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 Goteborg 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.’
‘Perhaps, but it’s not just my housecarls I worry about, it is the number of Norman knights. I suspect they outnumber our Saxon thegns almost four to one.’
‘That is probably so, my Lord King. But they fight weighed down with armour, which on their heavy destriers makes them awkward and cumbersome. If we choose our ground well, we should be able to unseat them. By waiting for you to call in the harvest, the Duke has left it late in the year. Autumn is a two-edged sword; soon the ground will be sodden with the October rains. His big horses will sink to their bellies.’
‘You are a good man, Hereward; you always have a strategic answer. Stay close to me in these coming weeks.’
In a gesture rare for a king, Harold embraced Hereward like a brother. England’s two greatest warriors had become the closest of friends.
Harold and his army were on the move again within thirty-six hours. He knew that Duke William was either still in transit in the Channel or had already landed on the south coast. Harold had 1,500 mounted housecarls with him, but to ensure that his baggage train could keep pace, he travelled south much more slowly than he had in his dash northwards. His baggage was laden with Norse armour, shields and weapons, a vital cache of materiel for the forthcoming battle with the Normans — an encounter that could be only a matter of days away.
Messengers were despatched to all parts of the realm. Harold had estimated that he needed at least 4,000 housecarls for the clash against William and possibly as many as 6,000 fyrdmen. He prayed that the annual harvesting had been completed and that such a force could be assembled. Most of his brothers’ housecarls — those of Gyrth, Earl of East Anglia, and of Leofwine, Earl of the South West Midlands — were still in reserve and were among England’s finest. His biggest concern was the availability of the men of Edwin, Earl of Mercia, and Morcar, Earl of Northumbria. Between them, they had well over 1,000 housecarls of the highest quality but, despite the fact that both men had promised Harold their support, he knew their commitment was questionable. Fiercely expressed separatism had always been a part of northern politics and Harold suspected that Edwin’s and Morcar’s real purpose was independence for the North.
At the end of the third day of the march south, the advanced party of the army was approaching the River
