The Norse Terror: What Was It Like To Be Raided By The Vikings? | History of Warfare | Chronicle

this channel is part of the history hit Network [Music] during the long years of the Dark Ages the site which brought dread and Terror to the inhabitants of Britain was the first glimpse of an unfamiliar sale on the horizon all too often its unwelcome event was the first Herald of a Viking raid the harbinger of death and destruction the walls of Odin were about to be Unleashed again [Music] foreign [Music] the age of the Vikings we'd saw the Norseman rise from occasional Pilots to the Undisputed rulers of Britain was to last for 300 years the first recorded raids on Britain took place in 787 A.D and by the time of the last Viking Army to invade England in 1066 they had brought destruction and Conquest to every part of these unhappy Islands written records for the time of the Viking ascendancy the long period between the end of the Roman Empire and the beginning of the medieval period are scarce indeed our lack of knowledge concerning these mysterious centuries is a chief reason why they have become known as the Dark Ages [Music] despite the huge gaps in our understanding of this remote age there are still some rays of Light which penetrate the Gloom achieve among them is the Anglo-Saxon chronicler a record of the main events in Britain from the birth of Christ until 1154 A.D the chronicle is not a single continuous work but a collection of animals written by monks in various monasteries around England the earliest years are naturally sketchy and sometimes the entries can be as short as a single line by the time of the first Viking raids in the 8th Century there is at least a complete entry for each year we are fortunate therefore to have a record through contemporary eyes of the principal events of the entire Viking era the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is also most unusual for a document of its time because it was actually written in Old English and not Latin almost without exception official records of this type would have been written in Latin the universal language of the church so we are fortunate that we have not only a complete record of the era but one which is written in the language of the people of the time indeed the chronicle is one of only three histories from the whole of Northern Europe to be written in a native tongue prior to the medieval period the first time to which deals with the Viking Raiders is for the year 785 A.D in this year the aortic took EBA daughter of king of King off in his days came the first three ships of the Norwegians the king's Reef wrote to them and tried to compel them to go to the Royal Manor for he did not know what they were and they slew him these were the first ships of the Danes to come to England arrive was a royal official who represented the king in matters of Taxation and trade at local level the unfortunate man killed by the Raiders would therefore become the first recorded casualty of the Viking Wars as a sad Liturgy of blood-stained entries but a large number of subsequent years testifies he was not to be the last if you read the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle you'll find every year mentions of Great Waves of Viking incursions into the what we now call the British Isles it was an endemic problem once it became clear that there could get a fairly easy loot in Britain and even some treaties were Kings who would pay Dane gold to get them to go away again at the end of the season of course we became a natural Target in these islands but what has always fascinated me is that not only us are receiving this treatment a little later on in history you'll find Viking fleets sailing all the way around into the Mediterranean as far as Sicily and even the Constantinople and in the chance of fear the great Cathedral and now a great Mosque of course in Istanbul right up in the gallery in the great Dome there are some runes which have been carved with a knife in the marble of the balustrade godric was here this was a sort of a 9th century uh Vandal so we say hard at work like many abundant future Generations bought to death with a service going on below digging out his dagger and carving his name on the building from the first recorded raid the chronicle runs for eight years without mention of the Vikings the next reference to Raiders is not until 793 A.D when they made their second incursion this time the raid was in far greater strength with far more determined purpose history hit is like Netflix just for history fans with exclusive history documentaries covering some of the most famous people and events in history just for you with familiar faces such as Dan Jones and Dr Eleanor janega we've got hundreds of documentaries covering the greatest figures and events of medieval history we're committed to Bringing history fans award-winning documentaries and podcasts that you cannot find anywhere else sign up now for a free trial and Chronicle fans get 50 percent off their first three months just be sure to use the code Chronicle that's the Raiders chose as their target the church and Monastery on the island of lindisfarne off the coast of Northumberland lindisfarne was a relatively remote Outpost to Christianity and must have presented an easy target it is hardly likely that the few Treasures of the Abbey could not have been extorted without Bloodshed but cruelty and violence appear to have been an integral feature of the norseman's raids from the beginning already The Familiar bloodstained Trail was beginning to take shape as a record of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle for 793 and 794 A.D Bear's Witness a Great Famine followed and a little after the marauding heathens destroyed the Lord's Church on lindisfar with great Slaughter from pillage and Northumberland was also ravaged by the Heathen and egrith's Monastery and jarrow looted one of the leaders was slain there and some of their ships were Shattered by storms and many of them were drowned there some came ashore alive but they were killed at once by the mouth of the river this is the island of Linda's Farm as it looks today peaceful and untroubled but with a little effort it is not too difficult to summon up the ghosts of the past especially in such a haunting spot as this [Music] we came here on the 1200th anniversary of that first terrible Viking visit and it is sobering indeed to look down the long Corridor of time to ponder whether our own humble record will stand even the faintest chance of surviving more than a thousand years hence in doing so we can begin to Glimpse some of the Miracle by which the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle has survived its Long Journey Through Time [Music] the Viking Raiders who pillage the monastery in lindisfarne in 793 A.D originated from Scandinavia either Norway Sweden or Denmark the exact origin of the term Viking is itself obscure it was almost exclusively a word used by the Norse men to describe themselves the chronicle refers to them as dini Dani or simply heathens the roots of the word have been lost but it has been suggested that it stems from Vic a region in Norway or from the Norwegian name which means Fjord or Bay [Music] whatever the source of the name he would appear that the writers of the time cared little to know the exact country from which their torment has originated the term Danes is often used to describe Raiders who in fact originated from the others Scandinavian countries and many of these games would actually have been swedes or Norwegians regardless of where they originated the end result of an early Viking raid was inevitably the same robbery pillage and Slaughter over the years there have been a number of theories as to why the Viking Raiders should suddenly appear off the shores of Britain towards the end of the 8th century the two most widely accepted reasons are either that the population explosion which took place in Scandinavia at the time forced the bands of Warriors to look outwards for new conquests or alternatively that the Viking raids had merely been transferred from their traditional hunting grounds of northern France in France at the time the increasingly sophisticated defenses of the Empire established by Charmaine the great reduced the possibility of a successful raid so the Norse men were forced to look elsewhere [Music] yet another theory postulates that the increased Mercantile trade of charmaine's Empire actively drew the Viking southwards and onto Britain by default whether the roots of the Viking raids can be ascribed to one or more of these theories is likely to remain in contention but on one topic all of the leading authorities are in complete agreement it was a revolution in the Scandinavian shipbuilding techniques which made the Viking expansion possible during the second half of the 8th Century the first Viking longships first began to be produced these ships were designed purely for war and raiding and in terms of the technology of the day they represented a huge leap forward in design they were perfect craft for seaborne Raiders the old high sides of previous ships were dispensed with in order to produce a low-sided long thin ship which Drew very little water crucially these craft were flat bottomed which meant that although they could carry a comparatively large number of men they did not need a harbor and could be beached or landed almost anywhere with a minimum of ceremony in consequence these Sleek crafts could move with great speed and also travel long distance up Rivers allowing them to be used to attack undefended towns and villagers which in previous years would naturally have considered themselves saved from Seabourn attack the long ships also allowed for an equally quick departure if resistance proved to be too strong as early as the Roman era Scandinavian ships had been noted for the fact that both Sterns and bows were curved into a high-graceful shape by the 8th Century however the familiar dragon head figures had begun to appear on the prowl the longships giving them their popular name of dragon ships it is not difficult to imagine the terror which the sight of such ships would have brought to the Islanders these were the famous long ships which have become synonymous with the Viking Raiders capable of being propelled either by the wind in the single sail or by anything up to 35 pairs of oars in the very large ships they were supremely maneuverable and provided the Norsemen with that perfect means to begin their conquests there is a body of evidence to support the suggestions that the Vikings use these ships to travel considerably beyond the confines of Europe to Africa and even to America [Music] these long sea Journeys must have been extremely hazardous in such frail craft but modern reconstructions of Viking longships have successfully completed many of the journeys which had previously been thought impossible including the crossing of the Atlantic which was completed by A reproduction longship as early as 1895. the longships was the most developed type of Naval architecture of this age and indeed for many an age to come they are beautiful craft they're highly skilled in their design and they're highly capable of going over long distances sometimes there are hundreds of them involved in fleets Harold hadrada and tostix Fleet for example which invaded the northeastern Coast in 1066 in the first phase or the uh which ends of Hastings of course it's said by the chroniclers who have had something like 250 ships with him the first Viking raids were just that short sharp violent forays in search of plunder and captives from 835 A.D scarcely a year passes in which the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle does not record a viking raid some inconsiderable Force in 837 Wolford the elderman is recorded as successfully fighting off a force of 33 ships at Southampton the native Anglo-Saxons however had less success in fighting off the Vikings in the following three years following wolford's successful battle in each of the three years 838 839 and 840 A.D the conical tells an unremitting tale of Slaughter and pillage wrought by the Viking Raiders in 851 however came a major change of behavior by the Raiders when for the first time the Vikings stayed on through the winter this was to be the first stage of the colonization and eventual subjugation of the entire nation the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle takes up the story with the entry for the year 857 A.D in this year the alderman sealed the men of Devon fought against the heaven at wickensberry the other night great Slaughter and won the victory this same year King ethelstan destroyed a large host of sandwich in Kent they captured nine ships and drove off the rest the Havens remained over the winter for the first time in the same year 350 ships arrived at the mouth of the Thames they stormed Canterbury and London and put be it wolf king of Mercia to flight so attractive was a fertile and comparatively wealthy group of islands at that time most of Britain still lay under a huge blanket of forest where wild boar wolves and bears roamed at will the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle describes the wield a great Forest which covered most to present-day Kent Sussex and Hampshire as being 30 miles Broad and over 120 miles long in this unspoiled Wilderness the occupants of Dark Age England enjoyed what was by the standards of the day a relatively prosperous lifestyle there were few large towns and most of the population lived in small villages or hamlets which were centered upon the long House of the local Lord arts and crafts flourish to a high standard and the inhabitants of Britain were noted for the competitive quality and finery of their dress Society at the time was of course strictly hierarchical the king of any one of the seven Petty Kingdoms At which England and Southern Scotland were composed at the beginning of the Viking age ruled absolutely or as absolutely as his strength allowed for there were numerous plots and power struggles generally resulting in an unpleasant end for one side or other there was also a constant intercourse team war between the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms and the older Celtic peoples still holding out to the West predominantly in Wales the kings of the day were of course expected to lead their armies into battle personally so the attrition rate on rulers of the various Dark Age kingdoms was very high indeed beneath the king were his Earls an elderman who ruled smaller sections of the Kingdom on his behalf in return for the king's patronage they were obliged to raise his troops in times of War this they did from among the next layer down in society these were the local fans each of whom ruled a village they were obliged to bring with them the local free men and any members of their retinue who could bear arms together the thanes and free men were known as the feared whom the king would call up in defense of the realm against the Heathen Raiders Anglo-Saxon armies learned the hard way how to fight and eventually beat the Viking and Danish menaces tactically this meant in part the development of the famous Shield wall and so by the time of 1066 the Battle of Stamford Bridge in that year the Anglo-Saxons have developed a very much more Superior fighting method on land than that of their opponents from the Nordic countries but what is so fascinating in that particular year is that having one Stamford Bridge Under King Harold they then have to rush South again of course on their horses for Mobility to reform The Shield wall at Hastings I'll send that Hills which is sometimes called and then they are attacked by a force using Cavalry and archers missiles and Mobility as their main means of fighting and this is a transitional moment in Warfare as far as England is concerned we're about to move from the age of the all fighting on foot Shield wall stance together great Mast formations to the idea of mobility and above all of using missile power to weaken an enemy before you come to grips with him it is a fascinating moment in history the men whom the Anglo-Saxons were gathered to fight were very different in many respects to their opponents but perhaps the chief difference which marked them apart was that while the Anglo-Saxons were all Christians the Vikings were still pagans the chronicle constantly refers to the arrival of heathen fleets and the constant battles fought with them the Vikings had no organized religion as such although there were temples in holy places religion among the Norse men seems to have been very much a personal matter with each man honoring the gods he chose in the manner which best suited him this would usually take the form of a sacrifice or votive offering to one of the many Norse gods in return for his favor in battle or for his help with the feet of arms or for any one of the Myriad daily Trials of life [Music] the world of Norse mythology is a strange world ask God the home of the Gods is unlike any other Heaven men have dreamed of there is no radiancy or join it there is no Assurance of everlasting Triumph peace or Bliss over Asgard hangs the threat of inevitable Doom the gods who reside there know that the day will come when they will be destroyed and that although they will struggle manfully ultimately the forces of evil will overcome them the chief God it's Odin or wodan in his Southern guys he presides over the feasts of the Gods in his Palace gladsheim he eats nothing but gives the food set before him to two Wolves At His Feet on his shoulders perched two Ravens who fly through the world and bring back news of all that men do the other principal gods are equally Stern and forbidding for the God of Thunder Heimdall the guardian of the Rainbow Bridge to Asgard Freya who cares for all the fruits of the earth and of course tear the God of War their mortal enemies are the Giants who dwell at jottenheim [Music] all know that final victory has been ordained to the forces of evil but the gods will continue to resist to the last our knowledge of Norse mythology comes largely from the Elder Adder a collection of wise sayings and legends which somehow survived from Iceland's Pagan past the Specter of the final Triumph of evil is omnipotent and The Saga records bleakly the gods are doomed at the end is death [Music] this day of Doom was known as Ragnarok When Heaven and Earth will be destroyed rosol the tree which supports the universe was being gnawed from The Roots by a serpent and his brood on the day of Ragnarok they would succeed in killing the tree and the universe of man and gods would come Crashing Down [Music] foreign if the gods were doomed to Die the same is therefore true of humanity within this Bleak framework of beliefs the Vikings knew that they could not save themselves by great deeds and endurance even so they would not willingly yield to the forces of evil a brave deed entitled them to a seat in Valhalla one of the halls of Asgard where the spirits of Brave Warriors slain in battle are brought by the Valkyries dare to dwell in the Long Haul of Valor but even there they could only look forward to final defeat and destruction in the last battle between good and evil the Warriors would fight on the side of the Gods and die with them this surely was Stern stuff for Humanity to live by and it was the absolute antithesis of a Christian Gospel with its promise of everlasting life in peace and happiness the only sustaining spiritual support the Norse Legends gave was in the Quest for the attainment of heroism a power of good was seen at its purest in continuing to resist evil while faced with certain defeat they saw victory in an heroic death believe courage was never defeated evidence of the Norse belief in the importance of courage and Valor comes from the Elder Eder once again in direct contrast to the Christian doctrine of forgiveness and tolerance a coward thinks he will live forever if only he can shun Warfare a brave man can live anywhere but a coward dreads all things this Fierce Creed made the Vikings implacable enemies who would fight ferociously long after hope had gone and contemporary accounts of Norsemen at War bear this out the norseman's religion was of course Very pagan it is also inspirational it was a combination of myths stories well-held beliefs and a great deal of fear and allowing it it was an ignorant religion in many respects for the great God of War as the sort of the champion of the Gods Freya who wove the Destinies of men and individual webs and so forth you have therefore this thriving religion in a sense so it is a pagan one which can inspire a warrior culture because the great effect of their religion upon them was to make them pagans and of course the great dread of their Berserker attacks when they literally I think went literally mad with bloodlust they often cast off all their clothes all their armor their helmets and just went in with either that great swords or their battle axes and by sheer Terror and fury hardly notice wounds as they sustained and that has made them so frantically difficult because you see they believe like the Japanese did of course in the second world war for the warrior who died in combat went straight to heaven or to Valhalla as it was called where there was endless feastings in the presence of the Gods for the brave warriors who had done that by bit below the chief weapons of the Viking armies were the Fearsome War axes were there Blades of special hardened steel in most of the rest of Europe the ax had fallen into disuse as a weapon of War but the Vikings never abandoned them and they came to symbolize the Norse Terror in addition to the acts nearly all Warriors carried a sword and most would have had the wide circular Shield some three feet in diameter and painted in a variety of brilliantly colored patterns the wealthier men in the armies of the age would have also worn a male coat and helmet which gave a strong measure of protection against all but the fiercest blows from swords and Spears these were the men who would fight in the front rank of a Viking Force with their Shields locked together they would Advance on their enemies above their heads would fly the various War banners of the Viking Kings the chief device which was the raven Odin's eye on Mortal men behind the best men came the Warriors who were armed with missile weapons Spears and bows their task was to fire their missiles over the heads of their own front rank in order to cause gaps to appear in the opposing formation allowing the better armed Warriors to crash through the ranks of their enemy where a series of intense hand-to-hand combats would result The Shield wall was a critical point of any Baccalaureate often the smaller wall be erected around a particular important Chieftain or King the side which first broke the shield wall of the opposition would generally Come Away Victorious one of the few descriptions of combat at the time of the Vikings survives in the brambara fragment a piece of a poem celebrating a great Victory won by the Anglo-Saxon men of Wessex led by Apple Stan against a combine force of Scots pigs and Vikings the Vikings who had sailed over from their base at Dublin under the leadership of amloff fought ferociously and the brambara perm gives a vivid impression a battle in the Dark Ages atheistan kinning and his brother each Edmund ethelene ayola see oath and Sun up on Morning Tide glad of grundas goddess their legs such many of a shield shorten Swedish each wearing wedges said foreign foreign fragment was written around 937 A.D by which time the Vikings had changed from being occasional if persistent Marauders to settlers and rulers of a large part of the Kingdom this was the Dane law a viking area of influence centered on York and covering the whole of northumbria the borders of this region were constantly shifting as different Kings Rose and fell and differing alliances and packs were made Island also had a large area of Viking influence and Dublin was the seat of Viking power there in England during the latter half of the 9th century Alfred the Great had done a great deal to limit the expansion of the Vikings into Wessex and Mercier his good work was carried on by his successors Edward and athelstan who was the Victor at bromborough during the latter half of the 10th Century the frequency of Viking raids seems to have been greatly reduced probably due to the strong rule of a series of determined English kings the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle for example records only one Viking raid in the 26 years between 954 A.D and 980 A.D [Music] as the century moved on there was definitely a great reduction in both the number and the frequency of Viking attacks against the British Isles now there were two main reasons for this first of all thanks to the great staunch reforms of King Alfred who produced the first really effective Anglo-Saxon Army its first Navy and also set up great fortresses like Edinburgh all the Burr words come from the fortresses set up and his and later times the Vikings found they were meeting a very determined opposition and we're getting somebody bloody noses so the idea of a soft easy target of the British Isles were coming loose and go home with women and all the rest of the baggage over your shoulders there was no longer so attractive and the same was happening in France incidentally where Charlemagne and his successors were all again fighting very effectively not only against the saracens in Spain but also against the Norsemen in the North the second reasons of course that is the great explosive energy of the Vikings begins to wane no longer are they so ambitious about sailing over large oceans looking for new countries new areas to plunder they now begin to settle in the long ships are not only the Warriors now but also the women and children and the old men the old women so in England you have the Dane law the area to the north of Watling Street which is about 50 percent of England as we now know it becomes settled and a lot of the names of The Villages reflect that and the same thing happens on the continent of course they settled in Sicily they also settle in Norman day which meant really Norseman country so you get a period when they stop being roving Raiders and become to be settlers and cultivators of crops in 978 A.D with the ascent to the English Throne of King atherade some of the iron grip necessary to maintain peace in these troubled centuries seems to have been lost from 980 onwards Viking raids and incursions by their armies once again featured strongly in the pages of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle hathred had become known to posterity as the unready although the actual translation of the word unread means ill or badly counseled rather than unprepared a rash discussions and bad judgments however do appear to have played a large part in his story ill-advised or not what is uncontestable is that there was again a huge upsurge of Viking raids on England during aphrod's reign a concerning the years from 980 to 982 we have the following entries in the same year Southampton was pillaged by an army of pirates in seven ships in the same year the island of thanet was ravaged by a pirate Army from the North in 981 and a domini padstow was lead waste and in the same year much destruction was done along the coastal regions in Devon and Cornwall the next year three pirate Crews landed in Dorset and pillaged Portland we are fishing these raids were to continue uninterrupted in one form or another for a hundred years to come sometimes in small raiding parties of three or four ships and at other times in great fleets in excess of 300 ships details of the armies and fighting which took place are naturally sketchy but we are fortunate in that one campaign in particular is recorded both in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and in an epic poem this was the large Viking incursion which resulted in the Battle of Malden 14 991 A.D between a viking Force which came in 93 ships and the Essex feared led by elderman brittnoff the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle for 991 takes up the story in this year and love came with 93 ships to folkestone and ravaged the neighborhood went on to sandwich she pillaged the country and so went to Malden the alderman brittner came to meet him with his feared and fought with him but they slew the Alderman and had possession of the place of Slaughter the Vikings had beached their ships on North the island a small island linked to the mainland by a very narrow Causeway only two yards wide and 30 yards long they were opposed by the local Anglo-Saxon feared under britainoff who easily managed to keep the Vikings at Bay on North the island during the early skirmishers prior to the battle the Norsemen could not Forge across the narrow Causeway and the Saxons held them at a disadvantage and a stalemate soon developed then a strange thing happened the Vikings asked for permission to cross to the mainland unmolested to fight in a fair fashion Boyd was success from the early exchanges the victory appeared to the men of Essex to be already assured in this confident mood britaineth agreed to allow the Vikings to cross to dry land and form their Shield wall there the poet who wrote the epic poem The Battle of Malden one thousand years ago recorded the events of the day for posterity by A Small Miracle the poem has survived the intervening centuries largely intact that exists the strong possibility that the poet may have actually been present at the Battle and as such we are privileged to witness a thousand-year-old battle Through The Eyes of one of the fighters we take out the story as Britain summons the Vikings to cross from North Island unmolested foreign lead man to Lander Linda Perron the decision to allow the Vikings to come ashore to reform their ranks and fight must rank as one of the major miscalculations in ancient military history these fearsome opponents needed to be handled with Extreme Caution and written up and his army would pay dearly for their overconfidence battle was furiously pursued by both sides H student and that we're on thealdon Fester with the Odom that their faga men fail and she Alden Fair word Hari mahafan harimasu Lagoon eventually the Vikings were triumphant in this most hard-fought of battles brittanov and his Champions and a great number of his men lost their lives the men of Essex were utterly defeated after a long rear guard fight their heroic Last Stand however was not entirely in vain as the final moments of their desperate fight produced for us some of the most inspiring lines of poetry in the English tradition britvold brittnoff's aging Champion spoke these words of defiance In the Heat of a losing battle foreign Malden was just one of a series of disastrous defeats for anglo-saxon's arms at the hands of the Vikings during the late 10th and early 11th centuries from 987 A.D onwards almost without interruption the Anglo-Saxon conical records the unceasing struggle between the Viking Raiders and the Anglo-Saxons during which the Vikings generally held the upper hand in order to try and prevent further Bloodshed in the fighting which increasingly saw the Raiders Victorious the disastrous practice of playing dengueled gain currency desperate to Stave off further raids the Anglo-Saxons paid an increasing amount of silver to bribe the Vikings to Halt their bloodthirsty practices like every good extortionist the Norsemen knew a good racket when they saw one and the sixteen thousand pounds paid to them in 994 A.D quickly Rose to 24 000 pounds in 10 2 A.D and stood at an astronomical 48 000 pounds by 1012 A.D as more warbands joined the trail to England the business of paying tribute was quite literally a vicious circle the more the inhabitants of Britain paid the more anxious the Vikings were to raid these islands and extract yet more dangled in return for ceasing their activities [Music] The Lure of dangel of course had often inspired raids in the first place the successful extraction of dengel from England even became a subject worth noting on a man's tomb this surviving Tombstone from Upland in Sweden erected in memory of the warrior old by his sons carries the runic inscription of has taken three girls from England the first that tosti paid then forkl paid then knut paid the ultimate irony of course was that it was Dane gold which paid for the armors of Sven forkbeard and his son Knute [Music] it was Canute when 1016 A.D would become the first Viking king of all England previously England had been split into a number of smaller kingdoms King knuts Ascend to the throne of all England was attained through a mixture of Conquest bribery and diplomacy all financed by English silver however the reign of the Viking Kings over all of England was not to last long the dynasty would span only 30 years or so but their enduring Legacy is in England would ever thereafter be a single Kingdom [Music] with the death of knut in 1035 he was succeeded by his illegitimate son Harold Harford then by hardik Knute in 1042 on the death of hardik Knute in 1047 the throne passes back into Anglo-Saxon hands when Edward the son of athared was Crown King of all England with Edward's Death in 1066 a number of playments to the throne emerged the two main Pretenders with Norwegian King Harold horndar and William the bastard of Normandy both of whom brought armies to England to claim the throne in the momentous year of 1066 A.D William landed in the South near Hastings to begin his attempt at the throne and Harold in the North near York Harold godwinson became the last Anglo-Saxon King to confront a Danish Army on English soil when he took the decision to meet the Viking Army first before moving south to tackle willian's Norman Army the battle which Harold fought against the Norseman in which the English were victorious took place at Stamford Bridge [Music] Harold King of the English attacked them unexpectedly beyond the bridge battle was joined in a fierce flight lasted till late that day taking Herald of Norway was slain and altostig and countless numbers of men with them then Herald crossed the bridge and made great Slaughter of the Norsemen and their allies although the Battle of Stamford Bridge is generally overshadowed by Harold's subsequent defeat at the infinitely more famous Battle of Hastings it is by far the more important to students of Viking history the defeat of the army under Harold of Norway at Stamford Bridge marks an end of both the Viking Kings of England and of the entire Viking era never again of the Norsemen play a major role in the Affairs of Britain there was still of course a large number of raids and incursions but as a rigorous order of the Normans was gradually imposed on the country a new era adorned and the influence of the men from the north began to wane the Vikings inexorably slipped from the world stage even from a distance of 1200 years their potent imagery and the sheer presence of these Fierce Seaborn Raiders still lingers on for some those brutal sanctuaries are simply the Dark Ages to others who can still hear the seagulls cry on a Long Winter Valhalla they will be forever the age of the Vikings [Music]

Channel: Chronicle - Medieval History Documentaries

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Keywords: history documentary, medieval history documentary, middle ages, medieval history, the middle ages

Id: Gn2ZoQ6yhjU

Length: 48min 54sec (2934 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 18 2023