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Updated: May 15, 2025
The day after tomorrow we don our harness again to meet this new foe, but it will be child's play compared with that which is past. Shall we, who have conquered the awful Harold Hardrada, the victor of a hundred fights, fear these puny Frenchmen?
"Advance the World-Ravager!" cried Harold Hardrada, "draw up, and to arms!" Then, picking out three of his briskest youths, he despatched them to the force on the river with orders to come up quick to the aid. For already, through the cloud and amidst the spears, was seen the flag of the English King.
When the knights rode off, King Harald Hardrada asked the Earl, "Who was the man who spoke so well?" The Earl replied, "That knight was Harold of England."
Then the English columns burst in among them, and a carnage ensued, the extent of which may be judged of by the exhaustion and inactivity of Norway for a quarter of a century afterwards. King Harald Hardrada, and all the flower of his nobility, perished on the 25th of September, 1066, at Stamford Bridge; a battle which was a Flodden to Norway.
'Egypt? said another; 'that's the land parson preaches of in the church; there were Pharaohs there, and plagues. 'Ay, said the first; 'when King Hardrada was in that land he met something worse far than Pharaohs. 'What was that? asked the others. 'A fearsome beast that wore armour like a man. They call it a crocodile; and the country there is swarming with its like.
Yet mighty that space is Which seemeth so small; The realm of all races, With room for them all!" But Harold Hardrada scorned witch-wife and dream; and his fleets sailed on. Tostig joined him off the Orkney Isles, and this great armament soon came in sight of the shores of England. They landed at Cleveland , and at the dread of the terrible Norsemen, the coastmen fled or submitted.
"So," saith the Norwegian chronicler, "not just the best friends, the Earl left the King," and went on in haste to Harold Hardrada of Norway. True Hero of the North, true darling of War and of Song, was Harold Hardrada! At the terrible battle of Stiklestad, at which his brother, St. Olave, had fallen, he was but fifteen years of age, but his body was covered with the wounds of a veteran.
He enlarged on the terror of the Norsemen that still existed throughout England, and the affinity between the Northumbrians and East Anglians with the race of Hardrada. That affinity would not prevent them from resisting at the first; but grant success, and it would reconcile them to the after sway.
These various representations, and the remembrance of Canute's victory, decided Hardrada; and, when Tostig ceased, he stretched his hand towards his slumbering warships, and exclaimed: "Eno'; you have whetted the beaks of the ravens, and harnessed the steeds of the sea!" Meanwhile, King Harold of England had made himself dear to his people, and been true to the fame he had won as Harold the Earl.
The citizens, dreading an assault, promised to yield the next day; and, accordingly, early in the morning, Hardrada, Tostig and a small band of followers, set out from their camp at Stamford Bridge, on the banks of the Ouse, to receive the keys.
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