The Rest Is History - 555. 1066: Slaughter at Stamford Bridge (Part 2)

Episode Date: April 9, 2025

In the tumultuous climax of 1066, why was Harold’s very own brother Tostig the first of the mighty foes he had to face? How did Harald Hardrada then launch his invasion of England, and how much resistance did he initially receive? And, what unfolded at the bloody battle of Stamford Bridge, in which Harold Godwinson and Harald Hardrada, two terrible kings, faced off at long last? Join Tom and Dominic as they discuss the Battle of Stamford Bridge, the last great clash between vikings and Anglo Saxons, for the English throne… _______ Twitter: @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Producer: Theo Young-Smith Assistant Producer: Tabby Syrett + Aaliyah Akude Executive Producers: Jack Davenport + Tony Pastor 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 the restishistory.com. As the enemy raced up the slope, Harold Hardrada tightened his grip on his sword hilt and whispered one last prayer. There was nothing for it now, he thought, but to die with honor. He had formed his men into a tight circle, linking their shields around the raven banner, where he and Tostick stood with his friends and captains. The Saxons, Harold thought, would have to cut their way through the line.

He would make them pay in blood before the day was out. The enemy was screaming out their war songs. Through the dust and chaos he could see Harold Godwinson at the foot of the slope, urging his men on. The circle was shrinking. Harold's men were tiring, their shield arms heavy, their sword blows weary. And still the Saxons came on, eager to finish it. For just a moment, Harold thought of that

morning by the stream when he was little, when Olaf had asked him what he most wanted in life. House-calls! So many house-calls that they would eat all half-danced cows at single feast. What he wouldn't give for more Housecarls now. So there Dominic, the epic tones of Snorri Sturluson, the 13th century historian and poet from Iceland, one of the greatest writers in medieval history, whose epic account, the saga of King Harold is the definitive definitive, in fact pretty much the only account we have of the Battle of Stamford Bridge, and since today's episode is about the Battle of Stamford Bridge, I mean what else could we possibly have begun with but that great work by Snorri Sturluson? I mean really the only choice, except perhaps for a new version, a new account of the battle of Stanford Bridge.

Because actually that wasn't by Sonari Sturluson at all, was it? It was by you! It was, yeah. It's a forensic reconstruction, I think it's fair to say, of what happened at that battle in Adventures in Time Fury of the Vikings. So that is literally exactly what Harold Hardrada thought. He thought back to that moment when he was a little boy, which listeners will remember from the Harold Hardrada series and you know, the enemy was singing their war songs and he could see Harold Godwinson coming on and that's exactly what happened, Tom. Because do you know Dominic, when we're going to go on and do the Battle of Hastings and initially I put a passage from

Millennium, my book about which includes the account of the battle of Hastings. And initially I put a passage from Millennium, my book about, which includes the account of the battle of Hastings in the front. And then I thought, no, I shouldn't do that. I mean, you know, there are so many other epic accounts that were written at the time I put them in and I did think, I wonder whether Dominic will include his account in preference to that of Snorri Sturluson, the great writer. Yeah. And you sent me the text and you had done and I salute you.

This speaks to your fundamental lack of self-confidence, I think Tom. I think that is probably what it does, yeah. Whereas I'm not burdened by the same doubts and anxieties. No, you have the spirit of a Viking. I have the spirit of a cringing monk. I think there is, I don't think there's any doubt about that. By the way, please clip that and use that as a social media. So Dominic, I mean, today looking at one of the most exciting stories in all of medieval history and it's really the last great battle between Anglo-Saxons and Vikings for the throne of England. And I guess this is the battle with which so many accounts of the story of

the Vikings finishes, doesn't it? In almost every general English language history of the Vikings, this is the last chapter. There may be a sort of epilogue, au revoir, farewell to the Viking age, but this is the last great narrative set piece. And you can see why, because although there are, as we'll discuss, there are subsequent attempts by Scandinavians to raid or indeed invade England. This is the last great one.

It's the one that comes closest. And it has, it really does have the quality of myth because at its heart are two irresistible, colorful, doomed characters, Harold Hardrada and Harold Godwinson. And both of them stand for things greater than themselves, i.e. a civilization, Anglo-Saxon England, as you put it, what, meatballs and mustaches. Yeah, and the Vikings, dragon ships and booming laughs. And booming laughs, exactly.

So let us start with the man at the centre of the story, Harald Hardrada, who we talked about last week. So last week we left him as King of Norway. The beginning of 1066, he's probably 50 years old. So he's the oldest of the contenders in this story. He's had the most extraordinary life. A lot of what we talked about last week, you know, was in that sort of fuzzy area between myth and history and fiction.

But we know that, you know, he was exiled as a teenager. He went off to be a mercenary in Kievan Rus, he was a Varangian guard, messing around with the emperor and the empress, possible eye gouging, comes back, snakes, great scenes, becomes king of Norway. And we ended the Harald Hardrada series talking about how he earns the reputation Hardrada. So there's a kind of chilling ruthlessness to Harold Hardrada. Adam of Braemann, who we've mentioned before, called him the Thunderbolt of the North. William of Poitiers, who we mentioned, William's chaplain, on Monday said he was the strongest living man under the sun. So even if you strip away the inventions

of the sagas, Harold Hardrada is a frighteningly ruthless, vengeful, effective, avaricious, impressive man. He is the distillation of the Viking ethos, I think. And that's why his story makes such a wonderful conclusion to any history of the Vikings. And it's why he's such a perfect history for a saga of the kind that Snorri Sturluson and the other Icelandic writers have. And one of the things that's fascinating about this particular episode is that we have a kind of first draft of history in the form of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Yes, we do. So we talked about Tostig in the previous episode and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle tells

us that he has retreated from England in 1065, that he's gone to Flanders, that he then launches a raid on the Isle of Wight, that he then launches a raid on the Humber and that he then goes to Scotland. And that is all it tells us. But the thing that about Snorri's epic is that it fills in a lot of those details, whether accurately or not is up for debate, but certainly in a much more dramatic manner. So let's, if we were doing this as an HBO series, we would start this episode with Harold in his hall in Vikken, which is near basically the Oslo region in Norway, and his days of war appear to be over.

He's fought this interminable war with the Danes that has basically ended in a stalemate. You can sort of see how you would shoot the scene. He's sitting there at the end of his hall, grizzled. The old wolf. The old wolf, exactly. And one day in the summer of 1066, I mean, this must have been effectively what happened. A man walks into his hall, a man the sagas describe as, quote, a tall tall strong man, a big talker and warlike with an enormous English moustache. I mean, the thing that's interesting about that description is that in the life of Edward the Confessor, which was commissioned by Tostig's sister, he's described as being short. So interesting contradiction there. Maybe his sister didn't

know what she was talking about. Maybe I'm going with the sagas, Tom. I'm always, by the way, in this episode, going to go with the sagas. So this is Tostig. And as we described last time, Tostig is seething with resentment against his brother, Harold Godwinson, who he blames for his exile from England, the fact that Moorcar has become Earl of Northumbria, that everybody hates him, all of this. Now, Tostig in the last episode had been raiding England, described him messing around in the Isle of Wight and the Humber and whatnot. But I think it's pretty clear that after he's gone off to Scotland and he's been blown around, he's looking for something more than raiding. I mean, by going

to get help, he is signing up effectively to regime change in England. It's clear to him his brother's never going to take him back. There's no possibility of a rapprochement. Now if the sagas are to be believed, Harald Hardrada is not Tostig's first choice because the sagas say initially he goes to see somebody you mentioned very briefly last time, Svein of Denmark. And Tostig in the sagas says to him, why don't you come with me and win the country, win England as Cnut your mother's brother did. And I think this has the ring of absolute plausibility. Svein says, no, I'm not Cnut. I don't have Cnut's capabilities. Only with difficulty can I defend my own Danish dominions against the Northmen, against the Norwegians,

which is absolutely accurate. Had Svein taken Tostig up on his offer and gone to England, there's no doubt in my mind that Harald Hardrada would have immediately invaded and conquered Denmark. So Svein would have been bonkers to take that up. Tostig, we're told, reacted contemptuously. He says, I expected more if so gallant a man, and I will look for help, he says, from a king who isn't frightened of a great enterprise as you are. It has to be said that both the contemporaneous sources and the sagas imply that Tostick does not have great interpersonal skills. That's absolutely true.

He's not a charmer. And to be fair, the record of history suggests that everybody despises Tostick. Yeah. But Tom. Tostick will redeem himself at the end of this episode and behave, I think, in a very impressive and gallant way. So now Tostick crosses the Skagorak to Vikkun and he finds Harold Hardrada in his hall. Now at first, Harold Hardrada too is dubious. You talked last time about how some of William of Normandy's advisors said, England really?

That is a tough nut to crack. That is a hell of a gamble. And Hardrada hesitates. We're told, the king replied that the North men had no great desire for a campaign in England. People say that the English are not to be trusted. Who says that? You're the one that says that. Outrageous. Everyone knows that an Englishman's word is his body.

This is fools in Norway. Idiots. Remember, Harold Hardrada has never been to England, so he knows not whereof he Everyone knows that an Englishman's word is his body. Right. This is fools in Norway. Yeah. Idiots. Remember, Harald Hardrada has never been to England, so he knows not whereof he speaks. Yeah, true. And Tostik says, hold on. Remember you have a claim to the English throne. He reminds Hardrada that a quarter of a century earlier during the succession crisis after the death of Cnut. There was this story that half of Cnut and Hardrada's brother, Magnus, had done a deal that whichever of them died without an heir would inherit

the other's kingdom, all of his kingdoms. And Tostick says to Hardrada, Magnus was your brother and you've inherited that claim. Edward the confessor has died without an heir. And under the terms of that deal, England is yours. Now, whether they'd really made that deal, it's not written down anywhere, so who knows, but it's convenient for Hardrada. And Tostick goes on, according to the sagas, if you want it, England is yours. I can talk most of the lords there to supporting you. That, as we know, is a dubious claim to say the least.

Tostik goes on and he appeals to Hodrad as vanity. Everybody says that never in all the Northlands has there been a warrior king to compare with you. So it seems odd to me that you spent 15 years trying to conquer Denmark and yet you shrink from the chance of ruling England when it is yours for the taking. Oh he's subtle there isn't he? Now the sagas then say that Harold and Tostig talked long and frequently together, which undoubtedly they must have done. And Harold has to weigh this up, right, because this is a

gamble. Now until this moment he has never shown the slightest interest in England and people who listen to our Harold Hardrada two-parter will know that basically all his career was spent in the East, not the West. He's always looked East. Because there are two paths to wealth in the Viking world out there, England or Constantinople basically by this point. So this is a novelty for him. He's never really thought about England before. Some of his chief advisors we're told said, look, you can do anything. You're the Thunderbolt of the North. Why not? Let's go for it. Others, and this echoes again,

what the Normans said to William, others again said that England was difficult to attack, that it was very full of people, and that the men-at-arms were so brave that one of them was better than two of Harold's best men, which actually, again, bears out what you were saying last time, that the English are generally underrated. We tend to think, oh, the English were rubbish because they were very peaceable, but actually, they're more formidable than you think. Yeah, and to look at it from the Viking point of view, Viking armies keep going over to England. They keep battering it, conquering it, draining it of its silver and still it endures and comes back kind of stronger than ever.

Yeah, exactly. So Harold sits and thinks about it and eventually he decides he'll do it. And I think there are three reasons why. Number one is the great traditional Viking reason, which I think does then sort of cement his last Viking reputation. And that is basically money. He has had terrible trouble in Norway raising taxes to pay for his wars, hence the name Hardrada because he's basically been harrying people who won't pay their taxes. But England as we've established is very,

very rich and even if he didn't get the crown, imagine that he lands, there's a lot of battles, there's a kind of stalemate, a little bit like it was with, you know, Svein Fortbeard and Cnut in the early days. He might just go home with loads of daengeld. The English would buy him off. The English would buy him off. So that's the, you know, that could be a worst case scenario. He doesn't think he's going to die. I mean, it's not the worst case scenario, actually, as it will turn out, is it? But yes, I mean, that's what he could get. Then I think there's a geopolitical reason. It's very clear that Harald has always wanted to, you know, Norway's not enough for him. Basically, if you're a Norwegian or Danish king, your ambition is obviously to try to be the next canute, to build a kind of North Sea empire. It would make complete sense that you might want to try to do that.

And I guess Harald Hardrada has seen Yaroslav the Wise, the great king of Kiev, and he's seen the emperor in Constantinople. So he has a sense perhaps that Norway is a slightly shrunken and impoverished stage compared to those. He's been playing for Real Madrid and now he's managing Burnley and he probably thinks to himself, ideally I'd be managing a bigger club. And the third thing I think is psychological. And there's no reason to doubt the evidence of the saga is that Harold Hardrada is a very restless warlike man who basically, he's a bit like Alexander the Great. He doesn't like building bridges and discussing tax returns. What he really

likes doing is fighting people. But also unlike Alexander the Great, he's now 50. So he's prone to a massive midlife crisis, I guess. Massive midlife crisis. Snorri says, he yearned to conquer new realms. And again, if you're doing this, it's your TV series. He's sitting there on his throne grizzled one last time. Will you join me? You know, that kind of thing. So the orders go out, they assemble a fleet in the Western fjords, we're told 200 long ships and 100 transports. So if you assume about 50 to 60 men per

longship, that would be about 10,000 men. That's plausible, because that's similar to the force that he threw against Denmark. It's actually bigger than the fleet that Cnut used to conquer England in 1016. And I guess that like William's invasion force, which is massing at this very moment on the North coast of France, Harold's name and reputation is a huge draw. Oh yeah. If you're a young man from Norway, Sweden, Denmark, or indeed the East or from Flanders or wherever it might be. And the word has gone out. Hardrada sails again. It's like something from a western, isn't it?

The dragon boats shall roareth last time. As the sun sets in the west. It's Theoden in the Lord of the Rings, right? One last time, you know, with all that stuff. So the fleet is assembled. Before leaving, he goes to visit the shrine of his late brother, Saint Olaf in a place called Nideros, which is today Trondheim. And Saint Olaf has already been turned into a slightly implausible patron saint of Norway as a way of buttressing the Hadradar dynasty regime. And he supposedly, I mean, why you would do this, God knows you'll know more about this than me Tom, he trims the hair and nails of the body of his brother and then bizarrely throws the key of the tomb into the river.

Well Otto III in the millennial year, the year 1000 had done the same for Charlemagne. He'd gone down into Charlemagne's tomb and trimmed his nails. Yeah. Right. So it's obviously a thing. Right. Now a very bad blow for Hardrada is that just as they're preparing to sail, his men are afflicted by a series of terrible dreams.

And Tom, you may scoff at this, but I have no reason to doubt that this happened. So first of all, there's a man called Geerd, and he dreamed of seeing ravens perched on the prowess of all their longships and a sinister witch wife singing that all the men would soon be a feast for crows. That's not good, is it? Unfortunately, there's another bloke called Thord and he says, well, he's also had a dream. He saw two armies lined up for battle in the fields of England.

Another of these witch wives riding between them on a wolf and I quote, the wolf had a man's carcass in his mouth and the blood was dripping from his jaws. And when he'd eaten one body, she, the witch wife, threw another corpse into his mouth until he swallowed them all. Again, it could be the English. But then unfortunately, the crowning dream, Harold himself has a dream that his brother Olaf, with his nails nicely trimmed, turns up during the night wearing the same armour that he had worn at the fatal battle of Stiklestad, which we

did in our Harold Hardrada series. Where he's chopped to pieces, isn't he? Yeah. So Olaf, bleeding, turns up in this armor and sings to him, thy death is near, thy corpse I fear, the crow will feed, the witch wife's steed. So this is a bad, bad development for Harold Hardrada. You can imagine him shivering as he stands on the prow of his ship. Do you think he would shiver? He would shiver. He'd give a little imperceptible shiver, I think. An internal shiver. He'd

draw his bare skin, you know, his wolf skin cloak tighter around him. He would gaze back at the dark forests of Norway and then his face would set and he would gaze at the grey steely waters of the North Sea and set sail for England. This is literally what happened. So August 1066, it's now or never they set sail. Now at first they seem to have headed northwest towards Orkney and Orkney is part of Harold's empire.

And we are told by Heimskringler, the King Harold saga, that there he collected more men and he left, the saga says he left Queen Elisife. So she's the one from Yaroslav's daughter. And her daughters, Maria and Ingegird in Orkney. But historians now think that's unlikely that she might have been dead by this point anyway. And that actually he had a second wife called Tora and that maybe it was her who he left in Orkney. Anyway, we don't need to worry about them. And it's interesting because there's a 12th century English chronicler, so that's well

before Snorri, who says that Tostig, who has spent the whole summer, presumably having come back from seeing Harold Hardrada hanging out with Malcolm of Scotland, that he has already been joined by ships from Orkney, presumably sent by Hardrada. Yeah, it's slightly confusing where Tostig is at this point because the sagas give different explanations but Tostig is definitely doing something up in Scotland. He's with Malcolm. I mean, that's what the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle says. So Harold now turns south, he sails down the east coast of Scotland towards the ancient

kingdom of Northumbria, of course, the part of England with very, very strong Scandinavian roots and the Scandinavian traditions. And in the middle of September, Hardrada makes landfall on the coast at a place called then called Cliffland, what we would now call Cleveland, North Yorkshire. And this is very Danish territory. So the first villages that he comes to, which are now suburbs of Middlesbrough, today they are Ormsby, Steinsby, Tolesby. They are Danish names. They are named after Vikings called Orm, Steen, Tol.

And the people that were told offered Hardrada no resistance. Now that may be, I mean, you wouldn't, would you? You wouldn't. But also these are places where they probably have trade with Scandinavia, where the arrival of Scandinavians is not maybe as terrifying and outlandish as it would be had they landed in Devon, let us say. So they do a bit of messing around there. Then they sail 40 miles south to a place called Skardy's Fort,

Skardaborg, which is named after a brilliant man called Thorgyll Skadi, Thorgyll's the hair lipped and Skardy's Fort, Skardaborg, we now call Skabra. So they land at Skabra. Now Skabra is a larger town, it's fortified and the people here clearly seem to have felt more English because they actually do try to resist Hardrada. Hardrada takes the town anyway and we're told by the saga, the Northmen killed many people there and took all the booty they could lay hold of. There was nothing left for the Englishmen now if they would preserve their lives but to submit to King Harold and thus he subdued the country wherever he came. So in other words, he's made an example of Scarborough. He has looted it, sacked it, and this sends a message to all the

towns of Eastern Northeastern England. You stand in my way and I will hammer you. But you do right by me and I'll do right by you. Exactly. So now he turns into the mouth of the Humber and by this point, we can be pretty sure he has joined forces with Tostig and Tostig has some Flemish mercenaries probably, and he definitely has men from Scotland, from King Malcolm.

Tostig has already sailed up the Humber once already this year of 1066 and it's a reminder of the way that for if you have any kind of Scandinavian inheritance of invasion, the Humber is where you go. It's like a great dagger pointed into the vitals of Middle England. And this is a standard thing, right? This is not unusual. So far, Hardrada is following the playbook that so many Vikings have done so often. He probably has about 12,000 men at this point. This includes his own son, Olaf Tostik's son who's called Skuli. They go up the Humber and then they turn into the river Uuz. People remember how they'd used the networks of rivers in what are now Russia and Ukraine. Now they're using the network of rivers

in Northern England and they row up the Uuz northwards until they reach the village of Rikol, which is 10 miles from York. Now so far everything Harold has done has made complete sense, has been very well planned. He has gone for the area of England that is the longest and deepest Scandinavian connections. He doesn't seem to be just interested in raiding. I think he's probably serious about conquest which is why he's going for York because York is one of the two biggest urban prizes really. London is the only one that compares. It's formerly Yorvik, massive Scandinavian heritage, it'd have been the capital of Eric Bloodaxe. You know, there are a lot of people there who would have Scandinavian family connections,

roots and so on, trading connections. There's also an archbishop, so quite convenient. And of course they, they crack out enormous turds, mighty Viking turds. I think the largest turd, isn't it? The largest fossil turd ever found, something like that. So a terrifying place. Slightly more excitingly, it also has a mint. So it's one of the only places, it's the only mint in Northern England. So if you take York, you're taking a proper seat of kind of royal authority. Anyway, York is guarded by the two

northernmost earls and we've talked about them a lot. They are Morkar, the Earl of Northumbria, and Edwin, Earl of Mercia. They are the grandsons of Leofric. They are the dynasty that had been the great counterweight to the Godwinsons. And they're now the brothers-in-law of Harold Godwinson. So they are now loyal to Harold as king. Now they are both much younger than Hardrada and much less battle-hardened. They're both in their twenties. And it may be that Hardrada thought they would come to a deal, that they would panic and run away, that they would surrender, but they don't. Now an interesting thing here is why don't they stay in York? Because York has stone walls that are built on kind of Roman

foundations. Everybody knows the one thing the Vikings don't like doing is besieging towns. They're not terribly good at it. They don't enjoy it. Why don't Edwin and Morkar just stay in York and wait for Harold Gobinson to come in with his army and relieve them? The obvious answer is that as you described last time, Harold Gobinson has been waiting on the South Coast for ages for the Normans, and his men have become restless and he has released them to go off and bring in the harvest. harvest. So Edward and Morkar probably think, first of all, that his men are all gone, so maybe he's not going to come and relieve us anyway. But crucially, our own men have not brought in our harvest, so we don't have a lot of food in York. The city is reliant on what small stocks of food we have. And if we stay cooped up in York, Hardrada's men, they'll ravage the fields or they'll

eat all the harvest themselves and we will starve. So we basically have no choice but to force the issue. Yeah. They are bold, these pups. Is that Howard Hardrada joining us? Yes. Brilliant. So now we come to Wednesday the 20th of September.

So that morning, Harold and Tostig are marching north along the River Ouse towards the hamlet of Fulford, which is now a southern suburb of York. And at Fulford, according to the sagas, they find their road blocked by a shield wall of about 4,000 men. And these are Edwin and Morkar's houseguards, so in other words, they're trained professional soldiers, and they're sort of levies and a real rag tag. People with pitchforks, up on a sow, I've got out my pitchfork. Exactly. People would like an axe, a bloke who's got a sling, all of this kind of thing. To describe the

terrain, the terrain is very wet and we know that because we can tell from the name of the place. Fulford, it means foul water ford. So as the Norsemen are looking at it, they have on their left the River Ouse and on their right it's a very kind of muddy swampy area. The Norsemen are going to go uphill between these two things and they're basically going to head up and they have to cross this deep muddy ditch towards the Saxons. Now I have to say the saga's descriptions of this battle are exceedingly confusing. And historians who claim they know what happened are obviously talking about Baudelaire. And to be honest, the same is kind of true of Stamford Bridge as well.

Right, exactly. But what seems to have happened is this. Basically, at first Harold R. Dryder's men are going slightly uphill through all this mud. The Saxons are throwing spears and firing arrows at them. The bodies pile up, people are stumbling in the ditch and whatnot. The right hand side, the right wing of Hardrada's force, where Tostig's mercenaries are, they start to waver, we're told. Now, maybe is that because everyone hates Tostig? Or is this the sagas just trying to buttress Howard Hardrada's reputation of dissing Tostig? Who can say? According to the sagas, more car begins to push them back, then all Thumbrians end up crossing the ditch. Now some people say, well maybe was this a ploy? Was this a Battle of Hastings style ploy? Or has it been lifted

from accounts of the Battle of Hastings? Exactly. King Harold's Saga says, Harold Hardrada commanded the charge to be sounded and urged on his men. He ordered the banner, which was called the Land Waster, to be carried before him and made so severe an assault that all had to give way before it. Land Waster, his banner, very famous emblem of kind of his power, this would have been a white silk banner with a black raven on it. You know, a little nod there back to their traditions. Will Barron It said that it brings victory to whomever it proceeds into battle.

Alistair Exactly. So now Hardrada orders his men into this great charge, into the gap that's been left by Morkar. There's a lot of ferocious hand-to-hand combat. And basically, the Norsemen are much better at this than the Anglo-Saxons are, than the English are. And the sagas are explicit about the scale of the slaughter. So this is King Harold's saga. He made so severe an assault that all had to give way before it. And there was a great loss among the men of the earls and they soon broke into flight, most of them leaping into the ditch, which was so filled with corpses that the Norsemen could cross it without getting wet.

Then a lot of the English seem to have fled towards the river and you know bodies piling up and then river another saga Morkinskin and no greater slaughter will ever be inflicted on a brave army. So the sagas say the English did their best they fought very bravely but basically our guy was far too good for them and in the end their military power is totally broken. Now both Edwin and Morkar get away but now there's nothing between Harold Hardrada and York. He marches on York and on Sunday the 24th of September after a couple of days of faffing around city fathers have opened the gates and Harold and Tostig convene a thing,

an assembly outside the city walls. And the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle tells us, they offered to grant a lasting peace to the citizens, as long as they all march south together to conquer this kingdom. So what Harold is basically, Hadrada is saying to York, the York sort of city fathers here is, you know, I'm not going to sack the city. I'm not going to pillage and loot it. Let's collaborate now. You join with me and we will take England. And actually, do you know what? There are probably a lot of people in York who think to themselves, we could actually come out quite well from this. You know, why not?

Well, because the Godwinnsons are unpopular. And the fact that Toste perhaps is at Harold's side actually serves as a reminder of everything they disliked about the Godwin Sons and perhaps, you know, they'll pitch in with Harold Hardrada. Right, and if they've pitched in with Harold Hardrada, what kind of benefits will flow Northumbria's way, York's way, as opposed to London, which will be a conquered city? Yeah, and of course for Harold Hardrada, why would he sack York? Because he needs it as his capital. Yes, exactly. So Hardrada says, okay, fine. This is what we'll do. You can give me 100 people as hostages, as a guarantee of your good behaviour. I will offer you 100 people as well. I mean,

historians disagree about whether these are hostages or whether actually this is basically a token garrison. Kind of collaboration. Yeah, I'll leave 100 armed hundred armed men here anyway and he says tomorrow morning which is Monday the 25th I will collect the hostages and some supplies from you and when I do that I will name the people who are gonna rule over the town and who are gonna sort out the laws and who are gonna give out land and all of that so make the final arrangements tomorrow Monday now in the meantime my men and I going back to give out land and all of that. So we'll make the final arrangements tomorrow, Monday. Now in the meantime, my men and I are going back to our ships, which are still

on the river at Rickall on the river Ouse, which is 10 miles away. We're going to sleep on the ships and we'll be back tomorrow. We won't come back to York. We'll get the hostages from a river crossing, an old Roman river crossing actually, called Stamford Bridge, which is eight miles east of York. That is where we will meet. And they all say, fine, we'll see you tomorrow at Stamford Bridge. So as night falls on this Sunday, Hardrada and his men have marched all the way back to the River Ooze and Rickle. And you can imagine the scene, Tom, you can deploy your laugh if you like. There is much feasting.

Right. There's a lot, there's much feasting, war stories, they're telling anecdotes about, you know, I smashed this bloke's head and it was, it was absolutely brilliant. Loved it. And you know what? Harold Hardrider is living the dream. It's all gone swimmingly. He's back on the road. Great gig. Yeah, exactly. Now for the South and for the Crown of England. But Tom, as they drain their wine cups and their drinking horns, what none of them knows is that 12 miles to the West, out of sight, entirely undetected, another army is waiting. And Tom, within just a few hours, Harold Hardrada's final adventure will reach its dramatic, heart-stopping conclusion.

This is blood pumping stuff. And we will be back after the break with the battle of Stamford Bridge. Hello. Now I'm sure you're already aware of this, but if you're not, we have some absolutely thrilling news for you. Last October, Tom and I did a live show at the Royal Albert Hall in London with an orchestra and a choir, and we enjoyed it so much that we're coming back to the Royal Albert Hall again with an orchestra to do not one, but two live shows, a matinee

and an evening performance. That's right, Dominic. We will be returning to the Royal Albert Hall on the 4th of May. And once again, we will be exploring the lives of two composers on this occasion, Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky and Richard Wagner. And once again, we will be accompanied by a full orchestra, the Philharmonia Orchestra, and the orchestra will be conducted by very much friend of the show, Oliver Zefman. That's right, Tom. And here is the really, really

good news. The very last tickets have just been released and there are still one or two available and they are both for the matinee and for the evening performance. So if you're an early bird or a night owl, there are still tickets available for you. So that's The Rest is History live at the Royal Albert Hall on the 4th of May, so only a few weeks away and we will be covering the lives of Tchaikovsky and Wagner and if you want to snaffle up those last remaining tickets go to therestishistory.com that's the restish history dot com. Hello, it's Steph McGovern and Robert Peston from The Rest Is Money here. Now it's absolute carnage at the minute on the stock market across the world, all thanks to Donald Trump and his tariffs. So this week we've gone daily.

We're going to bring you shorter episodes every lunchtime. Just trying to make sense of it all because Robert, I mean, we've been in crises before, haven't we? Yeah, I mean, I've been at the front line of reporting financial crisis for decades from Black Monday in 1987 through the global financial crisis through to the COVID crisis. I mean, you know, the list goes on. This is a unique crisis because it is driven by one man Donald Trump, but it does share lots in common with those sagas we have lived through before.

And as we know, although what people see is falling share prices, it is to an extent what goes on in debt markets, financial markets, which is more important to our prosperity. And we are seeing absolute turmoil in bond markets, for example. So this is going to affect every part of our lives. Yes. And so we'll be looking at things like what do we think is going to happen next? How much pain is Trump willing to take? And what similarities are there with things like the credit crunch that you and I covered together? So to try and make sense of all of this, join

us on The Rest Is Money Money wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, welcome back. We are at dawn, Monday the 25th of September 1066. Harold Ardrada presumably waking up perhaps with a slightly sore head. There has been much drinking and feasting and fooling and he must think everything has gone absolutely brilliant. All he needs to do is go back to the meeting place outside York, pick up his hostages, pick up his supplies, and then he can turn south. And he divides his army, doesn't he? So a third stay behind at Recall to guard the ships. And those who were left behind include his son Olaf and his pledged son-in-law

Einstein. And then the other 8,000, he and Tosti will take them to go and get the hostages and the supplies and things. And we know that it's unseasonably warm. So the Heimskringler, the weather was uncommonly fine and the sun was very hot. So the men laid aside their armor and went ashore only with their shields, helmets, spears and swords. And many had also bows and arrows and they were all very merry. So heading off without your armor, what could possibly go wrong? So Tostey, we're told in the sagas, says, what are we doing? Let's take the armor with us. It's mad to leave our armor behind in enemy territory. I fear you've lost your wits. Tostik, we're told in the sagas, says, what are we doing? Let's take the armour with us.

It's mad to leave our armour behind in enemy territory. I fear you've lost your wits. His people skills kicking in again there. We are told that everybody hates Tostik so much that, quote, nobody would listen to him. I love that detail. Now, the thing is, Tostik, of course course at this point is redundant. Really, there's no point in Tostig anymore. But you might say worse than redundant that he's an active problem because everyone in York hates him.

Exactly. So it doesn't surprise me that nobody listens to him. I mean, at this point, if you're Harold Hardrada, you're probably thinking, well, I'm going to get rid of this bloke pretty soon because I don't need him anymore. Do they leave their armor behind? There are some people who think they wouldn't. So this guy called Tom Shippey, great scholar of Norse literature, great Tolkien scholar, who says in his book Laughing Shall I Die, he says it's just not plausible that Harold Hardrada would have left his armour behind. This feels like a detail invented by saga writers to excuse his defeat. It's basically like saying you wore the wrong boots in a football match that you were expected to win. Who knows? Let's assume

they did leave their armour behind because the sagas are so... they emphasise it again and again. They set off towards Stamford Bridge. Now this is 15 miles away. Some of them would have had horses, most of them wouldn't, so they're proceeding probably at walking pace on what we're told is a hot day. Don Holway in his book The Last Viking about Harold Hardrada estimates that this would have taken them probably five hours or so. So in other words they probably get to Stamford Bridge when the sun's at its height around midday. We've already heard they were very merry. Of course they're in good form. They've beaten the only army in the north of

England. There's no real threat to them. They've had a great night of feasting and we know that they haven't sent out any scouts or patrols because they the north of England. There's no real threat to them. They've had a great night of feasting. And we know that they haven't sent out any scouts or patrols because they don't really need to. Now we're told they get to this bridge across the River Derwent. It's a wooden bridge going kind of east to west. Kind of rough, rough boards across with gaps in. With gaps, yeah. Through which you could stick a sword or spear in fact. Potentially if required. So they cross the bridge from the southeastern side to the northwestern side. And now we're told in the sagas comes the key moment as they see a kind of dust cloud on the western

horizon coming from the direction of York. And Harold Hardrada says to Tostig, what is this horsemen? And Tostig said, oh, well, this was obviously be the group bringing the hostages or maybe it's a party of kind of big wigs from York who've come to pay you, you know, homage to bend the knee as it were. And then the wonderful bit from Snorri, the nearer this force came, the greater it appeared and their shining arms glittered like a field of broken ice. Wonderful description, isn't it? And you get this sense in the sagas of Harold Hardrada watching this force

appear and the light glittering on the tips of the spears and this dreadful sinking feeling when he realizes, I've made a really dreadful mistake here, because these are not the hostages, this is an army. This is really one of the most dramatic, breathtaking, unexpected moments in all English history, I would say. And one of the most iconic exchanges in all of English history. So who is this? It is of course, Harold Godwinson, who's been waiting on the South

Coast all summer to face the Normans. Now there are two versions of what has happened here. Here's the one that is the one that you learn as a child in school. And it's the really exciting one. Remember Harold Goldwinson released his men to bring in the harvest on the 8th of September and went back to London. In this sort of legendary version of the story, he hears on the 19th that Hardrada and Tostig have landed in the North.

He immediately musters his men, what men he can, and then he starts riding out of London, gathering men as he passes. So that would be on the day of the Battle of Fulfa, the 20th of September. Now normally that journey to York would take two weeks and in the kind of legendary version of the story, somehow pushing his men beyond the limits of endurance. He does it in four and a half days. And for historians who love Harold Goldwinson, they say, come on, this bloke is brilliant. He's a brilliant general. He's a great organizer. And what an inspirational Churchillian figure he must be to push his men to cover such a distance

in so short a time. But the trend among more modern historians, more recent historians is to say, come on, if it takes you two weeks, you're not going to do it in four days. That's just not plausible. But I think they can be discounted. You think so? Yeah. The cynics explanation is that actually Harold G. Winston left much earlier, that probably he had words that Hadrada had first entered the Humber, and then he started mentoring his men, and probably it did take them about two weeks. So maybe they're not quite as exhausted. But also bear in mind, you know, we were talking in the last episode about the incredible military

apparatus that an English king can command. He can command people from the North. Yes, of course. You know, there are deep reserves of manpower. They haven't all been wiped out at Fulford. So I assume he could do what seems to have happened in the wake of Stamford Bridge, which is he has a cavalry force and as he goes, he raises men who then accompany him. That's quite possible too. That is absolutely possible. Either way, by the evening of the 24th of September, so the previous evening to the day that he meets Hardrada, by that

evening he has reached the village of Tadcaster, which is 10 miles southwest of York, having covered a distance of almost 200 miles. He will undoubtedly by this point have heard about Edwin and Moorcar being defeated. He will have heard that York has surrendered. And what he does is he waits. He allows Hardrada to have his feast, to feast at the ships. He keeps a low profile. Then when door breaks, while Hardrada's off walking through the countryside with no armor, Harold Godwinson marches into York but doesn't stop there, which you might expect him to do. He keeps going. He obviously is told Hardrada is going to Stamford Bridge to get the supplies and the hostages. And Godwinson says,

right, I'm going there too and we will intercept him there. It's a bold call. He's going to risk it all on one battle. I mean, this is what people keep doing in this story, isn't it? So this is what Hardrada sees coming in the distance. Harold Godwinston with the English army and they're flying Godwinston's war banner, which is a red flag embroidered with a white fighting man. Yeah, the fighting man of Wessex. Love it. So Hardrada thinks, oh no, oh God, because the Englishmen have more men, they have 12,000 men, he perhaps has 8,000.

And if we can believe the sagas, his men have by and large left their armor behind. So what's Hardrada do now? Now we're dependent completely on the Sagas really. The Sagas say he sent three men, he said, bring my three fastest riders and sent them back to Rickle for help, get the rest of the men. But if he did that, he must have known that that would take, even if they're riding really fast and then they basically move really quickly, it will take three, four hours for them to get to him. The key would be to find a bridge, say, and hold the bridge. If only there were a bridge that he could hold out at. And he says to his captains,

the Englishman shall have a hard fray of it before we give ourselves up for lost. No question about that. Yeah. So now there are two great incidents that feel that they're very JRR Tolkien or the stories of King Arthur or indeed the Norse myths. First of all, he wheels his horse to bring up his army and he says, bring forth the land waster, the raven banner. And at that point, his horse stumbles and throws him to the ground in front of his men, which is a terrible omen. But he is

quick-witted as we know, and he says, ha ha ha, our fall is good fortune. And Dominic, that is something that will also be told of William landing at Pevensey. Yes, of course. And both these accounts derive from an account in Sotonius about Julius Caesar. So to be discussed. Well, this is the thing with all these stories, right? So what is going to follow in the sagas? So many elements of this will be familiar to listeners from other battles and other such confrontations, because that's actually, of course, how the sagas worked. They worked, they're rather at Bond films. They have familiar elements that listeners, people listen to the stories, they look forward to hearing the, people listen to the stories, they

look forward to hearing the bit where the king is going to fall off his horse and say, ha ha, that is good fortune, because they like those elements of the story. I think also with the Hadrada specifically, there's the issue of the land waster always guaranteeing victory to whoever has it. And so there is a need on this occasion to explain why that might not necessarily be the case. At this point, we hear Harold Godwinson speak and Harold Godwinson says to his men, who was that tall man whose horse fell with a blue tunic on the beautiful helm? Now he's talking we're told to Norsemen who are fighting for him. And that's not implausible, is it? I mean,

these are not ethnically homogenous armies. Harold is half Scandinavian himself, Harold Godwinson. And these Norsemen apparently say, that was the King of Norway. And Harold Godwinson is given the splendid line, he looks like a grim and splendid man, but I think his luck has run out. Harold Godwinson in these epics, and I think you get the sense of him actually from contemporaneous accounts, there is a quality of Clint Eastwood in a spaghetti western. He's very cool and there's a kind of a dryness to his humor that seems authentic to the man.

Well, we'll see in the next exchange the great demonstration of this and this I have to say for me is one of the great conversations, one of the legendary conversations in all English history, not just medieval history but all English history and there are so many different versions in the sagas and chronicles and things that there must be I think some kernel of truth here and to be frank I want there there must be, I think, some kernel of truth here. And to be frank, I want there to be. But Dominic, remember that wonderful description of Harold Godwinson going through life with

watchful mockery through ambush after ambush, which is contemporaneous. And there is a quality of that about this exchange, I think. Totally there is. So the English have halted. They've approached the Scandinavians. They're at two bow shots away with a group of them ride forward, their banner's flowing. I mean, this is absolute kind of riders of Rohan kind of territory. Their leader, his face is masked behind a gilded helmet and he calls out,

is Earl Tostig here? Tostig says, rather bizarrely, I cannot deny it. And this man says, your brother King Harold greets you and sends you this offer. He would prefer not to fight you and offers you all Northumbria, a third of his kingdom. Tostig, my brother should have offered me that last winter instead of his enmity and spite. That would have been better for England. And then Tostig speaks again, if I accept this offer what will my brother give Harold son of Sigurd, meaning Hardrada, and then the Englishman has the absolutely excellent line, he will give him seven feet of English ground or more if he really is so much taller but no more than that. So for his grave,

for his grave. Now Tostig, who has been a complete snake so far in the story, then he doesn't take the deal. He says, tell my brother to make ready for battle and never let men say that Tostig betrayed Harold Sigurdsson when he came west to fight for England, for we have vowed to win the kingdom or die with honour. Now the Sagas, who have no vested interest in being nice to Tostig, they're very kind to Tostig at this point. They're saying Tostig actually, you know, he doesn't take the deal. He doesn't betray Harold Hardrada. Well, they do love an epic exchange, don't they?

They love an epic exchange. And then the splendid bit, Hardrada, who hasn't understood a word of this because he doesn't speak English. He says to Tostig, who was that man who spoke so fair? And Tostig says, that was my brother, Harold Godwinson. And Hardrada says, he is a small man, but he stood well in his stirrups. It's so brilliant, isn't it? Everybody is so great in this story. And those are the last words that will ever be spoken between the two brothers. And again, from Harold, you get this wit, this kind of defiant, cool, that you feel must be, must be true to the man.

Why is this not the most popular Amazon TV drama of all time? So now they make the final preparations for battle. The English, remember, have about 12,000 men. The Norwegians about 8,000. They, they have not been transformed by the same military revolution that has taken place in Normandy. So this is not going to be a battle with knights and with great cavalry charges and stuff. There is some of that in the sagas, but most people think these are anachronisms, these are later embellishments borrowed from the Battle of Hastings. What's so amazing about 1066, isn't it? That you have a battle that could have been fought

in the eighth century. And you have this other battle at Hastings, which presages all the battles that will be fought over the course of the high middle ages. It's a year with dragonships and with castles. Yeah, exactly. It's like two time periods colliding. That's what makes it such a brilliant story. So the odds very clearly, if you think they've got the same military technology, they're both kind of tired. The odds clearly favour the English, especially if the Norwegians don't have any armour.

And in good epic style, the sagas have Hardrada murmuring, composing poems as he draws up his men. Tom Shippey's translation, I've slightly adapted it. At first, Hardrada says, forward we go in formation, without our armor against blue steel edges, helmets shine. I don't have mine. Now our armor lies down with the ships. Now this is quite depressing for him.

Nice internal rhyme scheme though. Very nice, very internal rhyme scheme though. Very nice, very nice rhyme scheme. But then apparently the saga says, Hardrider says, oh come on, this is, that's a bit defeatist. I'll compose a better verse. And this is Tom Shippett's translation again. Again, I've slightly adapted it. We should not creep into battle behind the hollow of our shields because of the crush of weapons. So commanded Faithful Hill, the Valkyrie. The woman once told me to hold my head high where ice blades meet skulls in

the clash of swords." What that basically means is let's do this, let's do it straight, let's not hide behind our shields, let's meet this face on. Now I don't think for a moment that Harold Hardrada is genuinely standing there composing poems, but I think this does capture something of the essence of the man. He is always a... I'm not sure about that. I think it's possible. We know from historical evidence much later, the Elves of Orkney, when they go on these kind of great expeditions, and some of them are famous for composing, extemporizing poetry

like this. So it's not impossible. This is great that you've dropped your scepticism. See, I want to dial up the melodrama. I think Harold Hardrider definitely composed poems. These are those exact poems. Because I think the poems are likely to be more authentic than the actual details of the battle. Do you? Well. They're the kind of things that might have been preserved.

Well, on the details of the battle. So the Battle of Stamford Bridge, one of the great battles in English history. What do we know about it? If you read King Harold's saga, Snorri Sturluson, written in the 1230s, there are knights charging, people running away, all kinds of twists and turns. It's the Battle of Hastings. It's the Battle of Hastings. If you read the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, you're like, well, what's the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle say? I should tell you what it said. It said, they continued fighting all day. Come on, give us more detail.

Have you been to the site of the battle? I've never been there. It's basically a housing estate. So I went to have a look at it. There's a pub, there's a bridge, there's a little, there are kind of little hints of it, but it's quite hard to get a sense of the terrain. Please tell me there's a visitor center of some kind. No, I think there's a board. Oh no. On the side of a kind of community centre.

So there should be a virtual reality immersive experience, you know, be in the thick of the action. Yeah, ravens. Right. Whistling of arrows. Yeah, all of that. So let's go with the sagas, which are the, yeah, and try to, I'm just going to try to have some fun with the sagas and see what we think could have happened. Hardrada wants to hold off the English for as long as possible before, let's say, 4,000 men arrive from Rickle.

They'll take four hours. So he's got a long time to fight. But as you said, that bridge is going to come in very useful. So it's a narrow wooden footbridge we're told. We're also told the banks of the river are too steep and the water is too deep to cross anywhere but the bridge. If you're on the other side, the English have to, they can only use the footbridge to cross. So he puts most of his men, the sagas say, on the far sort of southeastern bank. And then he orders his elite, his vanguard, his houseguards, his trained

professional soldiers to form a shield wall at the far end of the bridge, the western bank and basically if they can hold the bridge they will be alright. And then, say the sagas, there is this long struggle. The English are firing arrows at them, throwing spears at them, basically trying to dislodge this shield war from the narrow footbridge because once they've got the bridge they can then pour across and attack the rest of the Norwegians. And in the English sources that we have, later chronicles, let's say a hundred years later some of them, they tell the story, again it does feel a little bit like a well-known formula, that one by one, the Norsemen are whittled down until there is just one anonymous Norseman

holding the bridge alone against the English. So this is Henry of Huntingdon. He was born at about 1088. So he's born about 20 years after the battle. Might he have heard eyewitness accounts? I mean, it's hard to know. But anyway, this is what he says. A single Norwegian whose name should have been remembered posted himself on the bridge and chopping down more than 40 English with a battle axe, his country's weapon, halted the advance of the whole English army. And this

is William of Malmesbury and you said Tom, I think that he's about the same generation, isn't he? So he might again just have heard eyewitness accounts. I mean, William of Malmesbury is a very great historian, probably the greatest English historian since Bede, so not to be discounted altogether. Well let us believe him. He says, given the chance to surrender and being assured that a man of such bravery could expect the greatest mercy from the English, he this is this lone Norseman ridiculed those who tried to bargain with him and scorned the cowards who were unable to overcome one man. And then this very memorable moment,

one Englishman gets under the bridge. Some accounts say he's sort of made a makeshift boat for himself and is kind of floating under the bridge. And then he stabs his sword up through the planks of the bridge. That gap between the boards that we mentioned before? The gap between the boards into the Norseman's Nether parts? Nether regions, exactly. The Norseman falls, a great cheer erupts from the English army, and then like kind of the orcs at the end of the Fellowship of the Ring. They pour across the bridge.

Dominic, you're not comparing the English to the orcs. Yeah, but Tom, I don't actually think that. This is what a great historian does with his imagination. I'm seeing it from the Norwegian perspective. I just want to pay tribute here to my very first history teacher, Major Morris. He would narrate our stories, very like you Dominic, but he was also a brilliant artist and he drew a picture of this sole Norseman standing on the bridge smiting the English and then he did one of the Englishmen in the boat gliding up to the bridge and then he had an excellent drawing of the spear being shoved up through

the gap. Oh no way. And the Norseman kind of arms and legs going out and I must have been, I don't know, eight, nine when I saw that and I've never forgotten it. I can't compete with that because actually my art teacher when I was that age said I was the single worst person she'd ever taught in her 40-year career. Mrs. Salt. That was her verdict. So I can't compete with Major Morris, I'm afraid. So what happens next? The English have piled across the bridge. What can we tell from the sagas? What probably happened? Almost certainly the Norwegians would have formed a shield wall, a defensive shield wall and tried to hold out. And we can assume that effectively the English surrounded

them again. And then Dominic has a great historian kind of entered into the mind of Harold. And if he has, shall I read what this great historian, namely yourself, has written about it? So to explain, we're told in the sagas that Harold decides on one final charge without his helmet, without his armor. And again, the mark of a great historian, Tom, is their use of the imagination as well as the sources. Yes, so this is what you write in Adventures in Time.

With two hands he raised his huge steel-ringsword and whispered one last prayer. Then, with a terrible roar of berserker fury, he hurled himself into the fray, and as he raged and slew, all his cares seemed to melt away, and he felt a lightness and joy he had not known for many years." So that's you inhabiting the mind of a Berserker warrior. Unbelievable! But you know, it's method writing, because I'm imagining my own mood before we do one of our Rest His History live shows on tour. That is very much what you're like.

You kind of froth at the mouth, don't you? Yeah. We'll read the next bit and people will see exactly what I'm like before a show. On he charged, his face a mask of dripping blood, a war cry on his lips, a battle song in his heart. He felt wonderfully happy. He had never been happier. That's literally how I feel just before we go on stage to answer the listeners questions. What's your favorite historical dinner party? Who would win a fight between

Jacko Macaco and Napoleon? That's exactly how I feel. So this is literally what happened to Harold Hardrada to be clear. In the sagas he is killed either with an arrow or with a spear in the throat. I think these details are very clearly taken from the Battle of Hastings. But you know what Tom, he deserves an ending like that. He does. I think he died just like Boromir at Parth-Gharlan at the end of the Fellowship of the Ring. So I think he is surrounded by English bodies.

He's in a pile of bodies. He's peppered with arrows. And obviously all of this is the stuff that Tolkien has saturated. Of course. I mean, it must be on Tolkien's mind, as Tom Shippey would, you know, I'm sure absolutely agree. Absolutely. So Harold Hardrada falls and dies, let us hope in this incredibly dramatic and worthy way. Snorri Sturluson says that at this point Harold Goldwynson paused and he said to the remaining Northmen and Tostig who's still alive, we will give you peace and quarter if you surrender. And again, Tostig behaves very gallantly. He says, no, I won't.

No, let's finish this. Let's go to the end. So there's a scale called Arnold who's quoted by the sagas. The gallant men who saw him fall would take no quarter, him being Harold Hardrada. One and all resolved to die with their loved king around his corpse in a corpse ring. So I think that's terrible. Yeah, I think that's brilliant. I actually almost started crying when I was reading that, I was so moved. So by now the Norwegian reinforcements are finally arriving, but it's far too late. Many of them are cut down too. And a few survivors, dozens, hundreds, it's hard to tell, do make it back to Rickle. They flee across the countryside. Well, it's 24 ships go and it was 300 ships that had arrived, isn't it?

Exactly. Harold Hadrada and Tostig's sons were not in the battle. They'd stayed with the ships. And the next day they rode under flag of truce to York where Harold Gobinson had installed himself victorious. And he was as biff as you would expect from Harold Gobinson, who's one of the greatest men who ever lived. He's very generous to them. And he was as you would expect from Harold Gobinson, who's one of the greatest men who ever lived. He's very generous to them. And he says, look, you know, it's a fair fight. You know, all's fair in love and war. You can sail back to Norway as long as you don't do this again. But he wants them to go.

And as you said, Tom, it takes them only 24 of their 300 ships to take the survivors back because so many have fallen. And Dominic, to the land of the Northmen came only a tale from far off, a rumour of the wrath and terror of Wessex. Oh, I love that. Is that you? No, it's from Tolkien. Oh, that's very good. Well done, Tolkien. It's the last sentence describing the battle of Pelennor fields. And I have replaced Gondor with Wessex. Oh, that's very good. Well done Tolkien. It's the last sentence describing the battle of Pelennor fields and I have replaced Gondor with Wessex. Oh that's very good. So that's one for you, one for Tabby and one

for Tolkien fans everywhere. Crikey. Well Tabby, Tolkien fans and I are all delighted by that I imagine. So this is the last gasp Tom of the Viking Age. Or is it? Well, well is it? Is it actually because you could make two arguments here. One you could say the Viking Age. Or is it? Well, is it? Is it actually? Because you could make two arguments here. One you could say the Viking Age is already over because of course Christianity has already began to transform Scandinavia. We've had towns arriving in Scandinavia, we've got kings, the days of you know, freebooting raiders are gone actually.

And Harold Hardrada in many ways is not a Viking. The other way you could say it's actually the Viking Age still has some time to run because there will be more Scandinavian attacks. Svein, who sensibly turned down Tostig's offer, he does actually launch two raids after the Norman Conquest. One of those has a very decisive impact on the course of William's reign as we will see. It does indeed. And in fact, I was surprised when I looked this up. The last really serious attack, it was as late as 1152, a guy called Einstein the second, who was Harold Hardrada's great-great-grandson raided the East coast of England.

So retro, isn't it? You know, you're busy talking about the Crusades and things. Oh my God, it's a Viking. Come on, mate, it's the 12th century. But you can understand completely why people call Harold Hardrada the last Viking and why people always use this to end their kind of Viking survey books. Because there is something about him, the mad adventures of his life, his travels, but also his sensibility, composing all these poems in the face of danger, kind of laughing uncontrollably for no good reason.

I mean, I guess I would just stick up for the ills of Orkney, who do kind of hang around on the scene and continue to lead a Viking life, composing poems and going on expeditions and things. You've got to admit, Tom, they don't quite have the same cultural cachet as Harold Ardrada. No, they don't, but they are still around on the scene. Tom Shippey has a lovely line where he's talking about the way he dies and he says, even the way he dies at Stamford Bridge, this hubristic end where he's left his armour behind, or has he?

Let's assume he's left his armour behind and he's surrounded by the English, but he fights on to the end. Tom Shubbie says, this feels like the embodiment of the Viking spirit, arrogant, unlucky, self-possessed to the last and accepting his fate with wry defiance. So that's the end of Harold Hardrada. But what of the victor? What of the man who's beaten him? I think Harold Goldwinson has won an astounding victory. It is one of the greatest victories at this point in the history of the English people. I mean, surely equivalent to any of the victories

won by Alfred or Athelstan, to have defeated a Norwegian army led by the most, arguably the most famous warrior in Northern Europe, in all Europe, to have killed him, to have won such a crushing victory, there is no chance the Norwegians will come back. I mean, Norway is out now. It is a great tribute to the potency of Anglo-Saxon arms. And to Harold Godwin's leadership, actually.

Absolutely. When you combine able leadership with the military resources of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom, Stamford Bridge is evidence that everything is fine, that it's ticking along. Well, I mean, Harold Godwinson can feel very, very pleased with himself. For a few days he remains in York to rest. You can imagine his overwhelming relief. He's had months of waiting, months of uncertainty, and he knows now for the time being, his kingdom is secure and his crown is safe.

And by now it is well into the autumn and people just don't sail in, you know, with huge expeditions in this kind of, this time of year. And then at the turn of October, a messenger arrives in York and when he's shown in to see Harold Goldwinson and he stammers out the words of the message, the blood drains from Harold's features because Tom, against all the odds, William of Normandy has landed at Pevensey and now for Harold and for the English, the road leads to Hastings and a final showdown. Unbelievable tension. I mean, who would not want to hear that episode right now, to be honest. And if you're a member of the Rest is History Club, the housecalls of our podcasters,

we like to think of them. You can. And if you're not, then you can sign up at therestishistory.com and join us for Slaughter at Sednlak Hill. And all that thrilling bombshell. Goodbye. Goodbye.