25 September 1066
The fight at the bridge
The English army comes down the road from York and falls on the Norwegians on the west bank of the Derwent, many of them without mail. Those who are not cut down flee over the bridge to the east bank.
The Derwent at Stamford Bridge, seen from the old railway viaduct, 2009Wikimedia Commons, DS Pugh, CC BY-SA 2.0 (Derwent in Stamford Bridge - geograph.org.uk - 1323992.jpg)
A passage added later to manuscript C of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle tells of a single Norwegian who holds the bridge against the English army. A javelin thrown at him misses, and an Englishman comes under the bridge and spears him from below, under his mail coat. Henry of Huntingdon, writing in the 12th century, adds that the man kills more than 40 Englishmen with his axe and holds the crossing until the ninth hour, and that his killer reaches him in a boat.
The delay gives Harald time to draw up his army in a shield wall on the rising ground east of the river. Snorri tells that before the fighting a rider offers Tostig his earldom back and Harald seven feet of English ground, and that Tostig names the rider as Harold himself. The historian Edward Freeman calls the story plainly mythical. By Snorri’s account Harald also sends riders to the ships at Riccall for help.
Sources
- Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, manuscript C, year 1066.
- Henry of Huntingdon, The History of the English People 1000–1154, tr. Diana Greenway (2009), p. 25.
- Snorri Sturluson, King Harald’s Saga, tr. Magnus Magnusson and Hermann Pálsson (1966), p. 149.
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