England won the Battle of Stamford Bridge on 25 September 1066.1 King Harold Godwinson force-marched his army roughly 185 miles north and caught the Norwegian invaders of Harald Hardrada by surprise near York. In a long, hard fight the Norse army was destroyed, and both Hardrada and Harold's rebel brother Tostig were killed. It is often called the end of the Viking Age in England, but the triumph came at a price: three days later William of Normandy landed in the south, and Harold's exhausted army would lose at Hastings just nineteen days on.
The year 1066 gave England two invasions and three kings. The first invasion came from the north, led by one of the most famous warriors of the age, and it ended by a Yorkshire river in a victory so complete that it is remembered as the last gasp of the Viking Age.
Three claimants, one throne
When Edward the Confessor died at the start of 1066, three men wanted his crown. Harold Godwinson was crowned in London, but Harald Hardrada, king of Norway and the most feared warrior of the north2, sailed for England with Harold's exiled brother Tostig. In mid-September they smashed the northern earls at Fulford3 and took the submission of York.
The forced march
Harold was in the south watching for a Norman invasion when the news came. He gathered his army and drove it north at astonishing speed, covering roughly 185 miles in less than a week. On the morning of 25 September he appeared before the Norwegians at Stamford Bridge, who had left much of their armour with the ships4 and were caught completely by surprise.
The bridge
The Derwent lay between the two armies, crossed by a single narrow bridge. Later chronicles tell of a lone Norse axeman3 who held that bridge against all comers, cutting down many Englishmen until a soldier floated underneath in a barrel and thrust a spear up through the planks. Whether or not the tale is true, the English forced the crossing and formed their shield wall on the far bank, and the real fighting began.
Orre's storm
The battle raged for hours. Harald Hardrada was killed, according to the sagas by an arrow to the throat5, and Tostig fell soon after. Then the Norse reserve, which had been left guarding the ships, arrived at a run, weighed down by their armour and exhausted from the miles they had covered. Their last desperate counterattack, remembered in Norse tradition as Orre's storm5, briefly checked the English before it too was overwhelmed.
The end of the Viking Age
The Norwegian army was all but annihilated. So few survived that, by the chronicles, only about twenty-four of the roughly three hundred ships6 that had come were needed to carry them home. Hardrada's son Olaf was spared and swore never to attack England again.6 For nearly three centuries Scandinavian kings had raided, ruled and warred across England; Stamford Bridge is the battle most often taken to mark the end of that Viking Age, even if smaller raids came later.
The road to Hastings
Harold had barely won when the second blow fell. Just three days later, on 28 September, William of Normandy landed unopposed on the south coast1. Harold turned his tired, battered army around and marched it the length of England once more. On 14 October, only nineteen days after his triumph in Yorkshire, he met William at Hastings, where he was defeated and killed. The victory of Stamford Bridge and the defeat at Hastings are two halves of the same extraordinary autumn, and the first arguably helped cost Harold the second.