Authors: Ian W. Walker
Tags: #Harold: The Last Anglo-Saxon King
On Monday 25 September, with his army rested and regrouped, Harold advanced through York to meet the Norwegians at Stamford Bridge. The latter had moved to this small village on the river Derwent to await the arrival of further hostages from the rest of Yorkshire. This need to collect hostages from the shire would appear to indicate that the Norwegians did not trust their Northumbrian hosts. The location also offered the Norwegians the opportunity to live off King Harold’s own nearby estate at Catton, which would avoid the possibility of their troops, or more probably Tosti’s, plundering York itself. There is no direct evidence for this last threat, but it would not be surprising if Tosti had scores to settle with the local
as a result of his expulsion in 1065. Following their recent victory, it appears that the Norwegians considered themselves safe from any immediate reprisal; at Stamford Bridge they could easily find themselves cut off from their ships at Riccall. If they had been aware of Harold’s approach they would surely have sought to oppose him at York, where they could bar the river Ouse against him. Perhaps they considered that King Harold would remain in the south to face the threatened Norman invasion, or perhaps they felt he would not risk attacking them after the defeat suffered by his earls at Fulford. Most probably they were surprised by the speed of his reactions and did not expect his arrival yet. Whatever the reason, they were completely unprepared for Harold’s sudden arrival at Stamford Bridge on 25 September.
The battle which took place at Stamford Bridge was King Harold’s greatest victory. It was one of the decisive battles of the Middle Ages, and the one which finally ended the Viking Age. It was important in terms of Harold’s own immediate future for another reason. The losses suffered in this battle had an impact on the outcome of the subsequent battle at Hastings. Therefore, it must be considered in some detail, in order to allow an assessment both of Harold’s military abilities and of its impact on subsequent events.
The numbers involved in the battle are not recorded but an estimate can be made for the Norwegians based on the Chronicle record of their 300 ships. Assuming a figure of 25 fighting men per ship, this would give them a total of 7,500 men when they first landed in Northumbria. It has been estimated that the later Viking longships could carry between 50 or 60 men; allowing for some exaggeration in the number of ships and the fact they may not all have been large ships, this appears a not unreasonable figure. They suffered heavy losses at Fulford, perhaps around a third seems feasible, leaving them perhaps about 5,000 men. They are known to have left men to guard their ships, and so maybe about 4,000 were actually at Stamford Bridge. Though there is no direct evidence for the numbers on the English side, King Harold perhaps had an equivalent number of men. His forces must have been of a sufficiently manageable size to allow for their rapid collection on the advance to York. They would also have needed supplies on this journey, and more than this number would probably have been too large. The closeness of the fighting itself, Chronicle C speaks of the opposing sides ‘fighting strenuously till late in the day’, suggests that the opposing forces were fairly evenly matched.
The Norwegians at Stamford Bridge appear to have been completely unprepared for battle. They had even left their mailcoats at their ships, according to the poems incorporated in the later Harald’s Saga. That this story is not simply a later excuse for their defeat is perhaps confirmed by its appearance in the contemporary Chronicle of Marianus Scotus. The Norwegians ‘had been promised for certain that hostages would be brought to them’ and therefore expected the arrival of small groups of local
, but certainly not an English army under King Harold. A poem preserved in the later saga declares bitterly that ‘the army has been duped’. The terrain itself may h