Thread by @ajcdeane

#Deanehistory 112

Given the current tussle for Stamford Bridge, I thought I’d tell the most interesting story to be taken from the original battle. Concentrate, as there are two principal characters with the same name.

It’s 1066. Edward the Confessor had died & the wise men of England made Harold OF ENGLAND king as Edward recommended.

Harold’s brother Tostig, erstwhile Earl of Northumbria, had been accused of various bits of bad behaviour, like bumping off houseguests…

and was exiled during Edward’s reign, despite being Edward’s brother-in-law. He fomented dissent & plundered the countryside, eventually joining forces with Harold OF NORWAY.

Harold Hardrada, aka Harold Sigurdsson, aka Harold of Norway, had designs upon Britain & Tostig was a useful enough sidekick in developing them. Norwegian Harold was a tough nut, with more than a decade of mercenary life under his belt before he developed monarchic tendencies.

In the days when kings & would-be kings fought their own battles, this mattered.

Harold of Norway & Tostig sailed with their forces - principally Norwegian, reinforced by forces from the Orkneys, Flanders and Scotland - up the Ouse and promptly seized York.

Harold of England was down south awaiting invasion by William (the, er, Conqueror - spoiler, but not for *this* story). Harold of England marched north with his forces at such a speed that he took the Norwegians & co by surprise.

Thus on 25 September at Stamford Bridge in Yorkshire, along the Derwent river, two armies faced each other - relatively evenly matched at a little over ten thousand men each, *but*…

with Harold of Norway’s forces rather unprepared for a fight and with one third of their number back at their ships, and Harold of England’s without such disadvantages.

Famously the bridge was supposedly held by one ferocious warrior who defeated all comers until an Englishman took a little boat up underneath the bridge and stabbed him from below. But that’s not the story I wanted to tell.

Before battle began, a score of Englishmen, armoured head to foot, rode from the English host towards the Viking lines to parlay.

One of the Englishmen shouted towards the Norse lines: is Earl Tostig amongst you?

In perhaps the 1st recorded double negative in our tongue, Tostig shouted: it cannot be said he is not.

The Englishman replied: our king greets his brother & says he shall have Northumberland again- indeed rather than his brother be an enemy, he will have a third of his kingdom.

Tostig - with some truth to his words - said that if such fair words had been offered last winter, many men who’d died would instead have lived. He asked their interlocutor: what will my brother King Harold of England give King Harold of Norway for his toil?

The Englishman replied that the King would give the Norseman seven feet of English ground- or perhaps a little more on account of his height.

Tostig said- battle it is then- I shan’t betray my friends.

Thus it was that any hopes of peace were dashed & battle became inevitable.

As the English horsemen rode back to their lines, Harold Hardrada asked Tostig: who was that Englishman who talked with us?

Tostig replied: that was my brother.

Hardrada berated him. He had come so close to our lines… if we had known it was him he would not have returned.

Tostig agreed that it had not been wise of Harold to come so close - but that if he had betrayed his identity he would have been his murderer. If one of them must fall that day… “I would rather that he should be my murderer than that I should be his.”

Tostig gets a bad rep in the history books. Not the devil, but perhaps the guy who crosses the street to buy the devil a packet of cigarettes. The exchange at Stamford Bridge gives a rather different context, doesn’t it?

Those few, poignant, shouted sentences across the lines- the forlorn offer of peace & land, the insistence that alliances could not be given up, words leaving the King’s identity unsaid so that he lived- were the last time the brothers spoke. The battle was fought, & Tostig died.

Later on that year, William came as expected and England fell before him. I am sure that much went through Harold’s mind at Hastings as he lost his kingdom and his life. I like to think, even in the last lament of a defeated king, his brother was amongst his thoughts.

Had they reconciled, who knows - Stamford Bridge might have been avoided and Harold’s forces at Hastings, all the stronger as a result, might have prevailed.

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