The Rest Is History - 44. 1066

Episode Date: April 19, 2021

It is perhaps the best known year in English history. But why has it endured in the national consciousness? Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook talk the Battle of Hastings, the end of the Anglo-Saxons and wonder if King Harold really was killed by an arrow in the eye. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com. In the year 1066 occurred the other memorable date in English history, viz. William the Conqueror 1066. This is also called the Battle of Hastings. When William the Conqueror landed, he lay down on the beach and swallowed two mouthfuls of sand. This was his first conquering action and was in the south. Later he ravaged the north as well. The Norman conquest was a good thing as from this time onwards England stopped being conquered and thus was able to become top nation. So says W.C. Seller and R.G.

Yateman's classic 1066 and all that and who am I to disagree? Welcome to The Rest Is History with me Dominic Sandbrook, romantic, freedom-loving heir of the Anglo-Saxons and grey, grim Tom Holland and Norman to his fingertips. Thanks, Dominic, for that introduction. Do you know I have actually played William the Conqueror on national TV? Of course you have. Yes, so I am a sleek, evil Norman to my clean-shaven chops. So when people mistake you for actor Tom Holland,

I mean, you are actor Tom Holland, right? Yes, I am an actor. I mean, he's the impersonator. Well, I think that anyone who saw my performance as William of Normandy would accept that it was a magnificent, thespian performance. Yes, his casting by Marvel was just a colossal case of mistaken identity, right? I mean, they seem you as William the Conqueror. Pretty much.

It's taken a time to get on to the Spider-Man jokes, but we finally, well, after 45 episodes, we got on to them. So well done on your restraint. Herculean self-restraint on my part. Yeah, it's been heroic. So, Tom, when I was at school, like you, like probably a lot of our listeners, I learned that there was one date that you had to know in english history it's the defining date in all english history 1066 now do you think that it

deserves its place first of all well we have a question on that don't we from richard deval who asks is 1066 a genuine pivot point in english history um and i think so give us a sense of what happened i suppose okay so before we come to that before we come to that essentially i think it is because it's um it's a kind of great scorch mark across the line of medieval english history and on the one side you have the period that we call maybe controversially the anglo-saxon period and then we have the period from which we start dating our kings and queens so there were lots of you know there were at least two Edwards who ruled as king of England before the Norman conquest but we start counting Edwards from the 13th century um and that's just a kind of

a single indicator of the way in which essentially thean conquest serves to completely reorient everything and i think it's 1066 matters and and is indeed decisive because over the course of the millennium since people have seen it as such and so have kind of yeah you know constructed entire mythologies around it the idea very popular in the 17th century of the norman yoke um the idea that england has never been invaded since which of course isn't true but it establishes an idea of england as freedom loving that has incredible influence through the 19th and 20th century so i think it matters for those reasons um but it's also i i think it matters in the context of the um 11th century because essentially what the Normans represent is this kind of revolutionary movement which is escalating on the continent at the same time as the Norman invasion

and it's both a military revolution and a religious revolution and the Norman conquest is very much a part of that story so we might get onto that later on um i would never have believed you would have found a way to fit religion but religious revolutions into the story of 1066 but this is fantastic work tom this is the 11th century it is the 11th century is the is the it's not just very religious this is the great seismic you know this is the moment of revolution the the the papal revolution that transforms the medieval world there's no century that you don't say that of though the 11th century i've always said is is the revolutionary century and i think it makes sense to put see 1066 in that kind of broader perspective let me try and put you back

on your on your leash um tell us what happened in 1066 in about 10 sentences okay i'll try yeah sweep if that's if that's doable there's a reason why um students when they go to secondary school study it in year seven because it's a very inherently dramatic story and basically it's a kind of three-way game of thrones you've got um harold godwinson son of an overmighty earl uh you have harold hardrada harold the hard ruler the king of norway and you have william the duke of normandy um the most kind of terrifyingly able man in france all of whom essentially have their eyes on the crown of England. And the crown of England becomes available on the 5th of January 1066, when the previous king, Edward the Confessor, dies childless. And so there is this massive scramble. Harold Godwinson has himself crowned

very rapidly in the newly built abbey at Westminster. This provokes William to fury because William thinks that both Edward the Confessor and Harold are committed to him succeeding to the throne. Meanwhile Harold Godwinson's brother Tostig has had a massive bust up, has left England in a half, has gone off to Norway where he's talked to Harold Hardrada, a terrifying Viking of the old school, persuaded him that he could come over and grab the throne. So over the course of 1066, you have these three men all competing for the throne. It's in the shadow of Halley's Comet, a sure portent of doom and disaster.

Harold Godwinson is stationed on the south coast of England waiting for the Normans to invade. Contrary winds stop William from crossing the channel. While he's down there, he's brought the news that Harold Hardrada and Tostig have invaded, have sailed up the Humber, have defeated the earls of Northumbria and Mercia, have seized York. Harold Godmanson marches at a furious speed, takes Tostig and Harold Hardrada by surprise, defeats them at the Battle of Stamford Bridge. He's just breathing a deep sigh of relief when he's informed that the Normans have landed on the south coast. So he hares back down there meets them at um a hill uh some seven miles north of hastings um a battle is fought all day harold ends up dead william um ends up uh waits for the anglo-saxon nobility to um accept him they don't so he starts to ravage the south this is sufficiently effective that

on Christmas day 1066 he is able to have taken possession of London and on that day he is crowned in Westminster Abbey as king of England so it's an incredibly dramatic story and I'm sure again part of the reason why it has this seismic role in English history is simply that it's so dramatic and in lots of ways unusual. It's a great story. Well done, Tom. That was a bravura performance. And it is a kind of Game of Thrones, isn't it? But what's interesting to me about it, just thinking about it

before we're recording, is that in the popular imagination, there's this sort of period of bucolic Anglo-Saxon peace and then these bastards arrive from Normandy and burn everything and smash everything up and the norman conquest is this great traumatic rupture but the interesting thing is that england i mean it is very rich england is very you know it has a very sort of potent state

so it's very good at raising taxes and it has the sort of shires and all the rest of it but england is has kind of been up for grabs for a while so england has been invaded by the danes it's been run by canute it's been part of a north sea empire and the normans the norman influence has been getting stronger in england for decades hasn't it before the norman conquest so edward the confessor is half norman he's got norman friends he's given lands to some normans in a way yeah and harold godwinson is half scandinavian so exactly so isn't this basically england is going to be taken over by one of these two sort of powers either norway or normandy both but viking powers basically and it's inevitable do you not

think do you think this place it's going to be dragged into the orbit either of scandinavia or of normandy and france and the only question is which i think it was always going to be that of france i think it was always going to be because of this the the scale of this ongoing kind of revolutionary ferment in france but you're right okay that it is also um i mean essentially england is is too rich and too successful i mean it sounds an old thing to say but the the unitary kingdom of england that gets founded in in the 10th century is incredibly precocious by the standards of the rest of europe where where this kind of centralized nation state doesn't really exist you mustn't

overemphasize the centralization i mean the north is is is very roughly controlled but it is there that there are recognized boundaries there's a single faith there's almost a kind of single language i mean the dialects are kind of pretty much mutually intelligible there's a single religion there's a single king and that there are these kind of incredible abilities to raise taxes so it's it's by the standards of other lands very very wealthy but that's a problem because you're surrounded by robbers so it's kind of like walking through um you know a a place where there are lots of muggings with um wearing a kind of you know wearing diamonds or something i mean it's kind of asking for trouble um and the v of, you know, wearing diamonds or something. I mean, it's kind of asking for trouble. And the Vikings, you know, this is incredibly appealing to them, of course.

So they come over and it's in the reign of Æthelred the Unready. Canute establishes his reign. Absolutely. Essentially, Harold Ardrada in that sense is kind of old school because what he's doing, you know, Vikings have been doing pretty much since the the rain on linda the raid on linda's farm um is basically kind of come in and grab stuff um william i think is is different because he he although harold harold hardrada is christian and indeed is is the half brother of the man who will become um norway's patron saint say do laugh he's he's christian in the sense that everyone has to be christian

so he doesn't believe it i don't think he's not a turning the other cheek man he's very much not a turn the other cheek man for william it's it's different because William really passionately believes that God wants him to have the throne and that Edward the Confessor, I think, and I think he's right to do this. famous episode that appears on the bay tapestry um a year or so before 1066 has been shipwrecked um and essentially rescued by william from captivity uh and he has sworn an oath um on the bones of saints that he will back william's um right to the throne and william's that a story just told by propagandists I don't think so true is that I think it's you think it's real yeah I think it is because I don't think Harold would have got away otherwise I mean the the debate is over why Harold has gone there so the English sources say that it's to to ransom some captives that some hostages that William has

and the the Normans say that he's been sent there by Edward the Confessor I think the English sources there are probably truer but I think it's pretty clear that Harold did do it and the Normans say that he's been sent there by Edward the Confessor. I think the English sources there are probably truer, but I think it's pretty clear that Harold did do it. And the reason that Harold does this is because he doesn't take it seriously. So there's a fabulous description of him in one of the, in the life of Edward the Confessor, written a decade or so after 1066, where it refers to his his watchful mockery that he takes from ambush to ambush and i think there's the sense that he feels it doesn't really

matter and i think more than that that his he's in normandy he's able to scope out william and and exactly calculate what he is up against um but the problem for har is that William is signed up to the idea that essentially if he is going to England, he will be doing so as the agent of God. And as proof of that... So he's got a papal banner or something? He has a papal banner, which is very shocking because it's none of the business of the papacy to intervene in this kind of thing this is this is a period where um the reach of the papacy is nothing like what it becomes even within a decade or so because this is the period where reformers in rome are starting to use the papacy as a way to bring the whole of christendom to heal as they see it to subjective to a process of reformatio. And England is a massive prize. England is a kind of

ancient Christian country, but the Archbishop of Canterbury, a guy called Stigand, is absolutely representative of everything that the reformers in Rome dislike. He's corrupt, he holds multiple benefits, he does not take his faith seriously at all. so the chance to bring england to heel is hugely hugely tempting and the guy um behind the um the pope who who essentially persuades the pope alexander ii to give a banner with a papal blessing to william is a guy called hildebrand who in due course will become pope gregory vii and g. And Gregory VII is the great revolutionary pope of the 11th century. And he's the guy who at Canossa Castle in the north of the Apennines will get Henry IV, the emperor himself, to kneel in the snow and humble himself. And essentially,

the humbling of Harold is a part of this. And people who are opposed to what Gregory VII are doing, opposed to what the reformers are doing, opposed to this policy of essentially kind of shaking Christendom up, cleansing it, purifying it, making it more truly Christian. They compare Gregory VII Hildebrand's approach to Henry IV and they cast it as kind of rebellion as as upstart behavior as revolutionary behavior and they explicitly compare it to um what William had done to Harold you know the the murder and dismemberment of a Christian king yeah so I think that that that is a massive massive part of the context for it and that's why when after the battle of hastings william builds a great abbey on the site where harold fell and the high the high altar yeah battle abbey so battle abbey the high altar is supposed to stand on the spot where harold fell and this is a gesture of penance that that for william is a truly heartfelt one and everyone all the normans who fought at

hastings have to do penance for the death that they inflicted so there is a kind of normans are kind of they're more christian they're more they're or that they wear their christianity more heavily than harold and his and the godwinsons and their sort of hangers-on and henchmen. Is that fair? I think so. They are militant in their Christianity in a terrifying way. And a sort of allied question. So lots of novelists, I think of Julian Rathbone wrote a book on this called The Last English King. Lots of novelists have written about this.

And of course, it's the stuff of children's history books. And we always attempted to project personalities onto these characters so we're going to come to Harold Hardrada later because there's lots of questions about him. He's this amazing character. Harold Godwinson for lots of people is this kind of romantic hero who falls in battle basically

after a massive fixture pile up. And William is kind of a new Satan. So you know yourself. So he's kind of this grim, very political, you know, very intense, supremely competent, terrifying figure. How much of that do you think is us projecting personalities, sort of Hollywood style, onto these people who are basically, I mean,

they're basically competing warlords, right? They're leaders of gangs. They're pretty scary people who now we would think of as kind of the equivalent of you know vladimir putin and and sort of that's they're tough guys and are our modern impressions of them basically romantic inventions do you think but they've been mythologized right from the right from the right from the right from the beginning so the image so the story that this you know harold hardrada is the hero of icelandic saga so there's all this stuff about how he he goes off to byzantium how he fights dragons how he has affairs with empresses how he conquers the holy land i mean it's all totally obviously

totally made up um and it it draws on the fact that Harold Hardrada, as a young man, did go to Constantinople, did clearly cut a tremendous dash with the Varangian Guard, came back with lots of cash, made himself, you know, with which he was able to win war bands and win the crown of Norway. I mean, clearly he's, as my brother would say, a massive lad. Like Neville Chamberlain. Yeah, like Neville Chamberlain. He's a terrifying, I mean, of course he's a's he's as my brother would say a massive lad like neville chamberlain yeah i never tell you he's a terrifying i mean of course he's a terrifying guy and that's why people write epics about him harold godwinson likewise is i mean this is a guy who's fighting the welsh um and gets given the head of the welsh prince who he's been fighting and treats it as a trophy. Yeah.

Now, to the Normans. He's kind of listening to poetry and holding hands with Edith, his wife. Edith Swanneck. Yes. Yeah. And he's loving kind of Anglo-Saxon traditions and all that. That's all balls, is it? I think, I mean, I think he's, Harold, Harold Gormson is a charismatic man.

He must have been to win the support uh essentially he i mean he you see harold goddinson is um he's a kind of uh a decent richard iii he's a usurper like richard iii there is you know there is an atheling a man yeah a prince who should become king in the form of edgar edgar is the um the the grandson of edmund ironside the english king who fought canute and then and then died um edmund ironside's son had been brought up in hungary he'd come back to england he died almost immediately edgar is the son he's only about 13 in 1066 so he's not really able to to have the crown but even so um he's the rightful heir harold godwin yeah harold godwin elbows him out the way i mean but doesn't kill him or anything so so so he's a nice richard the third but but he's so he's a charismatic man to persuade all the other noblemen to to sign up to that but yeah a usurper is only a usurper is only remembered as a usurper if they

then lose aren't they if they're a usurper and they win then they're just part of the canon so no one thinks of them as also and also it's more confused because um the the laws around who becomes king is you know it's it's more up for grabs essentially it's an elective office and you then get it sealed with a coronation um so uh harold you know i mean he's elected king um so he he clearly is charismatic and i think you you get the sense from that thing of him, you know, the watchful mockery. I think that that's written within his lifetime. And I think that that's clearly true to the style that he brings to kingship. He's he's an amusing, amused kind of man.

William, you know, I mean, he he's he's terrifying because he's terrifyingly able and he's terrifying in the way that um very very competent revolutionaries are invariably terrifying and the thing is that that the revolution is not just religious it's also military because um this in France this is the age of two very, very significant developments. One of which is the realization, particularly in Anjou, who William fights against for decades before he launches his attack on England. The Angevins recognize that you can use castles as tools of oppression. Yes. So they start.

There's no word in english for castles is there when the normans come over no people don't know what they are no they've got no idea whereas all along the you know the loire the early chateau are going up and essentially um the uh the angevin counts are able to use these chateaus as ways of establishing themselves as kind of power you know they come from almost nowhere to become the major power in central france and the normans pick up on this very very quickly the scope for castles and william as a as a boy you know he's he he becomes duke very very young so he has to put up with all the noblemen's whacking castles up all over the place and he spends his early years essentially breaking that power so he's very very alert to

the use that castles play and he's able to do that because he is a norman and the normans are kind of proficient at the other great development which is the um the use of horses as a tool of oppression so you've got castles and horses and these are of course knights knights yes yeah yes and i mean essentially to to be in the neighborhood with the normans is like being stuck in a bottle with a hornet these are these are terrifying in the way that the spartans were terrifying or the romans of the of the mid-republic were terrifying these are people who are completely organized for war who live and breathe it will William has been in the saddle training for war since he was a boy.

And the Anglo-Saxons, although they fight a lot, are not organised for war in that way. And they do not have castles. They have kind of wooden halls that are unprotected. So that is what enables the Norman conquest to work, is that they are introducing this terrifying military technology, which is transforming France and which England is very, very vulnerable to.

So, Tom, we're going to have to take a break in a second and then do the questions. But before we do that, I want to ask you what you think about this. So England has become quite a potent unitary state, the most united, the most sophisticated governing apparatus really in Europe. And some people say the first European nation state, partly under threat from Viking invasions. So because of the

Viking invasions, because the constant need to raise money to fight them off and to sort the defences out and stuff, English kings before 1066 have built, have created with their thanes and whatnot, this great state that makes it a prize. So you can decapitate the king and you can take it over and then you'll be very rich.

So the question is, why haven't they created a technological military apparatus to go along with that? So in other words, why are they behind? If they are ahead of other european sort of states in tax raising and all that stuff why are they behind technologically in military terms is it because they to do with the geography is it because they're only having to fight vikings what's the reason it's it's precisely because the english state is as unitary as it is, that the king, or at least the, you know, the earls who rule the former kingdoms of Wessex and Mercia and East Anglia and Northumbria have sufficient authority that people who give them any shit can, you know, will come to a

grisly end. That is not what happens in France. In France, the power of the king shrivels and shrivels and shrivels until essentially it's just focused on the yield of paris um and that means that all that the duchies and are essentially kind of fair game for anyone who wants to grab it so you have a state of kind of organized anarchy across what will become the kingdom of france and this is a breeding ground for um for for oppression so it's it's kind of like you know um you know one city where you have mob rule you have the mafia uh you know the mafia become incredibly good at extorting stuff and then they muscle into a city where there's no mafia at all and suddenly all the shopkeepers are having to you know they have no protection against it and that's that essentially is the situation that there's no need for castles or knights

in england because you have the the unitary monarchy but that's precisely what makes it as so vulnerable in a weird way competition the sort of anarchic competition of life in france breeds innovation and success basically britain is almost a victim of its own well it's a it's a victim of a different kind of success yeah and and this this kind of potent new form of of I mean it is oppression with the knights and the castles it's not just England that and and in the due course Scotland andland that suffers from it it's also um in italy so norman adventurers travel there they conquer southern italy they conquer um the muslim uh state in in sicily they invade the balkans they um you know they they give the byzantine emperor

an incredibly bloody nose in the balkans and then they provide the cutting edge for the first crusade so these are quite simply the best warriors in europe yeah and england is one of their victims england is just most high profile victim england is the hype the most and and that's why the norman conquest is is so unusual the the fact that you know a band of men can move in and take over an entire kingdom nothing really quite like it happens apart from the normal conquest perfect point to take a break tom and we can go and sharpen our swords and build our castles and stuff um and then we'll come back and um do the questions see you in a minute. Welcome back to The Rest Is History. In podcasting terms, we've seen off the Norwegians at Stamford Bridge, and now we're marching desperately south to find the Normans have landed at Pevensey

with a ton of questions, and we're going to get through them now like arrows falling onto us exactly it's from danny k uh and we've sort of addressed this a bit but he says why despite a relatively well-developed state was england such an easy target for invaders we've kind of answered that but we haven't answered his second his follow-up which is what do the normans do to change that? So why does it change? Why don't more people invade England after the Normans have landed? Why don't everybody else pile in and try to take England from them, Tom? Well, because they're a car source.

So, you know, there are kind of Viking kings who do have a kind of little nibble at England after 1066. But what can they do? I mean, you know. So the normans are simply too fearsome once they've got possession you can't dislodge them well they they rush around putting castles up everywhere um and i think one of the reasons that harold godwinson when he comes south from stanford bridge rather than resting and waiting for more troops to come as he probably should have done isn't is is so desperate to march on on on william is that he's been in normandy so he sees what the normans can do with their castles and he knows that even a few very rough castles put up are almost impossible to remove so i think he's rushing down to try and stop that from happening

um and of course the moment that um that williams become king you know he's sending his his uh his liege men out they are putting up the castles and once the castles have gone up there's no one who can pull them down because the normans have the have the military technology that prevents anyone from from from competing them and i think that's true for the vikings as well so that raises an interesting question if the if the vikings had taken england if harold hardrada had taken in do you think ultimately the normans would have won anyway because they have so much technology i think at some point that technology would have crossed yeah yeah that's an interesting i mean i kind of agree i mean that's the interesting

thing is that the argument is that this is a pivotal moment because it brings england into the norman and then the french orbit but i suppose the ultimate point surely is that that england would have been claimed by that orbit at some point in the next yeah i think is anyway i i think i think within the next few decades because i i think that right that the lethal quality of of the military technology that had been developed in france and the militant quality of the papal revolution meant that England couldn't be allowed to drift along as it was. It's sort of like the same question about the English language, isn't it? It's often said this is a pivotal moment in the evolution of English,

that it absorbs French words and that sort of stuff. But I suppose you could argue that France's cultural gravitational pull meant that at some point in the next few hundred years English was bound to take in lots of French words because of trade because of cultural contacts yeah I think so there would have been court contacts and stuff like that okay let's have another question um I'll ask it again I guess uh Chet Archbold so Chet is a friend of the show we're very used to Chet's questions. Chet says he wants to know who was Edward's lawful heir. Can we resolve that?

And, well, he's asked three questions. My gosh. Let's do the Edward's lawful heir first. Edgar Atheling, I think, was the lawful heir. But it doesn't matter, does it? Because it's irrelevant who the lawful heir was, right? At this time, ever since there's been Danish invasions, the crown has been changing hands lots.

I mean, it's not the right question, I guess. Well, except that, no, except that, there is a kind of sacral quality to the line of Alfred, which Edgar belongs to. It's the House of Wessex. belongs it's the house of wessex and and that's that's edgar is the house of wessex guy and but he could never have got it right because he was too young but he's an athlete and everyone calls him athlete and athlete means you know deserves to be king crown prince almost yeah yes but but but with the sense

that you have the right to become king so so why does no one speak up for him when edward the confessor you know breathes his last because he's 13 all frightened of harold gobbinson yeah because because he's 13 because they know that um that they don't want that they don't want the normans they don't they don't trust edgar to stand against the normans harold is is a general of proven ability um yeah so they're rallying to that they're rallying to the guy who who will keep england english so choosing harold is not this kind of weird illegitimate they've been intimidated by godwinson kind of mobs um it's a completely reasonable legitimate choice yes it is okay good because that's what i think um what about chet's

next question he asks about class so there is this argument that people called let's say glanville are more likely to be rich because they're descended from the normans than people called smith who are likely to be you know still kind of you know working class um sort of salt of the earth britons. Do you buy this? Do you think the Norman conquest has left a class system that has endured for a millennium?

Yes. You do? I do, yes. You do? I do. Do you not? I mean, I think statistically. There was some study

published a couple of years ago. Yes, there was. Exactly. That's what I'm thinking of. So I'm very happy to go along with that. The people with Norman names. Montgomery. monty was very proud of being how i'm a bit i'm a bit uh i'm a bit dubious about this to be honest with you but um i think it's definitely i mean you made the point in the first half of the show that it's definitely what it's actually

clearly made a difference to is our sense of class if not the reality then our our understanding of it so our sense of a sort of dualism between haves and have-nots between a ruling class and an oppressed mass i mean that's there before you know marx or anything like that that's there in the middle ages isn't it it's there and it's there in the middle ages um and it's it's hugely influential i mean it's kind of growing up there by the 14th 15th centuries as you say the norman yoke and it's massively or we've already talked about ivanhoe and walter scott and that idea of of there being a massive division between normans and english and i and that's not made up that's real i mean i think it is made up i think it is made up i think i think

that i mean certainly by the time that john loses normandy in the in the 13th early 13th century everyone is thinking of themselves as english but for a long time tom maybe a couple of hundred years people are there is a sense of england is what one and a half million people and the normative come over and we're talking about tens of thousands maybe maybe 20 000 15 000 or something yeah they have all the land they have all the power i mean they are a ruling class right you you you get this with the um the the first english historians to write about you of Malmesbury um and uh who who talks about um new faces everywhere enjoying England's riches and gnawing at her vitals makes me sick it makes me sick to hear this stuff and and and you've got um Henry of Huntingdon who says that that God

basically has invented the Normans to wipe out the english so that's yeah so that sense is is very real but but i think it fades pretty it's gone by the 13th century i think and the normans basically now see themselves as english because i suppose they're fighting the french right so they're defining themselves against the french do you yes they are absolutely yes they are and but but what also happens is say with the peasants revolt you're getting peasants there who were mythologising the Norman conquest to explain their sufferings. What about Chet's final question,

which is about would England have looked more to Scandinavia than France? I mean, I think that's the question that people often ask. If it had gone otherwise, would England effectively be part of Scandinavia? And would we be eating cinnamon buns fantastic mid-century furniture you know very we'd have very generous

pensions and pay colossal taxes if they'd won we would all be listening to Abba and shopping at Ikea oh we are yeah well you see I love this because I'm a real Scandi-i file so i kind of think oh if only hadrada had won it'd be great we'd all be watching somewhere miserable trials about detectives

there we are um no i think that for the as we've discussed i think that the gravitational pull of france would have been too great. And we can tell that because the same is true of Scandinavia. The Scandinavian kingdoms likewise start building Gothic cathedrals and going on crusade and having knights and castles and things. So it's a cultural pull that I think was not to be resisted. Okay, here's one for you on on the subject of norway this is from stefan jensen since i'm norwegian i of course have to ask how close to a great and awesome norwegian-led north sea empire was king harold really before he lost at

hastings could he have made it e.g the timing had differed by a few weeks or was it a doom project from the beginning so well that could harold hadrada of course because the the example of canute suggests that it wasn't necessarily doomed from the beginning because canute had a north sea empire but i suppose the argument against it is that north sea empire was was liable to fragmentation so canute's empire breaks up as we know um and maybe even if hadrada had won at you know if he'd won at stanford bridge if he'd then beaten william which is according to you unlikely because of the technological gap um would england have remained as part of a north sea empire or would that empire have inherently

fragmented um because it because of its sort of yeah... Yeah, I think it would have fragmented. Yeah, I mean, it's hard to imagine. Also, how old was an old guy? He's 50, isn't he? He's about 50 when he... Yeah, so it's his last... So he'll be dead in 5, 10 years, probably. And one of the things you get throughout this period, right, is a series of succession crises.

So that's why the crown is swapping so much, and it's such a confusing story in the sort of hundred years before 1066. So there'd been another succession crisis. Well, I guess. Of how Drada died. And what would have happened then? Tostig, I guess. Yeah, well, there would have been some other earl would have challenged him.

And it would have been somebody would have pitched up from Norway. And it would have all been a bit of a mess. Tostig. And then the Normans would have come over at some point, wouldn't they? And then, you know, the normans would have come over at some point wouldn't they and then you know the go i mean but but clearly tostig is thinking i'm going to get the throne when harold when harold dies i always had a soft spot for tostig um our cat yes our cat is named after him so we had it we had um we had harold uh tostig and edith um harold harold harold wandered off uh but we still got tostig and edith um harold harold harold wandered off uh but we still got tostig and edith

so how do we have to swear an oath to some other yes he did he did he wandered off south and home yeah he did he's with some other home oh that's sad watchful mockery what a traumatic moment it is but we still have tostig um okay here's another one we've got another yeah another one for you um um patrick 851 was william's real triumph ending the viking way of war in favor of cavalry if so were the english exiles why why were the english exiles so successful in the mediterranean after they fled e.g the english guard in byzantium yeah so the english guard in byzantium you'll know more about this than me tom so they're basically the Varangian Guard have been there for a while they're the emperor's kind of bodyguard and they're recruited from Norsemen they've often come down from sort of Kiev and Rus and all that sort

of stuff the sort of trade routes that the Norse have established going down into what's now Ukraine but the Varangian Guard pick up a lot of Anglo-Saxon exiles, don't they? Am I right? Yeah, that's right. And they're sort of feared because of their strange moustaches and sort of hard drinking ways. They're basically football hooligans who've gone to Turkey, modern day, what's now Turkey, and sort of behaving badly and being fearsome and stuff. Well, the Warrington Guard go with the Byzantines to confront the Normans in the Balkans after 1066 and end up in a barn and the Normans burn them to death. So it's not as successful as all that. They're not, unfortunately. But having said that, I think the, you know, the housecarls, the personal guard around the English king are simply the best infantry in Europe so what you have at Hastings this is they've got the shield wall tactics haven't they and all that stuff

this this is um you know this is uh kind of European cup that they're they're going for it's the best cavalry against the best infantry and one of the things that's that's really unusual about Hastings is that it goes on all day. I mean, that's really unusual for an ancient battle or a medieval battle. They're usually over in about an hour. And it lasts all day. It's how exhausting. They must have been absolutely, I mean, barely able to lift their weapons at the end, you would assume.

A lot of them presumably just die because they're too tired to fight anymore. Yeah, I think so and also what's impressive is that um both the normans and the english at one point look as if they're going to break so there's the rumor that not that william's been killed and that they will and then william takes his helmet off and rallies them and then um the uh anglo-saxons have run down the hill um lots of them get killed but they still don't break and even when even when the shield wall breaks they remain on the top and that's that's essentially what that's that's why the battle is so decisive is that harold doesn't flee he stays where he is but tom the accounts of the battle um i mean how much is that actually what happened and how much

of that is just sort of standard battle narrative the formulae i mean people are always almost being killed in battles and lifting their helmets and saying i'm still alive and and sort of staging feints and being chased and then coming back and isn't that well the sources the sources the sources for a medieval relative to a needle battle are pretty good for hastings you know they're written by people who were there or who witnessed it who talked to eyewitnesses. And you've got the Bayeux Tapestry. So obviously there are details that we don't know. It's mythologized.

People can't know for sure. But I think the basic outline and the thing about the Normans and then the English kind of breaking is repeated in different ways in near contemporary sources. So they are not copying one another they're clearly drawing on a sense that this had actually happened so i'm i'm i'm happy with that i think it happened but to just go back to the question for a second about the varangian guard and the english guard in byzantium i think that's one of the most romantic stories in all history actually i love the Varangian guard sort of stuff. So you've probably seen, I can't remember if we've talked about this in a previous podcast,

the graffiti in Hagia Sophia. By Halfdan, I think. Isn't he called Halfdan? He's a sentry or something and he scribbles on a pillar. I can't remember how he does it. He's etched it into the wall or something. We really need to do a podcast on the Vikings in the East. It would be great.

Well, we talked in a previous episode about Rosemary Sutcliffe's book Blood Feud, which is about an English boy who becomes a Varangian guard. And he becomes a Viking and he goes down the river and he goes to Kiev and then he ends up working for the emperor. It's great stuff. We should do a podcast just about that book anyway let's do another um question okay rob scott pick one yeah rob scott um is there any truth in the rumor that king harold was shot in the balls rather than the eyeball and that's that's quite absent isn't it because

we're about to do one on eunuchs so yes and there's our next podcast so dominic what's your take on the was king harold shot in the eye mystery you project onto this what you want really but i think it's endured for so long partly because of that that image in the tapestry so the as far as i can understand some scholars now think that the image in the tapestry so shows two stages of his death so he's shot in the eye then he falls then he's yeah then he's butchered. Or that he's holding a spear. That the guy with the arrow is holding a spear.

Yeah. I mean, I think that Harold's shot in the eye is such a great story. And it's endured because it's... I mean, it's a better story, isn't it, than he's just butchered on the ground. And because the shot in the eye introduces the element of contingency. So it makes it easier to see him as a romantic hero if only he the arrow hadn't hit him right in the eye but maybe he could have prevailed and but the other way of saying like about it is that it's not contingency that it's the judgment of god well i knew this was coming because because

actually the the earliest extant source says that um and this is where the testicle thing comes in, as it were, is that William sees Harold on the battlefield. And William gathers some men around him and they go and attack Harold and they butcher him and they dismember him and they hack off his testicles and they behead him right nice and nice i think that that what's interesting about that is that it that is not a tradition that gets picked up um and i think one of the reasons it doesn't get picked up is that it makes william look bad whereas william has cast hastings as being you know we're putting this before god god will judge and if the battle is finished you know the story that harold gets shot in the eyes are quite early um if that happens then uh obviously it proves that god is on on william's side so i i think that question i mean it's a really interesting one gets caught up in the snarl of norman propaganda and justification they might have

wanted to think that and on the on the topic of of romance and har. They might have wanted to think that. And on the topic of romance and Harold, one from Pink Haze, is King Harold really buried at Waltham Abbey? I've been to both Battle and at Waltham Abbey and have seen what they assume is his grave, but is it him? So the story of what happens to Harold is terribly romantic.

Which I don't know. Isn't there a claim that he's also at Bosham? Yeah, that's right. And there has been an argument about, permission was refused, I think, to dig up a grave in Bosham to do DNA testing or something. I mean, what do you think, Tom? Do you have a definitive answer?

I don't know. How can you? I don't know. But the story, well, so again, the earliest thing is that William refuses to give the body of harold to um to harold's mother that's right give it to another norman yeah they make it they make a joke that um harold's body should be put um on the foreshore looking out to sea and that that's kind of interesting because bosom is on the sea it's on the sussex coast so maybe that's um but that there are a lot of medieval stories that he he survives the battle and becomes a hermit i like that so i like that one so he'll

maybe he'll come here we've been told by the producer that we can only do one more question so i think we should do two more questions just assert just just to assert some pathetic some pathetic sort of vestige of power over our own podcast so i think we should do conor moon's question because it's very crucial if you can be very crucial um how if all if at all just says conor moon did life change for the submerged nine-tenths of the population when norman rule was established you know was it life as usual for the peasants or were there big changes and i guess that's a really huge question isn't it so for you're living in a village somewhere in lincolnshire or or herefordshire how much does this actually matter to you is that the replacement of one elite by another you know does it make a big difference in your in your

life tom well i'll tell you who it does make a big difference for is the slaves because about a tenth of the population in ang-Saxon England are enslaved. And the Norman Conquest effectively ends that. And there is evidence that William is ideologically opposed to slavery, that he regards it as being contrary to God's will. So you could cast the Norman invasion as an anti-slavery movement as well. Well, you could. To throw into the mix okay and so on that topic of what gets lost with the norman conquest here is one from tim vasby

bernie friend of the show um when you think of 1066 various aspects of anglo-saxon culture came to an end so we've talked about slavery that's one aspect that comes to an end yeah which of these are we most saddened by so dominic you're a romantic on this i am so you see i what i mourn tom is something that probably is utterly made up which is the sort of the traditional liberties of the anglo-saxon you know the anglo the ordinary the ordinary the middle england you know crushed by these frenchified um and i'm sure that's utterly invented but i kind of like the romance of the of the norman yoke and i suppose there's um ah you know the sources suggest that actually norman rule wasn't a bundle of laughs i mean people sort of english sources say you know

they they sort of wept and cried out and to God such was the oppression. So I think there is obviously a sense of some degree of liberty or self-government or cultural integrity being lost, I guess. The other thing that's lost, of course, is the hair. Yeah, so there's a sort of hairiness to the Anglo-Saxons, isn't there, in the Bayeux Tapestry, don't they have moustaches and stuff? Yeah. So they look like the village people or something. And that's obviously

been lost to some extent, hasn't it? I mean, as a clean-shaven person myself, I suppose I should applaud the Norman. Are you never tempted by a kind of Godwinson moustache? I think I'd look ridiculous. I think you should try it. I mean, more ridiculous than I do now. You think so? Yeah, I think you should try it. Maybe. Alright, what do you think's

been... I mean, you're another Norman tonsured man. For me, I to do now yeah i think you should try it maybe all right what do you think's been what do you i mean you're another norman norman for me i'm i i i think what gets broken is the distinctive quality of the english church uh and our sense of the saints the anglo-saxon saints which um as you'll know from we did the saint cuthbertbert. St. Cuthbert does get appropriated. Quite a lot of them get appropriated. But because essentially the Normans move in and they take over all the cathedrals, the monasteries and everything, that sense of a kind of organic link with the pre-conquest church

and its traditions and its saints, that gets broken. And I'm sad about that. Although possibly not as sad about the fact that you don't have a moustache and i really think that you seriously think about firming your rights as a free-born anglo-saxon by growing one tom like one last question which has occurred to me from what you you just said do you think that the the fact that such a question is being asked by the reverend tim vasby bernie and the sense of 2066 is a rupture and a lost sense of liberty do you think that plays a part in English exceptionalism England's sense of itself is distinct I think that um I think it's

very very when we talked about this right at the beginning about it the role that 1066 plays in the secondary school curriculum that it's right at the beginning um yeah I think that if England's exceptional it's exceptional in the way that it describes as its national myth, the story of which the English get defeated. I mean, yeah, it's that's not something that the Scots or the Americans do. It seems very, very odd. And I think that that does kind of I think it's always slightly served to qualify the English triumphalism, certainly. And perhaps... I think it reflects our enormous sense of self-confidence.

Possibly. You have to be a really top nation to start with. To celebrate a defeat. Yes, maybe. Well, on that patriotic note, I think we probably better celebrate the end of 1066. We have another episode coming up, don't we, on Wednesday, a live episode.

Assassinations. So the link, by the time this goes out, may well already be up. If not, it will be going up imminently. And yes, it's on assassinations. And then on thursday we have an episode in which we go through our list of top 10 eunuchs and i think we're not giving a spoiler are we harold isn't one of them so no he's not we've got some very good eunuchs though

yeah we've got very good eunuchs good eunuchs we've got them so um we will see you hopefully on wednesday and hopefully on Thursday. Thanks very much. Bye-bye. Thanks for listening to The Rest Is History. For bonus episodes, early access, ad-free listening and access to our chat community, please sign up at restishistorypod.com. That's restishistorypod.com.