canute's most important and most trusted advisors. In the king's frequent absences, it's Godwin is right-hand man who effectively runs the country. With Godwin's own sons put in charge of the key earldoms, he has turned governance of England into a family business. When Canute dies in November 1035, age 41, his eldest sons are the obvious candidates to replace him. But which one?

Elf Gafu's firstborn, Sven, has died in battle, so next in line, Harold steps forward. With the backing of the Northern Earls, Harold's case is strong. Though with Emma the official queen, it is her son, Arthur Canute, who is the choice of the southern Wessex establishment. He is the one who prevails. Only when it comes to the appointed hour, Arthur Canute is stuck in Denmark, putting down a Norwegian uprising. It is here, as is assumed, that Harold acquires his nickname Harold Harefoot. In Arthur Canute's absence, he legs it to Winchester. to claim the throne for himself.

Fearing a power vacuum, the Council of Elders, the Wittan, has little choice but to go along with him. And so, Harold Harefoot, half Danish, half Saxon, becomes King Harold I of England. Or does he? Notably, when anointed by the Archbishop of Canterbury, none of the official regalia, the crown, the sceptre, is used. A suggestion that he is merely a caretaker. There was time wears on, and with Arthur Canute still a no-show, the tougher it becomes for Harefut's opponents to oust him. Chief among those enemies, the Machiavellian queen Emma. She's clearly involved in 11th century English politics.

She's also one of the most visually represented early medieval queens. So the fact that she shows up as much as she does reflects just how powerful and important she was. Emma is a formidable character. With Arthur Canute out of the picture, Emma is still determined to maintain her family's power. So, she switches her allegiance back to her earliest sons with Ethelred, a surprise move given that she had effectively disowned them.

In response to her invitation, a letter purportedly bearing her seal, Princess Edward and Alfred, now of age, duly set sail from Normandy, ready to advance their claim. They choose to arrive separately. With the political situation on a knife-etch, they have good cause. Sensing he is about to walk into a trap, Edward, the oldest, hangs a U-turn at Southampton and heads straight back across the channel.

His brother Alfred is not so lucky. Ambushed on the south coast by Earl Godwin's men, He is dragged away to have his eyes put out with red-hot pokers. There is a convention that a blind man cannot be king, though he will die days later from his injuries. With Emma fleeing to Flanders, her part in proceedings never entirely clear, Harold Harefoot's reign seems secure.

But it will be a brief tenure. After four years, he dies unexpectedly, aged just 24. Arthur Canute is a contender, one. Once again, the only way Arthur Canute can leave to take up the kingship of England is to make a lasting peace in Scandinavia. It comes by way of a pact with his rival, King Magnus of Norway. In a winner takes all arrangement, the proposed deal goes like this. Arthur Canute and Magnus will live in peaceful coexistence, but should either king die, the other

will inherit the sum total of their realms. To cross the North Sea, Arthur Canute becomes the third official member of the Yelling dynasty to be king of all England and Denmark. Disgusted at Harold Harefoot's attack on his half-brother Alfred, his first act is to have Herford's body dug up, decapitated, and thrown in the sewage of the Thames. It will be recovered later by some fishermen, who see to its reburial in the Church of St. Clement on Fleet Street, henceforth known as St. Clement Danes. Deploying the defence that he was just following orders in the attack on Alfred,

Earl Godwin is fortunate to escape a similar fate. But in another twist, Arthur Canute's reign proves even shorter than his predecessors. Just two years later, in Lambeth, while giving a speech at a wedding, he suddenly drops dead, possibly from a stroke. There is a suggestion Arthur Canute knew his days were numbered. childless he had been making contingency plans. It is the surviving half-brother across the channel who is his nominated successor,

and thus Edward, son of Ethelred, after 25 years in Normandy, is recalled to become King of England. The House of Wessex is back, Scandinavian rule is over. There has been some reinvention of Edward, painted as a pious man he will later be canonised, dubbed the Confessor. This image will be enhanced by his commissioning of a new cathedral, an abbey to the west of the city of London,

a West Minster. But if England thinks it as a bona fide English king again, that's also overstating the case. With a half-Norman half-Danish mother in Emma, and having spent most of his life in Normandy, the French-speaking Edouard is in reality another outsider. With Earl Godwin having killed his brother most brutally, he would imagine clemency to be in short supply. But Godwin is the Teflon Don. Without him, the king is powerless.

Further insinuating himself into the royal household, Godwin foists upon Edward a bride, his very own daughter, Edith. It is a smart move. Godwin is now the king's father-in-law, directly plugged into the the royal bloodline for when the king has a son. Only Edward never does. The growing tension will culminate in a Godwin-led insurrection, with Saxon nobles rejecting Edwards' perceived normalization of the English church. It will lead, in 1051, to Godwin's banishment from the kingdom, along with his sons. Though after a year sailing up and down the channel, raiding the English coast, the boys will be back.

no one dares resist. Professor Levi Roach And in the end we end up with kind of a herald as the power behind the throne and Edward, to my mind, pretty much put in his place as a monarch. No matter. In their absence, King Edward has been scheming, both to ensure the royal succession and to lock the Godwins out. In 1051, during the Godwin's exile,

Edward is visited by a relative from back home. A 21-year-old first cousin once removed, another of Emma's bloodline, and Edward is said to have pledged the crown to him. That boy's name is William. With his father and mother unmarried, he is nicknamed, unflatteringly, The Bastard. But it makes little difference to his rank. Since the age of seven, William the Bastard has been Duke of Nor. Normandy, and there is a certain stubbornness about him, enough to suggest that he's not going to let this proposal slide.

For William is the great, great, great grandson of the famous Viking leader, Rollo. It's 1064. We're on a desolate foreign shore. An English nobleman has washed up on the rocks. His ship has gone down with all hands. Arrested by soldiers, the man is informed that the place where he is beached is Normandy. And what business did he end up here? Fearing he might be an enemy spy, he is dragged off to court where he must plead his credentials before Duke William. At William's court, the man reveals that he was on his way to Scandinavia to conduct some diplomatic business on behalf of the English crown, for he is no mere sailor.

Since the death of his father in 1054, he has taken over the family firm. He is now Earl of Wessex. None other than Harold Godwinson, son of Godwin. And he can also count on royal connections. His sister is Queen of England. Apologising for the heavy-handedness, William explains that he has to be careful. Normandy has been riven by power struggles. But William is a good soldier and a clever leader it would say.

seem. Slowly, he has united his realm. Come stay a while, William offers to Harold. He will show him. With just six years age difference between them, Harold is 42, William 36, the two men hit it off. In fact, they get on so well that Earl Godwinson is permitted to accompany William in a campaign against the Uppertie Bretons. In return for William's generosity through this lengthy stay, Harold has a parting gift for his host. Well, what exactly happens here depends on what you read. According to Norman sources, though countered by the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Harold endorses Williams' claim to the English throne.

He swears it upon holy relics, an oath before God. Edward the Confessor falls into a coma and dies on January 2, 1066. With no successor named officially, the contenders again start jostling. William of Normandy, who now claims to have been promised the English crown not once, but twice, the Saxon noble Edgar, Edgar the Aetheling, or eligible prince, grandson of Edmund Ironside. The dying king intriguingly had whisked him back from Hungary. And now, in a surprise move, a third candidate day. declares, Harold Godwinson himself.

Throwing a spanner in everyone's works, Godwinson insists that on his deathbed, the king, his brother-in-law, had revoked all previous pledges and offered the throne to him. Ah, and there's someone else. Slogging his way up a hillside in Sicily, where we left him at the beginning of this episode, Harold Hadrada cannot possibly envisage the way things are going to pan out. but he is a man for whom life is one big adventure.

Born in 1015 in rural Norway, he had fought as a teenager alongside half-brother Olaf the Stout, the ex-king of Norway, the future patron saint, seeking to reclaim his crown. Olaf, by the way, as a warlord in Knut's army, was the one who burnt down London Bridge.

Things did not go well initially, but it was never going to death. end Harold's ego. Lars Brownworth. He's present with his half-brother the Battle of Sticklis Ladd when King Olaf is killed. He's hiding under a group of corpses as the enemy soldiers are kind of dispatching the wounded.

He drags himself out of there, composes a poem saying, I'll be back essentially, my name will be great. The Viking Terminator will seek his fortune in the east. He heads across the Baltic to Staraya Ladoga, the bustling gateway to the Russian interior. Travelling down the waterways, Hadrada will pitch up in the territory of the Keevan Rus and become a guest at the palace of King Yaroslav. He is betrothed in a political engagement to the king's daughter, Elisif.

He's assured of her hand once she comes of age, but only if he can prove himself both in battle and in wealth. And thus, Harold followed. the well-worn path of a Viking warrior errant, heading for the golden domes of Constantinople. There he will go incognito and become a soldier of fortune, working his way, on Merit, into the Varangian Guard. It will take Harold Hadrada 15 years to amass sufficient riches, during which time he will fight battles against nomads in Central Asia. Take on Arab corsairs in the Aegean. In addition to his campaigning in Sicily. In the Middle East, Harold will visit Jerusalem. He will stand guard over the

holy sepulchre and swim in the River Jordan. He goes to Sicily, to North Africa, Asia Minor, he takes a bath in one of the fountains of Jerusalem. He then sails west and supposedly sees Greenland. He's baptized in Rouen. With something of a rock star reputation, there are also plenty of groupies. An affair with a married by Zanthai noblewoman, possibly even the empress herself, will see him thrown in prison, followed by a dramatic escape and a return to Kiev. There, with his Kievan princess now legitimate and with Harold toting battle scars alongside bags of gold, he can formally take her hand. Professor Stefan Brink. So a Viking man equaled a warrior and no one epitomizes this ethos more than Harold Hardrada.

When he left Constantinople, he had assembled a huge fortune. You needed this kind of wealth to be able to build up your power base. Dr. Eleanor Baraklough. Harold often gets pinned up as a poster child for the end of the Viking Age. And when we think of the typical characteristics of the Viking Age, So things like raiding and warfare and ruins and travel and trade and scoldic verse and international settlement. Harold has all of this. He's a really incredible character.

Though no sooner has he reappeared in Kiev, then word reaches him that Norway is in turmoil. Canute has died. Adrada's half-English nephew Magnus, son of Olaf, is the new Norwegian king. but the situation would seem to be fluid, and so Harold Hadrada boards his long ship, the serpent, and heads north. For Magnus, his uncle's return is welcome. Harold brings charisma, military experience, and much-needed cash, so much so that he's willing to share the crown with him.

So when typical fashion, Magnus falls ill and dies. In 1047, Harold Hadrada becomes the outright king of Norway. Ruling as Harold III, it's an anti-climax after a decade and a half of swashbuckling. Harold compensates by taking it out on his citizens. It is where he gets the nickname Hard Ruler. Fifty years old now, he yearns for just one final adventure, one last hurrah. And it is in January 1066 with the arrival of a ship from the West that the opportunity presents itself. News that English monarch Edward has died does not seem of immediate importance, nor the fact that a certain Earl Harold Godwinson has cajoled the Saxon nobles into appointing him the new king of England.

More intriguing is the fact that this news is delivered by an emissary of one Tostig Godwinson, the new king's very own brother. The siblings have fallen out in spectacular fashion. Tostig has been deposed as the Earl of Northumbria. Having failed to incite the Danes to invade and overthrow brother Harold, Tostig is turning instead to Norway, and with a sweetener. Remember the treaty that had been signed, he asks, the one between Magnus and Arthur Canute. Arthur Canute pre-deceased Magnus.

Thus, Hadrada has inherited both Magnus's and Arthur Canute's possessions. By that logic, it is also the case that it is he, Harold Hadrada, who is the rightful heir to the North Sea Empire, Norway, Denmark and England. Harold wanted to be king of Denmark and in the long term, probably sought to restore Canute the great North Sea Empire in its entirety. However, that did not succeed and accepting he could, not conquered Denmark, Harold switches attention to England. He eventually gets bored, you know, and goes out as the Vikings should, invading England.

In the fjords on the quiet, Harold Hadrada starts assembling a huge invasion fleet. The decision of the Witten to back Harold Godwinson, who will rule as Harold II of England, is not a unanimous one. The return of Edgar Aetheling has certainly muddied the waters. But English kings are elected, not there by divine right. While convention dictates the elder's son will inherit the crown, the lack of a clearly designated heir leaves things wide open. The Saxon elders take stop.

There have been three Viking kings this century, their figure. Four, if you count Harold Harefoot, it has caused no end of turmoil. Throw in Edward the Confessor, ostensibly Norman, and the country has been under foreign dominance for the best part of 70 years. A likely challenge from Duke William poses the possibility of yet more overseas vassalage. This is no time for weak leadership. Better the devil you know. Harold Godwinson ticks all the boxes.

He is English, well, half English, a proven soldier, and he has the running of the country down to a tea. He is, too, the brother of Queen Edith. So part of the royal family. And it's in this context that Harold Godwinson has himself elected and crowned, but it is quite clearly a coup of some description. So he seems to be elected and consecrated king on the same day, possibly at the same ceremony, at the same mass,

as the Requiem and of the funeral of Edward the confessor, which is really undue haste. Across the channel, news of Harold. The old succession is greeted with howls of outrage by William, treated as an act of betrayal. He too begins assembling a massive invasion force. The three-way tussle is on. So in terms of that, that then creates this situation to which William says, what, no, no, no, not so fast.

I've got my claim. And Harold Hardrata equally says, well, you know, the rules of Norway and Denmark have often ruled England. Might make's right. Try to say no to me in 8,000 men. At nearly 70 metres long, the Bayer tapestry is a remarkable work of embroidery. It depicts the events of 1066 from a Norman perspective. It was likely commissioned by Duke Williams' half-brother, Bishop Otto. As the tapestry shows, the spring of that year is a whirl of shipbuilding and preparation.

The better to transport 10,000 Normans, their horses, arms and equipment across the English Channel. Harold Godwinson, in readiness, and yet unaware of the Norwegian threat, raises an army and stations it on the Isle of White, off the south coast. With bad weather throughout the summer, however, the Norman fleet can never put to sea. Maybe Haley's comet, which appeared in the skies over Easter, was a good omen for England after all. Going into September, William's ships sit at the mouth of the Somme River, while his men kick their heels, waiting in vain for favourable conditions. On September the 8th, knowing that no fool would attempt to crossing in the squaws of autumn,

and with many of his own troops obliged to return to help with the harvest, Harold Godwinson stands his men down. A Norseman of the old school, Harold Hadrada, needs no such thing as favorable conditions. For the sons of men who navigated the ice flows all the way to Canada, Launching longboats into the North Sea in September is Charles' play. Around 300 Norwegian vessels slide into the water, carrying at least 8,000 warriors. By the middle of the month, having stopped en route in the Northern Isles, Harold Hadrada is glimpsing the rugged coastline of Northumbria, the old Viking playground.

When his longships enter the mouth of the Tyne, it must seem like a throwback. Not just for the older locals who can remember the raids of Sven Falkbeard, but to the beginning of the Viking era itself. Just up the coast lies Linda's farm. It was here, nearly 300 years earlier, that the Vikings first hacked their way ashore. With little resistance encountered, Harold Hadrada uses the rivers of the Humber estuary to navigate inland and get within proximity of his target. Yorvik.

York, capital of the north, the second most important city in England. Faced with the flustered earls of Northumbria and Mercia, who hastily muster the militia, hard-rida's men sweep all the fore. On September the 20th, at Fulford, on the river Ouse, just south of York, he wins a stunning victory. His men, with their long hair and battle axes, smashed their way through the local militia like a blast from the past. Harold Hadrada has judged things well. The north, he knows, with its Viking heritage, remains scornful of southern Wessex rule. There's a lot of sympathy.

And there are others eager to join the pylon, itching to settle old scores. Tostick has arrived with a contingent of Flemish mercenaries, and he can call on the support he boasts of King Malcolm III of Scotland. Harold Hadrada's numbers swell to around 12,000. On September the 24th, Hadrada enters York. Job done, his troops begin to celebrate. The ale flows. Down in London, completely blindsided,

a panicked Harold Godwinson throws together a patchwork army and yomps north. It will have to cover over 200 miles of difficult terrain, and at lightning speed, should it wish to see off the Norwegian thread. But Godwinson's troops move at an incredible lick, 35 miles per day, through forests and swamps and along crumbling Roman roads. In four days, the English army is at Tadcaster,

within reach of the enemy, and with some stunning intelligence received. Hadrada has released half of his army. They have sailed back towards the coast, ready for their next move. There on the longboat sits not just his army supplies, but most of its armour. The Norwegian king, meanwhile, has ventured off to transfer hostages. Harold Godwinson is a good strategist.

He has proved it in campaigns against the Welsh and the Scots. Capitalising on the Norwegian split forces, and with the added incentive of putting one over on his brother Tostig, he will cut off Hadrada's contingent before they can ship out. There's a pinch point on the River Derwent, just east of the city, an old Roman crossing. On the 24th, September 1066, Harold and Tostig, and their army had a decisive victory which led York to surrender to their forces, but the next day they had heard that the Anglo-Saxon king Harold Godwinson had arrived at Stamford Bridge.

Today, the Battle of Stamford Bridge is marked by an unassuming monument, a rock with a plaque attached. It sits at the end of a cul-de-zac on a housing estate, a tract of 1970s semis, all paved driveways, satellite dishes and a row of pull-down garages. The course of the river has shifted over time, but beyond the estate, the flat, unremarkable landscape is probably little changed. It seems a curiously sedate scene for a showdown of such bloody intensity. For the Battle of Stamford Bridge is one of absolute slaughter. To achieve any kind of success till reinforcements arrive, Harold Hadrada's men must put up a valiant stand. But without its armour, limited in weaponry, and not to mention hungover, the odds are against

it. The King of Norway has been ambushed. On the morning of September the 25th, according to chronicler, Snorri Stirlesson, before battle commences, an English rider canters out for a party with Hadrada and Tostig. He proposes a deal to Tostig. Withdraw his army and he can have back his old Erlgum, Northumbria. And what can you offer my king? asks Tostig, meaning Hodrada. Comes the reply, seven feet of English ground, meaning a grave. Later reports claim it was Harold Godwinson himself, who was the messenger, approaching in disguise. Needing to withdraw eastwards, the Norwegians

must retreat over the old wooden bridge, but it means that they can be kettled, penned in. Despite a protective shield wall and the withstanding of attack after attack, though Norwegians and their allies are no match for the English. The heroic rearguard, according to legend, is mounted by a lone Norse warrior who stands on the bridge swinging his axe, taking down 40 Englishmen single-handedly. But even he, in the end, is overwhelmed. An English soldier floats underneath on a barrel and impales the warrior on his spear, thrust up through the slats.

In the battle, Tostick is killed, and, crucially, so is Harold Hadrada, felled with an arrow to the throat. King Harold Godwinson gives clemency. So comprehensive has been the routing of the Norwegians that the survivors are permitted to take to their ships. Only 24 vessels are needed to spirit the survivors away out of the 300-plus that had landed just days before. The Norse threat has been seen off. And Harold Godwinson is back in control of the entirety of England. Kingdom Secure, the epochal battle for its soul seemingly won. Godwinson's men do exactly as Hadrada had done.

Take to York for some rest and recuperation. The revelry will be short-lived. Only two days later, a rider arrives from down south, some astonishing, unthinkable news. William of Normandy, defying certainty that a channel crossing was no longer possible, has begun landing his army on the shingle of Pevency, Sussex. Famously, after marching his men north and fighting one epic battle, Harold Godwinson will have to repeat the trick, a 240 mile about face.

He musters his exhaustive. soldiers and begins the long slog south. But the Normans, he will find, are a different proposition. William is an experienced general. He is assembled an alliance of troops not just from Normandy, but from all over northern France. He is well equipped with archers. He has a new weapon to deploy, the crossbow, and his battlefield tactics are based, unlike the English, on the use of cavalry.

And there is something else that William has on his side. God. William's mission to take the throne of England comes with papal blessing. The banner of Rome flies prominently. Oath sworn on holy relics are not to be broken. For William, invading England is a big risk. It is a rich and powerful state with an efficient military set up. Normandy is of junior ranking.

He will beat Harold. Godwinson, he determines, by drawing him towards him, fighting the battle on his terms. Near the coastal town of Hastings, he builds a makeshift wooden fortress, from which his men will range out to harass the local population. It is the bait to reel Harold Godwinson in. He's missed most of the campaigning season, and that's why he needs this decisive battle, because it's September. The weather is getting worse. I mean, we know what the weather is. like in England at that time of year. It's not going to get better for armies,

and over winter, he's going to start starving. His army needs a decisive victory. He needs to win a big, big battle, and ideally kill or capture Herald. On October the 14th, as the Normans wait, English troops start appearing through the woodlands. They establish themselves on nearby Senlac Hill

at present-day battle, East Sussex. With a half-mile shield wall in place, they have the upper ground and strategic advantage. But it is an army running on empty. The Battle of Hastings is an astonishing confrontation, one that lasts all day long. But eventually, the Normans prevail. By evening, Williams' cavalry is chopping down the English stragglers.

There is no question of Harold Godwinson being allowed to live either. This battle must have a definitive outcome. outcome. And so, Harold, King of England, will die alongside his brothers, Gieth and Leofwein, all directly targeted, no quarter given. In a simplistic interpretation of the Bayer tapestry, King Harold is killed with an arrow in his eye, one of thousands dying under an archery blizzard. It is something backed up by some contemporary sources. There is also a suggestion that he is butchered by William's knights, maybe even by William personally. What is never in doubt is that the carnage is on a biblical scale,

a landscape of corpses, guts and limbs around 4,000 English and 2,000 Normans lying dead. It is one of the interpretations of the origin of the name Senlac, the hill the English had mustered on, Saint-Lac, the Lake of Blood. On receiving the news of Harold's death, a king of just ten months, the Saxon nobles rushed to appoint Edgar Aetheling, still a teenager in his place. But he is unable to press his claim. After a scorched earth Blitz Creek through southern England, William moves on to London. He will be crowned in Westminster Abbey on Christmas Day.

William the Conqueror. may try to dress his claim up in much more genteel terms, as I'm a second cousin of the confessor, but he is also just a thug with a big army. So realistically, in 1066 we have three thugs with big armies claiming it. Neither, I suspect, deep down, or nice human beings. If there's anybody we should be feeling sympathetic for, it's Edgar the Affling, who've been promised the throne almost certainly, been brought over to England with the prospects of it,

who's just a bit too young and loses out completely. The history of England will be indelibly altered, not just in language, culture and architecture, but in its governance. It will take around six years for William to fully subdue the country. The Norman yoke will weigh heavily. It will include a tantamount genocide, the harrying of the north, in which three quarters of the northern English population is killed or displaced. With it, England's old Viking heartlands are laid waste, and William's new assets will be inventoried in a ledger. The Doomsday Book. The old earls will be replaced by a Norman nobility, a class of barons.

England's land will be concentrated in the hands of just a few favourites, who will watch over it from massive castles. A formidable fighting machine, the Normans will go on. on to write their own history, conquering Sicily, becoming a dominant force in the Crusades, and eventually invading Ireland too. Harold Hadrada, Harold Godwinson, William the bastard. In a turf war between a Viking, a half-viking and a Viking descendant, a Northman of some sort was always going to win. It is the demise of Harold Hadrada that is often cited symbolically as the end of the Viking era. Few figures personify our idea of the Viking Age so completely as Harold Hard Rada.

As a result of that, his death is sometimes seen as the end point of the Viking Age, but that's a really tricky thing, because of course that's from a very Anglo-centric perspective. And the whole point of the Viking Age is that it was chronologically very long, but also geographically, absolutely vast, spreading its height from contact with the edge of North. America all the way to the Byzantine Empire and Baghdad. 1066 is generally seen as the end of the Viking Age in Britain, but the interlinking between Britain and Scandinavia from sort of the lowest levels of power to the highest levels was so complete and so complex that pretty much all of the key players of these momentous

events in 1066 had some sort of. of Scandinavian background. So whether we can really, in real terms, talk about an end to the Viking Age is perhaps a little bit questionable. Professor Davidae Zori. Sometimes the date given for the end of the Viking Age is 1066, tied of course to the historical Norman conquest. But where that was accomplished from Normandy, descendants of Rolo and Scandinavian men who got on ships

that if you look at the Bayou tapestry, look a light like the Viking ships of the Viking Age. What we do see is a reorientation of English politics. It is no longer a realm reaching across the North Sea, but one facing south, to be governed by a francophile, francophone aristocracy. But of course, in 1066, no one knows it's going to be lasting.

And William's greatest threat throughout the remainder of his reign, actually, isn't English rebels. The threat is from death. Denmark. And what keeps William awake at night is the threat of the Danish king. And indeed, there is eventually an invasion attempted, which isn't successful. Actually, the Danes right up until about 1,100, have ambitions and realistic ambitions on England. A Danish army backing Edgar Aetheling will take York in 1069. Continuing the attacks, the Norwegian king Magnus Bearlegs, were raid places like Dublin, Anglesea and the Isle of Man into the 12th century.

But it's a closing and narrowing window, if you will, of opportunity. So in that sense, I think it goes out with a splutter, the Viking Age, not with a bang. There's not this moment at Stamford Bridge or Hastings that spells the end. Actually, the scale slowly decreases and eventually the Scandinavians become a part of mainstream European culture. And by the time we reach 1,100, I would say, we are in a different society in Scandinavia. So I would put the end of the Viking Age at 1100, when Scandinavian kings or Christian, when they're raising taxes on their population, rather than trying to convince them to get on to open ships and go raiding and trading and settling. And they really become part of Western Christendom in a way that they weren't before.

British or Anglo-Celtic Isles, Shetland and Orkney will persist under Scandinavian control. It is not until 1472 that they are ceded to the Scottish crown. In lieu of a wedding dowry for his daughter, the King of Denmark and Norway hands them over. The Northern Isles' localized Norse language Norn will not die out until around 1850. Unlike the Greeks or the Romans, history is never fully. given the Vikings their due. It is only relatively recently that we have come to appreciate to embrace the scale of their achievements.

The annual Upheli-R festival in Shetland, for example, with its burning of a long ship, is just part of a growing pageantry. There's a burgeoning revivalist movement, as communities across the Northern Hemisphere, once touched by a Norse presence, come to celebrate a Viking heritage. that had for so long been scorned. From the giant long ships preserved at Osberg and Ross Killed to the excavations of York, to Lens-O-Meadows in Newfoundland,

now a world heritage site. Modern archaeology and scientific advances give fresh insight into the craftsmanship and societies of the Old Nordic world. In language and place names, in family names, even our days of the week, the Vikings walk with us still. And in popular culture, the Norsemen, once the hooligans of the high seas, are now its heroes. The interest for Vikings kicked off in Victorian England, and then it spread,

and we have it in Germany in the 19th century, and the Wagner operas, and this fascinating for this world, and especially this mythology. And then, of course, this warrior aspects to the Vikings was emphasized and misused in Germany by the Nazis, which led to a situation where Viking studies got a bad reputation. But after the Second World War, we had a settlement of this legacy, and in especially in 1960s, there was this trend of changing the view of the Vikings from this brute war. to the rather peaceful trading Scandinavian who went abroad as explorers. The truth is of course somewhere in between.

But the legacy has just exploded in the last 30-40 years in the public culture with this fascination for this Old North mythology and this warrior ethos which has led to all these films, TV series, etc. I think the legacy of the Viking age is one really of Europe transformed but also interconnected. Anyways, those kinds of trade links and that kind of wide networks. So these closer links between the British Isles and Scandinavia, closer ties between Scandinavia, the Baltic, through to the Dnieper River, to Ukraine, Russia, through to the Mediterranean and so on. They settled the North Atlantic Islands, the Faroes, Iceland, Greenland.

These are big landmasses that were not inhabited by humans. And it's a really testament to their exploration capacity that this was accomplished during the Viking Age. And in fact, Iceland today is still a flourishing Scandinavian population that charts its origins and its golden age to the Viking Age. Britain was a series of kingdoms. before the Vikings get there. So the one unified England, you could say, came out of the crucible of the Viking Age. The Viking bases in Ireland

that link Ireland into the Northern Ark of Trade that leads all the way over to the Caspian Sea and the Black Sea. Those towns grew up during the Viking Age. Professor Elizabeth Rowe. So the Vikings settled in Normandy. Normandy gives us William the Conqueror, William the Conqueror changes English and British history, so that's a huge line of impact right there. We can also see the Vikings and Scandinavian traders settling in what's now Western Russia and Ukraine.

Kiev was the center of power for that part of the world for this combined Norse and Slavic culture. Keev was the center of power long before St. Petersburg was found. much less Moscow. And so Russian attempts to control Ukraine. This goes absolutely back to what Vikings were doing in that part of the world. There's something really romantic about the Vikings. It's a world that is lost. These are the great rags to riches stories of medieval Europe.

I mean, you literally have people starting life as 13-year-olds going to war without any prospects and no land and no money and no hope and then ending life as a king. And so there's something inspiring about these people as well. They're so pragmatic and they are so strong that I think people are drawn to that. They embodied this very human drive to explore the unknown to go where others haven't gone before.

Dr. William Fitzhue. To me, it's discovery. It's geographical. discovery, it's also personal discovery. And I think that there's so much to see and think about in the Viking period that relates to our modern times, you know, to our exploration of the universe and things that are coming on ahead of us. There were remarkable people, brave and ingenious. It's July the 20th, 1976, 1153 a.m., coordinated universal time. We're at the crisis. We're at the Cry-See Planitia, Greek for Golden Plain on the surface of Mars, a planet that has been untouched

for 4.5 billion years. In a blaze of retro rockets, a small mechanical craft descends. It's a lander, dispatched from apparent orbiter, and it swings into position under a retarding parachute, falling softly with a reduced gravity into the Martian dirt. Pretty shortly it will begin transmitting the first images of the red planet back to Earth. The craft was meant to land on July 4th, timed for the American bicentennial. But after 140 million miles, 11 months in space, and some tricky terrain to navigate, that was wishful thinking by the White House. Instead, mission control has done the next best thing, putting the lander down on the

seventh anniversary of the first moon landing. The lander will soldier on for six years, or 2,245 Martian Solar Days, sending back vital scientific data, paving the way for future missions into the Great Unknown. When it came to naming this craft, NASA had to find something appropriate, something that conjured not just a staggering feat of engineering and navigation, but conveyed a certain doggedness, a devil-may-care attitude in hurling itself out into the void. What better word than Viking, or Viking One, to be precise. For like those long ships of old, another one is always on its way.

Thanks for listening to Real Vikings. I hope you enjoyed the show. Now you've finished, discover your next immersive history podcast at www.noiser.com, the home of the Noiser Podcast Network. That's www.w.com.