8 September 1066 was the beginning of the end of Anglo-Saxon England. On that day, the Norwegian King Harald and his English ally Tostig, brother of the English King Harold, set off from Tynemouth with three hundred ships, sailing south along the northern English coast and plundering everything they found on their way. Scarborough, little more than a day’s march from Leavening, tried to resist and was completely burned down. The Norwegian army continued their raids until the huge fleet advanced inland on the River Humber.
At this time, King Harold, who was waiting in the south for the Normans to invade England, had already disbanded his assembled army. The peasants who made up the fyrd had to go home for the harvest in August, so the king had to release them. However, this did not stop him from riding north with his huscarls – heavily armed elite warriors – when he heard of the invasion and raids of the Norwegian king.
After the victory at Fulford on 20 September 1066, the Norse army became reckless and only took the bare minimum of armour and weapons to Stamford Bridge, where they waited for hostages and supplies to be brought to them by the residents of York. Instead, however, they soon found themselves facing the overwhelming English army in full battle dress, led by King Harold and his huscarls.
While the English king defeated the Norse army and killed King Harald Hardrada, his warriors engaged in another battle with the Norwegian rearguard, led by King Harald’s prospective son-in-law Øystein Orre. King Harold also won this battle, but the fighting had taken its toll on the English army, too.
Together with Olaf, the son of the Norwegian king, and Paul Thorfinnsson, the Earl of Orkney, King Harold agreed to a truce, which he accepted on the condition that the two and their followers swear never to attack England again. Only then would he allow them and their surviving army to depart. Otherwise, he would continue to fight them until the last one of them lay dead on the battlefield. Olaf and Thorfinnsson gave him their word that they would immediately leave England and never return.
With his father’s lifeless body and just over a thousand men, Olaf subsequently set off for Riccall, where he dismantled the camp and sailed home with barely twenty-five of the original three hundred ships, never to be seen on the English coasts again.
Decades later, it was still reported that the battlefield at Stamford Bridge was white with all the bones of the fallen warriors.
But the winners did not have much time to catch their breath, for soon after, the threat they had been waiting for all summer in the south arrived: Duke William and his Normans landed in Pevensey and began plundering and burning the land. With his exhausted huscarls, the English king set off on his final journey.
Even after the Norman conquest of England, peace was fickle. Numerous uprisings in Wales, East Anglia – where the English rebel fighter Hereward the Wake made life difficult for the Norman troops – and Northumbria kept King William on his toes for years after his coronation.
In December 1069, the new king ordered a campaign whose cruelty shocked even hardened warriors as well as loyal supporters and advocates, and which would go down in English history as the “Harrying of the North”. For two months, the Norman troops ravaged the land between Nottingham, Durham and York, causing a famine of unprecedented proportions. The death toll is estimated to be in the tens of thousands, with significant social, cultural and economic damage to the entire region. Out of desperation, survivors fled as far as Evesham Abbey, 250 km south of York, where records were kept of the starving. At Easter 1070, William was crowned again to demonstrate his power. Sixteen years later, the Domesday Book, a survey of England listing (almost) all places along with inhabitants, animals and resources, still described the state of many places in the affected areas as “wasta” (vasta: laid to waste/destroyed).
William had defeated the English of the north, but neither he nor his kingdom would have peace for very long.