Harold nodded.
The man drew a deep breath and, in the clear and precise tones of his calling, made his announcement.
‘Sire, I come from the garrison at Nottingham. Yesterday, on the twentieth day of September, there was a great battle at Gate Fulford in Yorkshire. The armies of Edwin, Earl of Mercia and Morcar, Earl of Northumbria, have fallen to the Norwegians, commanded by their King, Harald, known as Hardrada. His royal standard, the Raven Land-Ravager, flies from the Great Hall of York.’
The King bellowed in anger at the herald. ‘Why did I have no reports of the Norwegian ships approaching, or of the landing of their army?’
‘Sire, it appears that the coastal lookouts reported directly to Earl Morcar, and he chose not to inform you. The first news we had in Nottingham was late last night when riders arrived from Tadcaster.’ He then paused and looked directly at the King, knowing that what he was about to add would be particularly hurtful to him. ‘Sire, your brother, the Earl Tostig, is with Hardrada in York.’
Harold was incandescent with anger, but he declined to comment on his brother’s treachery. He asked a vital military question. ‘What of the housecarls of Earls Edwin and Morcar, how many have survived?’
The herald hesitated for a moment. ‘The battle was fierce and many men died in the bogs and marshes of the river Ouse. Hardrada himself led the main attack. Edwin and Morcar survived and made peace with him, but his berserkers cut down hundreds of their housecarls. Survivors said the Ouse ran red with blood all the way to the sea.’
Harold took a deep breath, thanked the messenger and turned to address the Council. As he spoke, he mostly looked to Hereward for reassurance, especially as he was about to abandon the central tenet of his carefully planned summer strategy.
‘Command your constables to bring horses; we ride to the North immediately. I will take only the fifteen hundred men currently under arms and as many as I can gather on the way. We will revert to the cavalry tactics of my campaigns in Wales and cut down the Norwegians before they know we are among them. We must be there by the twenty-fourth. My brother Gyrth will ride with me, as will the Captain of my Hearthtroop, Hereward of Bourne. Go! Go quickly!’
The Saxon military machine sprang to life with remarkable efficiency. Almost 800 horses were in Oxford within twenty-four hours. A thousand more were gathered on the way north, to put a force of almost 2,000 men in the saddle by the time the Saxon army mustered at Tadcaster at midday on Sunday 24 September. It was a small force, significantly outnumbered by the Norwegians, but they were England’s finest, the embodiment of 200 years of Saxon military tradition.
Harold’s force had covered a huge distance in just three days. No other army in the world could have been assembled with such speed, covered such ground and been in such prime condition to fight. The months of training had paid off handsomely.
Harold called for mass to be celebrated and, as the shadows lengthened from a setting sun at the end of a fine English day, he addressed his men from horseback. Hereward watched from afar as the King spoke, but could clearly see the Talisman around his neck. He felt relieved that his long journey seemed to have had a purpose after all.
As Harold’s voice rose, so did the hearts of every man there. His horse circled and stomped its feet, its gyrations adding emphasis to his message. He sat tall in his saddle, looking every inch a king in England’s gravest hour.
‘Tomorrow we ride into battle. There will be no shield wall to protect us; our defence will be our speed and our guile. If there is a pitched battle, we will engage at pace and withdraw quickly to regroup and strike again. Those of you who have served with me for many years will remember our campaigns in Wales. Surprise will be the key to our victory. Tomorrow we will annihilate the Norwegians, who threaten our families and our future. The chronicles will tell of the day for generations to come. Fight for England! Fight to protect our Saxon blood! Long live our cherished people!’
Beyond the King and his army, the sun was setting behind the trees of the forest, its leaves the vibrant colours of an English autumn.
Hereward looked at Einar, Martin and Alphonso, who had just arrived from Glastonbury.
‘Tomorrow we stay close to the King.’
At that moment, Hereward’s pride in his homeland knew no bounds.
A pivotal chapter in the history of England was about to be written, and these men would determine the outcome.
16. Hardrada
The morning of 25 September dawned bright and clear. The meadows were dank from heavy dew as the rising sun drew swirls of mist from rivers and streams made cool by the chill of night. A warm day beckoned.
Hardrada had been uncharacteristically careless. That morning, buoyed by his reception at York, confident from his comfortable victory over the forces of Edwin and Morcar and feeling certain that King Harold’s army could not be within 100 miles of him, he was in a complacent mood. He had made camp at a small bridge on a tributary of the Great Ouse and was overseeing the taking of hostages from the people of Northumbria. The crossing was called Stamford Bridge, on the River Derwent, a few miles due east of York.
The Norwegians had spent the days since their victory filling their ships with the spoils of war and celebrating their success; they were in no state to fight an elite force of Saxon housecarls. Hardrada had advanced from his main camp to Stamford Bridge with only about a third of his force, perhaps 5,000 men. More significantly, he had allowed them to leave behind their mail coats, shields, helmets and spears. They carried only their swords and axes and their only protection was their leather jerkins.
It was a bedraggled body of men.
Harold’s army could not have offered more of a contrast. It had left Tadcaster under darkness and in barely three hours was in York, where the locals were shocked to see a Saxon army enter their city so quickly after the defeat at Gate Fulford.
Harold’s housecarls had grown in number. A further contingent of 500 had arrived in the early hours of the morning and swelled his force to close to 3,000 men. Unlike the Norwegians, they were fully armed and well prepared. Harold’s advance had been so rapid that no word had reached the North that the Saxons had even left the Midlands. He halted his men just outside York to wait for his scouts to report on the Norwegians’ position. When he heard of Hardrada’s disposition, he ordered an immediate attack.
This time there would be no final rallying speech.
The first the Norwegians knew of the advancing army of Saxon housecarls was the low rumble of their horses travelling on the wind from the west. At first, they thought it must be more hostages from York. Then, they suspected a double-cross manoeuvre from Edwin and Morcar, surmising that, somehow, the defeated Northumbrians and Mercians had raised a force of cavalry. Only when they saw how many horses were streaming over the hill from Gate Helmsley and heard the rising thunder of thousands of hooves, did they realize that Harold’s army was about to descend on them.
Recognizing the gravity of the situation and knowing how effective his brother’s surprise attacks could be, Tostig shouted at Hardrada, imploring him to organize a rolling retreat, fighting as they went.
The old warrior would have none of it and bellowed back, ‘We stand and fight. Send messengers to the ships and summon Prince Olaf to come at speed. Raise the Land-Ravager standard; form a shield wall around it. Berserkers come to my side. Men of Norway, stand your ground!’
Harold watched the rapid Norwegian deployment, counted their numbers and, seeing that they had no horses, no armour and few weapons, called a halt to his advance. He summoned a company from his personal bodyguard, twenty-five men in all, and asked Hereward and his three companions to join him. They rode down to the river and sought to parley with Hardrada.
The famous warrior appeared, accompanied by Tostig and a small retinue of berserkers.
‘You sit tall in the saddle for a man of modest height, Harold of England.’
Hereward could not help but be amused by Hardrada’s comment. Althou
gh the legendary Norwegian was at least six and a half feet tall, Harold was also a tall man, standing well over six feet.
‘Greetings to you also, Harald of Norway. I will try to observe noble courtesies, despite your presence in my kingdom and your treatment of my people.’
‘My Lord Earl, your occupation of the throne of this land is not legitimate. You are not of royal blood. This land was part of Scandinavia until recently; it will be so again.’
‘We will settle that argument in due course. First, I would like to speak with my brother Tostig.’ He turned to Tostig with a look of contempt. ‘You have invaded your own land seeking vengeance, and in defiance of a decision made by the Witan. Few would forgive your actions.’ Then the King’s face softened. ‘But I will do so. Return with me; bring your men. England needs you. There is a foe far mightier than these Norwegians approaching our shores. I will restore you to your earldom and increase your lands in the North. After we despatch the Normans, we will campaign in Scotland against Malcolm, your erstwhile ally. When he is defeated you can add Scotland to your domain. We are still brothers and we can be comrades once again to protect our homeland.’
‘It is an interesting offer, my brother, but your brotherly love was absent when I was hounded from my earldom. Today you propose terms because you need my support, but I fight with King Harald and the Norsemen now and I did not bring them all the way to Northumbria to desert them.’
Harold looked sad at his brother’s response, but his expression quickly became stern again. ‘So be it, Tostig, once my brother, once an earl of England. You will die for your treachery. As for you, Harald of Norway, you are ill prepared and caught in the open on English soil. If you withdraw and return to your ships and leave the plunder and hostages you have taken, I will spare you and your men.’
‘You are bluffing, Earl Harold. My force is far superior to yours. I stand on Scandinavian soil. This land is mine through the heritage of my ancestors. If you desire to take it from me, you will have to win it in battle.’
Harold breathed deeply, knowing that many were about to die, and gestured to his men to turn and ride back to the army.
He addressed Tostig one last time, deliberately ignoring his Norwegian foe. ‘If Hardrada insists on his patch of English soil, he’d better start digging his grave. As he stands so tall, he will need a big hole.’
As Hardrada watched Harold ride away, he turned to Tostig. ‘Your brother has a sharp tongue. I’m going to enjoy cutting it out of him.’
There was only a narrow bridge between the two forces, so Harold decided to abandon the horses and mount an immediate infantry attack. His army advanced on foot in squadrons of fifty, but found their way across blocked by a huge Norse berserker, who despatched the Saxon housecarls in groups of three and four at a time with the wide arcs of his flailing axe. The Saxon squadrons tried to wade across the river but could not do so in shield formation and were easy targets for the Norwegian archers. Hereward looked at the situation and quickly gave instructions to Alphonso, who melted into the crowd of housecarls massing to reach the bridge.
Within moments, the berserker’s stubborn defence came to an abrupt end. With a scream of agony, he was impaled through the groin by a spear thrust from beneath the bridge between the planks of its footway. Alphonso had slipped under the water upstream, floated down and positioned himself directly beneath the Norwegian before delivering his fatal thrust. With an almighty splash the berserker hit the water, and the Saxons streamed over the bridge en masse.
The ensuing hand-to-hand fighting continued well into the afternoon. Hardrada had kept his hearthtroop of axemen in reserve, but eventually, they too were encircled. In a bloody encounter that would be recounted reverentially in the chronicles of both sides, English housecarl met Norwegian berserker in a prolonged fight to the death. As his loyal comrades began to die in droves, some of whom had fought with him in his youth in the Varangian Guard, Hardrada broke into the open, grounding any Saxon who came close in a frenzy of blows from his war axe. His fury was only abated by an arrow to his throat, which brought him to his knees, struggling for breath. His warriors attempted to save him with a desperate last redoubt, but it was futile.
Within moments, in a muddy field in the featureless countryside of the lowlands of York, the last great Viking died, in search of one final conquest.
Harold, mindful of the battles to come against the Normans and seeing the toll the hand-to-hand fighting was taking on his men, offered the Norwegians the chance to surrender. Tostig led the defiant refusals as Hardrada’s faithful hearthtroop pulled the stricken King back under the shadow of the Raven Land-Ravager. A cry went up.
‘Rally to the standard! Fight for the Hardrada! Prince Olaf is on his way with ten thousand comrades.’
The next phase of the slaughter commenced immediately. At King Harold’s command, the Saxon housecarls cut swathes into the Norwegian redoubt. The defenders were soon isolated in small groups and cut to pieces. Many drowned in the nearby Derwent as they tried to flee to their ships. Tostig was killed, as were the leaders of Hardrada’s Norse allies from the Orkneys, Ireland and Iceland.
At the end, an eerie calm descended on the battlefield, but within minutes yet another murderous episode beckoned. Messengers had reached Prince Olaf at midday, telling of the fighting at Stamford Bridge. Eystein Orri, Hardrada’s senior son-in-law, and Prince Olaf’s men immediately collected their weapons and armour and set off for the battlefield. It took them over four hours to reach Stamford Bridge. Although it was early evening, the day was still warm as the Norwegian force, numbering more than 8,000 men, roaring for vengeance, sprinted towards the right flank of the exhausted Saxons in a ferocious charge that became known in Norse folklore as the ‘Storm of Orri’.
Harold had to think quickly. He estimated that he had lost well over 1,000 men and now faced a superior force that outnumbered his surviving army by four to one.
He called to Hereward. ‘Take the remains of the Eagle Cohort back over the river and get them mounted. You must get them back across upstream and attack from the rear. I will hold our ground here with my two Wessex cohorts.’
As Hereward led his men away to the sound of the retreat horn, the front ranks of Orri’s Norwegians were already cascading into a Saxon shield wall, hurriedly prepared by Harold’s captains. The wall swayed and buckled and in places was breached, requiring Harold and his hearthtroop to act as reinforcements. The King became anxious as he looked at the Norwegian massed ranks in front of him, three times deeper than his own.
It was only a matter of time before they would be overwhelmed. He looked across the Derwent to the south-east, just as the setting sun touched the horizon, but there was no sign of Hereward and his cavalry. Within minutes, his wall would break under weight of numbers and his cause would be lost. Then he heard the rumble of horses on the move.
Hereward had drawn up the Eagle Cohort in squadrons of ten abreast, five ranks deep, fifty men in all. Harold counted four squadrons in line of attack, supported by four waves. He quickly calculated: eight hundred men in support; enough, he thought.
As soon as the Norwegians saw the dark cloud of mounted attackers behind them, their rear ranks turned to create their own shield wall; the Norwegians were outflanked, something they hated. By the time they reached the Norwegian shields, Hereward’s huge phalanx of horsemen were at full gallop and, by staying close and keeping their discipline, cut through the line of defenders with ease. Hereward was at the centre of everything, often standing high in his stirrups and using the Great Axe of Göteborg to direct the point of attack. Not only was he able to wield his fearsome weapon on either side of his mount, but he was also able to lean out at perilous angles to create even wider arcs of mayhem. His progress was like that of a reaper in a field of barley as he cut swathes through the Norwegians beneath him. His was indeed a grim harvest.
The charge soon began to carve the Norse infantry into isolated pockets. The fleeing Norwegians were pursued all the
way to their ships at Riccall on the Ouse. The fleet was torched and with it any chance of escape for the majority of the survivors. Harold’s two-pronged attack, committing his cavalry in the rear while his shield wall held its ground, had saved the day.
Hereward had arrived in Harold’s service with an unparalleled reputation. Now word of his prominence in the charge, and his bravery at the vanguard of the attack, spread through the ranks of the English army. His exploits and those of his Lord, Harold of England, would be carried back to the Norse lands by the survivors of Hardrada’s army to become part of Scandinavian legend for generations to come.
At sunrise, only Prince Olaf had survived of the entire Norwegian aristocracy; the whole of its military elite and most of its seasoned warriors had perished.
It was carnage on a brutal scale.
Harold knew that Norway would not be a force in Europe for at least a lifetime and he let Olaf leave with the twenty-four ships that remained afloat. Earl Tostig’s body was retrieved from the battlefield and he was buried at York. The Norwegians were allowed to remove Hardrada’s body, which was laid to rest in St Mary’s Church, Trondheim, a resting place that became a shrine to his poetry and his heroics.
It had been a remarkable victory for King Harold. After a gruelling march from Oxford, a force of barely 3,000 men, outnumbered by more than four to one, had beaten a Norse army led by the greatest warrior of his age.
The next morning, after they had both had a few hours’ sleep, Hereward and the King gathered their thoughts.
The King had won a great victory, but was in a sombre mood. ‘My friend, although the first battle is won, the greater one is still to come… and I have lost half my housecarls.’
‘Yes, sire, but every man who remains is worth two Normans.’
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