Battle of Stamford Bridge (1066): End of the Viking Age

The Battle of Stamford Bridge was fought on 25 September 1066 east of York, where King Harold II of England surprised and destroyed the invading army of King Harald Hardrada of Norway. Hardrada and Harold’s rebel brother Tostig were killed, and the Norwegian threat to England ended in a single day. Coming only three weeks before the Battle of Hastings, Stamford Bridge is often seen as the end of the Viking Age in England.

Background: three claimants to one throne

Edward the Confessor died on 5 January 1066 without children, and Harold Godwinson, Earl of Wessex, was crowned the next day. His claim was quickly challenged from two directions: by William, Duke of Normandy, and by Harald Sigurdsson of Norway, known as Hardrada, “hard ruler”.

Hardrada’s claim rested on an agreement said to have been made between his nephew and predecessor, Magnus the Good of Norway, and Harthacnut, king of Denmark and England, that whichever died first would leave his kingdoms to the other. Harthacnut died in 1042, but Edward the Confessor, not Magnus, became king of England. Hardrada regarded the claim as his inheritance.

He was one of the most experienced warriors in Europe. As a teenager he had fought beside his half-brother Olaf at the Battle of Stiklestad in 1030. He then served in Kievan Rus and for about a decade in the Byzantine Varangian Guard, returning rich and famous. He became king of Norway in 1046, sharing power with Magnus until Magnus died in 1047.

Tostig’s betrayal

The second key figure was Tostig Godwinson, Harold’s younger brother. As Earl of Northumbria from 1055, he ruled harshly, and in 1065 the Northumbrians rebelled. Harold, seeking peace, accepted Tostig’s replacement by Morcar, brother of Earl Edwin of Mercia. Tostig was exiled and became Harold’s bitter enemy.

In May 1066 Tostig raided the English coast, attacking the Isle of Wight and Sandwich before sailing to Lincolnshire, where Edwin and Morcar drove him off. He spent the summer with King Malcolm III of Scotland and then joined Hardrada. The two planned an invasion of northern England.

The invasion and the Battle of Fulford

In late summer 1066 Hardrada sailed from Norway with a great fleet, put by the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle at around 300 ships, and gathered further forces in Orkney. Joined by Tostig, he sailed up the Humber and the Ouse and landed at Riccall, about 16 kilometres south of York.

On 20 September Earls Edwin and Morcar met the invaders at the Battle of Fulford, just outside York, and were heavily defeated. York surrendered. Hardrada agreed to spare the city in return for supplies and hostages, who were to be handed over at Stamford Bridge, a crossing of the River Derwent about 11 kilometres east of York. Most of the fleet remained at Riccall.

Harold’s march north

Harold had spent the summer guarding the south coast against William of Normandy, but on 8 September he had sent home the fyrd, the part-time levies, because their term of service was over and supplies were exhausted. When news of the Norwegian landing reached him, he gathered his household troops, the housecarls, and as many men as he could and marched north.

Harold covered roughly 300 kilometres (185 miles) from London to Tadcaster in about four or five days, arriving on 24 September. This was an exceptional feat for an army of the time. Many of his men were probably mounted, riding to the battlefield and then fighting on foot as English armies usually did. Along the way he gathered more troops from the Midlands and the north.

The Norwegians appear to have had no warning. Hardrada was not watching the road from York, and the arrangement to collect hostages at Stamford Bridge had drawn part of his army away from the ships. On the morning of 25 September Harold passed through York and advanced on Stamford Bridge.

The battle

The Norwegians were not expecting an English army. According to Snorri Sturluson, writing in the thirteenth century, it was a hot day and many of Hardrada’s men had left their mail coats with the ships at Riccall. Only part of the army was at Stamford Bridge.

The English arrival caught the Norwegians on both sides of the Derwent. A later addition to one manuscript of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle tells of a single Norwegian who held the narrow bridge against the English, killing many, until he was stabbed from below. Whatever the truth of this episode, the delay gave Hardrada time to form a shield wall on the rising ground east of the river, at the place now called Battle Flats.

Snorri’s saga describes a parley before the battle in which an English rider, really Harold in disguise, offered Tostig a third of the kingdom. When Tostig asked what Hardrada would receive, the answer was “seven feet of English ground”, or a little more because he was taller than other men. The story is famous but comes from a source written about 150 years later and is probably literary.

The fighting was long and fierce. Hardrada was killed, according to Snorri by an arrow in the throat, and Tostig fell later. Reinforcements under Eystein Orre, Hardrada’s prospective son-in-law, arrived from Riccall exhausted after running in full armour. Their furious charge, remembered in the sagas as “Orri’s storm”, briefly checked the English, but they too were overwhelmed.

The aftermath

The Norwegian army was destroyed. Harold allowed the survivors, including Hardrada’s son Olaf and Paul and Erlend, the earls of Orkney, to leave after swearing never again to attack England. The Chronicle says they went home in 24 ships, a small fraction of the fleet that had arrived.

Harold had little time to celebrate. On 28 September, three days after the battle, William of Normandy landed at Pevensey on the Sussex coast. Harold marched back south and fought William at the Battle of Hastings on 14 October, where he was killed. Many historians believe that the losses and fatigue of Stamford Bridge weakened his army, though the effect is debated.

Harold’s victory came at a cost. Among the English dead were experienced housecarls who could not be replaced before Hastings. The northern earls, Edwin and Morcar, whose forces had been shattered at Fulford, did not join Harold in the south, and their absence further weakened his army in October.

The battlefield remained a grim landmark. The Anglo-Norman chronicler Orderic Vitalis, writing in the twelfth century, said that a great heap of bones from the battle could still be seen there.

Key people

• Harold II (c. 1022–1066), king of England from January to October 1066.
• Harald Hardrada (c. 1015–1066), king of Norway from 1046, veteran of the Varangian Guard.
• Tostig Godwinson, exiled Earl of Northumbria, Harold’s brother.
• Eystein Orre, Norwegian nobleman who led the reinforcements from Riccall.
• Olaf Haraldsson, Hardrada’s son, who survived and later reigned in Norway as Olaf III, “the Peaceful”.

Hardrada’s body was later taken back to Norway and buried at Nidaros, now Trondheim, the city where his half-brother Olaf was venerated as a saint. Tostig was buried at York.

Why “the end of the Viking Age”?

Historians often date the end of the Viking Age in England to 1066. Stamford Bridge was the last great invasion of England by a Scandinavian king seeking the throne. Norway, under Olaf the Peaceful, turned to internal development and trade.

The label is a simplification. Danish fleets sailed to England in 1069–1070 to support rebellions against William the Conqueror, and a Danish expedition came in 1075. Norwegian kings remained active in the Irish Sea and the Scottish isles, and King Magnus Barefoot was killed in Ireland in 1103. The Orkney earldom and the Norse kingdom of the Isles also remained part of the Scandinavian world for centuries; Orkney and Shetland passed to Scotland only in 1468–1469.

Still, after 1066 the political world of England was shaped by Normandy and France rather than by Scandinavia.

By the numbers

Timeline

• 1066, 5–6 January: Edward the Confessor dies; Harold II is crowned.
• 1066, May: Tostig raids the English coast.
• 1066, 8 September: Harold disbands the southern levies.
• 1066, September: Hardrada and Tostig land at Riccall.
• 1066, 20 September: Battle of Fulford; York surrenders.
• 1066, 24 September: Harold reaches Tadcaster.
• 1066, 25 September: Battle of Stamford Bridge; Hardrada and Tostig are killed.
• 1066, 28 September: William of Normandy lands at Pevensey.
• 1066, 14 October: Harold is killed at the Battle of Hastings.

Why it matters

Stamford Bridge was a brilliant victory that ended the last great Viking invasion of England, yet it could not save Harold’s throne. Its timing, only days before William’s landing, made 1066 one of the most dramatic years in English history and helped decide that England’s future lay with the Normans.