Harald Hardrada's REAL Story + The Battle of Stamford Bridge

then coming over someone the hero from the viking age that i by far get the most request to do a video on is i don't know why i mean he was cool and all but he's not even in my top 10 favorite vikings of all time there are way more cool heroes than him but people seem to like him and they know of a very famous story that he was involved in the battle of stamford bridge and i'm going to tell you the whole thing and break it down but uh first of all i'm going to tell you some things that you don't know about him as well and about his journeys in other parts of europe first of all it's going to be surprising to most people but he was a christian and now this was an interesting time in scandinavia starting in the year 1000 about most of the kings were baptized and they were written down in the history books as christian but most of them really were not at this time and i only say this because the mainstream history books that you read are full of crap as usual but if you look into the actual primary sources and put two and two together you will see that many of these kings um and definitely the people of the time were pagan in scandinavia look i have no problem with christians i have many christian friends today and they're great people i only say these things because i have a problem with history books and even people with phds in a subject spreading absolute lies and i'll come back to this later on in the story but yeah i don't care what religion anyone is as long as you're a good person that being said many christian rulers in the viking age were not good people they were horrible but fortunately was one of the good ones and all the evidence suggests that he was clearly christian same thing as his older half brother ula of the saints lots of records of this and that the two brothers here even though many of their warriors were still pagan and believed in reincarnation were clearly christian and this brings us to the first major event in harald hadrada's life the uh christian forces led by his older brother ullah the saints they had a christian army and basically trying to give a last stand to take control of norway back the pagan norwegian warriors were led by hoyek uh some of these are real heroes and they were a much larger army and they slaughtered all of the saints forces and norway remained under the danish king the greats rule at the time the norwegians preferred the rule of knuts from denmark because he was still pagan or at least had pagan sympathy yeah blah blah blah he was baptized and he was a christian king of england he was pagan trust me it's too long to go over in this video but he was anyway hailed hyderabad actually survived this battle but he was not welcome in norway after his older brother had done such things to piss off the country so he was exiled from norway and he ended up going east actually and he spent time with the kievan ruse uh which was in an area called gandariki in the north sagas uh basically russia he served there under the prince yaduslav of kiev in one source it said that he was welcomed warmly already before he even got there because he had another brother that had previously been there and was good friends with jaroslav and his wife was actually a distant relative of this is actually kind of similar to the plot and vikings when eva was in kiev anyway there held quickly achieved a high ranking in just a few years and moved on to constantinople he was only 19 years old by that time so kings and noblemen and heroes were always said to be very tall and strong in the north sagas and great warriors they were typically said to be a head taller than regular men making them probably about two meters tall at the time average heights in the rest of europe were even shorter than in scandinavia so it's easy to see how a giant 19 year old kid like harold got to be such a successful warrior when he was so young now i already know what people are going to say in the comments people bragging about their height saying they descend from viking kings look viking kings were said to be tall strong and athletic hydrata for example was said to be so strong and great at poetry and sports such as horse riding swimming skiing shooting rowing the sagas that mentioned him in the mediterranean he was said to take at least one break during the siege of castles so that he and his warriors could play sports as a break from the battle okay so if you're seven foot tall and the only thing strong and athletic about you is your left thumb on the joystick probably no king dna in there okay if you can't dead lift an easy 200 kilos or can't even strap two skis to your feet without falling over nobody wants to hear it in the comments section how your ancestors were viking kings or you're held hide out are reincarnated anyway hyderal's big strong young badass moved on to constantinople and he rose to the top of the ranks there in the vigarian guard now the tales go that it was the swedes who were typically the ones who traveled east and served in the bargarian god for a long time and here comes the first norwegian to the place and says [ __ ] get out of my way let me show you sweets how it's really done so he was massively successful and he was loved by the eastern roman emperor michael iv and he was actually made a commander of the military forces not just guarding the emperor like the swedish vikings did at the time but he and his men were so good at combat that they went on all of these conquests and traveled everywhere during the mediterranean and fighting battles and all those things many of them it was defending the eastern roman empire from attacks from the arabs and reclaiming territories for uh the christian roman empire according to one skaldic poem uh he captured up to 80 arab strongholds and won them back for the holy roman empire the byzantine empire at the time so there are many stories about his deeds and what he did in the mediterranean he achieved a legendary reputation and also extremely large wealth it's too long to go into here and you guys probably want to hear about the battle of stamford bridge so i'm getting to that now now the emperor michael iv died and there was some turmoil here in the empire so different sources say different things but heild was eventually arrested some say for murder some say for betraying the new roman empire michael v and some say he defiled a noble woman you can read these sources yourself and see what you believe either way he got the hell out of constantinople and made his way back to scandinavia he headed back to scandinavia with the goal of retaking the throne of norway and this was in the year 1046 he was only about 30 years old at the time so the king in norway right now was among this the good and he was yeah a bit of a [ __ ] in comparison but he was just a kid after all he took the throne at only 11 years old and he was actually a son of ura of the saints so magnus was harald's nephew actually and by the time the powerful hyderabad came back to norway king among this was only about 21 22 years old at the time also at the time the danish sveyen estridson was teaming up with harald haiderada and raiding and causing problems in denmark and along the southern coast of norway and the young mungus did not want to fight these guys he did not want to take on his own uncle in a war so he gave up control of norway and among this and harald ended up splitting the rule and the wealth of norway but just a year later the young among this mysteriously died we don't know how but it sounds like an assassination to me maybe some poisoning so it was the year 10 47 when the great harald hyderabad took over the throne of all norway and this was a relatively peaceful time in norway there were a few revolts but uh idol had to exercise his force but no big battles and it was relatively peaceful for about 20 years this brings us to the battle of stamford bridge which is the whole reason you guys wanted me to make this video in the first place the throne of england at the time was very unsteady we had harold goodwinson not to be confused with heidel but harold was the king in england and there were many that felt that he did not have a right to the throne one of them was edward the confessor who just recently died and he was a king of wessex and this guy was basically scared of invasions and revolt from scandinavia and normandy and he went around promising all these different kings that they would get the throne once he had died just be patient everybody wait a little bit longer and you'll be the one in charge don't worry about it meanwhile he dies and leaves everyone else with a [ __ ] storm to deal with because he was a coward man it's like i say all the time nothing changes anyway another person who didn't want the english king herald to have the throne was his own brother tustig godwin sin and what he did was pledge his allegiance to harald and invited him to come to england and claim the throne and hail says all right don't mind if i do thank you sir i always liked england so we had at least two treacherous english kings here and even more earls we had two scandinavian kings and one norman duke william which were they were really vikings too just a couple generations separated and they all had plans to come and take the throne of england from porting out the poor guy i feel so bad for him and you're gonna see why in a minute so the first attackers were of course harald hyderada and the norwegians and they assembled their forces and sailed on over they made a couple pit stops in the scottish isles which were inhabited by vikings and they took a couple thousand warriors from there to help them and they took another pit stop and done fermline and scotland and some of the allies of the treacherous toast godwinson were there so they got a couple more thousand soldiers there massive army about 10 to 15 000 total we think so they raided a few places in northumbria but they did not receive much resistance the first real battle came at fulford with a resistance from the earls in northumbria and marzia but harald haidarada won the battle and captured york pretty easily now the english king harold hears of this and he rushes to the north to fight off the invading viking army so the norwegian ships were stationed right here at rickle as it was called the next day they after they had won the battle they were set to meet some of the noblemen from york and they were meeting at stamford bridge to decide who would rule over the york on hudel's behalf so they walked to the bridge with no armor didn't even bring their full force it was just kind of a peace talk it was supposed to be just a diplomatic meeting now right at this time during the peace talk he sees the english king harold's army coming in fully armored and equipped and outnumbering the norwegians and they said oh [ __ ] so huddled and tustig went out to the center of the battlefield to have a chat with the english forces and they saw one lone rider coming out to meet them and the lone writer said that tustie would be offered his earl dumb back if they surrendered and then the norwegian king heild asks what about me what do i get and the lone rider on the horse said six feet of english soil or perhaps a bit more since you are taller than most men implying that he would give them no peace terms to the norwegians only death and burial so as the other lone rider rode away heilold asked who that was and toasty said that was my brother king harold and they were both impressed at the bravery and courage that the english king showed coming out to meet them alone one of my favorite kings ever the english king harold was anyway the battle starts and the norwegians knew they were [ __ ] so they retreated over the bridge to buy some time get ready and form a shield wall with the little protection and weapons that they had meanwhile the story goes that you've all heard of a giant man stood on the bridge and held off the entire english army for a long time and killed 40 englishmen with his ex now of course this story is probably over exaggerated i'm sure he had some help but either way this man must have been a beast think about it king huddle was probably two meters tall this viking on the bridge would have been even more than that and he was only beaten when an english soldier floated underneath the bridge and stabbed him underneath up the ass with a spear you like that for a surprise sneak attack so the english made it over the bridge and the norwegians had little time to prepare but they were still outnumbered and without their armor and without a large part of their forces actually so they were defeated but they did put up a hard fight and king heidel was said to go out in a blaze of glory fighting aggressively in a berserker-like state which is interesting because he was christian and berserkers were absolutely outlawed in scandinavia by this time so don't know if that's true but he was for sure a beast he was 51 years old at the time and he got an arrow to the throat and was eventually killed towards the end of the battle the remaining norwegian forces had come from the ships but they had sprinted the whole way and were tired it was about 15 miles so they almost won back control of the battle now that they were fully armored and had their weapons with them but they were defeated too and they had to flee and that was the end of the battle and the story of hyderabad so this is such a significant battle in history because it could have had a huge influence on europe and really the world think about how influential england was for the next couple hundreds of years imagine if the norwegians had one control what would have been different and how would that have affected the world instead what happened is a few weeks later poor poor english king harold had to defend another massive invasion by the normans who of course took the victory and gained control of england and everything turned into the history and the world as we know it today the normans were also a viking genetics as i said uh before but their culture was much different than integrated into mainland europe but there was still uh viking dna in there just back a couple generations so i continue this story where i speak about say that and war magic if you want to watch that video so that's it for the story of hail hadrada i hope you learned a couple new things at least but that's all i'll say for today yes nestagon

Channel: Norse Magic and Beliefs

Views: 23,495

Keywords: harald, hardrada, viking, history, battle, of, stamford, bridge, england, last, war, vikings, age, norman, last kingdom, king, norway, scandinavia, lesson, kiev, kievan, rus, vargarian, guard, emporer

Id: -85tiLsAc9o

Length: 15min 9sec (909 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 10 2021