Harald Hardrada (31 page)

News of this decisive destruction of a Welsh king long notorious for his raiding over the border may well have been brought to Norway by means of the regular traffic plying the sea-road linking Dublin with Scandinavia by way of the Hebrides and Orkney. No less likely is that Harald would have heard tales of the English Harold's later warrior service to Duke William in Normandy (reliably dated to 1064), because his Norman sojourn and his swearing of fealty to William was so well known to Snorri as to be recorded in remarkable detail in his
Harald's saga
. Harald assuredly knew at least something of William the Norman too, but it is unlikely that he would have been daunted by either of these men. Both were his juniors, Harold (born
c
. 1022) by at least six years and William (born 1028) by more than a dozen, and neither could boast a military reputation bearing any comparison to the one he had earned throughout three and a half decades of warfaring across the greater extent of the known world. For all Harald's undoubted appreciation of his own warrior fame, he was not spared a word of hard-headed caution from his old comrade-in-arms Ulf Ospaksson, who is said by the saga to have warned him to expect no easy conquest, by reason of ‘the army called in England the king's housecarls and formed of men so valiant that one of them was worth more than two of Harald's best men'. Snorri emphasises the significance of this caveat with a strophe of verse which he attributes to the marshal himself (although perhaps more likely the work of Stein Herdisason, the skald closely associated with Ulf in life and the author of his memorial lay).

In fact, Ulf's advice would well correspond to the opinion of at least one modern historian who believes it ‘likely that there was no force in Europe equal to the Anglo-Saxon
huscarls
. . . so well-trained that they were able [if only on the evidence of the Bayeux Tapestry] to use both the two-handled battle axe and the sword with equal dexterity'.
⁴
Ironically and as the name ‘housecarls' suggests, this body of professional fighting-men had been introduced into the English military by Cnut when he became king of England in 1016, but fifty years later the ranks of the ‘royal housecarls', and their counterparts in the service of the earls, were more often filled by warriors of native stock eager for the status associated with a warrior elite and, of course, the pay that went with it. Unlike the Scandinavian housecarl who was usually rewarded with land grants, his English equivalent had always been paid in cash, initially funded by a general tax specially levied for the purpose by Cnut, but later from the treasuries of the king and his earls after the tax had been abolished by Edward the Confessor.

While there was little difference between the essential weaponry of the English and Scandinavian housecarl – sword and shield, axe and spear making the complement in each case – there would have been finer points of variation reflecting different foreign influences. Just as the arms and armour of some Norwegian warriors might be expected to reflect the Russo-Slavic, or even Byzantine, characteristics brought home by the east-farers, and Germanic styles were more likely to be found among their counterparts in Denmark and Sweden, so the Anglo-Saxon (or, perhaps more accurately, ‘Anglo-Danish') housecarl of the mid-eleventh century would reflect the Norman influence which had long since found its way into the English court and its military. His mail-coat extending to the knee (thus longer than the Scandinavian custom) and his helmet of a one-piece forging fitted with a nasal guard are two such examples, while his long kite-shaped shield, similar in design to those associated with the Norman knight, would be another. There was, however, something particularly significant about this fighting-man because – like the Varangian in Byzantium and the
galloglach
in medieval Ireland – he was similarly representative of the elite mercenary axe-bearing warrior type found right across the Scandinavian expansion in the early Middle Ages.

While Ulf's pessimistic comparison of English and Norwegian housecarls might be thought less than fair, it does serve to illustrate the international reputation of the foemen whom Harald was to face in England. So too, it reflects the wise caution characteristic of this old soldier who was sadly and deeply mourned by his king when he died in that same spring. ‘There lies the man who was most faithful and loyal of all to me' are the words said to have been spoken by Harald as he walked from Ulf's graveside – and I can think of no other occasion where the saga record touches so convincingly on the core of human warmth beneath the mail-coat of the warrior king.

‘In the spring' – according to the saga and apparently shortly after Ulf Ospaksson's passing – Tostig left Norway and sailed westward to Flanders, there to rejoin the men who had come with him into exile and the other troops who had since gathered to his cause out of England and from Flanders too. Having already agreed with Harald to mount their joint invasion later that summer, Tostig appears to have made the first move on his own account, crossing from the Flemish coast – ‘with as many housecarls as he could muster', according to two manuscripts of the
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
– to attack the Isle of Wight where he plundered provisions for his troops and funds for his war-chest. The early sources offer no indication as to why Tostig should have chosen to strike at the south coast of England, but it has been persuasively suggested that he specifically chose the Isle of Wight as his first target in emulation of his father, Earl Godwin, who had himself been briefly exiled to Flanders during Edward's reign and made his own successful return with a landing on the same island. It is no less likely, however, that the more general direction of his attack might have been chosen by Harald in Norway with the strategic intention of concentrating the greater strength of English forces in the south.

Just such was indeed the result of Tostig's sudden appearance on the Isle of Wight, because the English Harold was in London when he learned of the landing and – perhaps imagining that this was the first phase of the anticipated Norman invasion – urgently commanded a full-scale mobilisation said by the
Chronicle
to have ‘assembled greater naval and land hosts than any king in this country had ever mustered before'. By this time, Tostig's fleet already had moved on to harry the Sussex coast and reached Sandwich, where he had occupied the town and was seizing ships and recruiting men (willingly or otherwise) to reinforce his Flemish forces, when news of the advancing royal army prompted him to put back to sea. Sailing up the east coast, he paused to raid Norfolk before entering the Humber estuary with a fleet numbered at ‘sixty ships' by the Anglo-Saxon chroniclers. It would seem that this strength now included seventeen ships said by the twelfth-century verse chronicle of Geoffroi Gaimar to have been brought from Orkney by Copsi (or Copsig), one of the supporters who had earlier accompanied Tostig into exile, which had joined up with his fleet as it rounded the coast of Thanet.

It was with these quite impressive forces that Tostig came ashore on the south bank of the Humber to plunder and burn around Lindsey (modern Lincolnshire) until confronted by the Mercian and Northumbrian levies mustered against them by the brother earls Edwin and Morcar. Although the
Anglo-Saxon Chronicles
supply no detail of the engagement or its precise whereabouts, they leave no doubt as to Tostig having been convincingly defeated. Gaimar would appear to credit this victory to Edwin and his Mercians, while Morcar's Northumbrian forces remained on the north bank of the Humber to prevent the invaders crossing over into (what is now) east Yorkshire. Thus Tostig was driven back out to sea, where his forces were further reduced by the flight home of the Flemish contingent laden with their plunder. So it was with only a dozen ships that he made his way up the Northumbrian coast and into the Firth of Forth where he found refuge at the Scottish court in Dunfermline and there awaited the arrival of the very much greater fleet being assembled by Harald in Norway.

By way of a footnote to Tostig's unpromising overture to the greater enterprise, it is perhaps worth mentioning the reference made by the English chroniclers to ‘a portent in the heavens such as men had never seen before', which remained visible every night for a week after its first appearance on 24 April. This phenomenon, called by some ‘the long-haired star' and illustrated on the Bayeux Tapestry, was Halley's Comet and its practical importance here bears on the dating of Tostig's incursion which is placed by the
Chronicle
‘soon after' the passage of the comet and thus dated to May (or, perhaps just possibly, early June) of 1066. The greater significance of this comet for the chroniclers, of course, appears to have been as an omen and one impressively borne out by the subsequent course of events.

While there is no mention of the comet in the saga (and neither is there any account of Tostig's activities), other omens are described in such sinister detail as to cast the darkest shadow over Harald's fleet being brought together in the shelter of the Solund Isles. Snorri mentions very many ‘dreams and portents' reported at this time, but selects just three for inclusion in his saga. The first of these was a nightmare which came to one Gyrth, probably one of Harald's own housecarls, who was sleeping aboard the king's ship when he dreamed that he saw a huge troll-woman (one of the monstrously ugly and invariably hostile giant race of northern mythology) out on one of the islands, with a knife in one hand and a trough in the other. As his dreamscape widened, Gyrth could see eagles or ravens perched atop every prow in the fleet as the gruesome giantess sang (in skaldic verse, of course) of the king being enticed west-over-sea to fill graveyards and of birds of carrion following in his wake to feast on slain seamen.

A troll-woman also appeared in a dream to another man as he slept aboard a vessel lying alongside Harald's ship, this one riding on a wolf with a dead warrior in its blood-streaming jaws and the English battle-array behind her against the skyline. As soon as the wolf had consumed the corpse, its grisly rider dropped another into its jaws while chanting a strophe foretelling reddened shields, fallen fighting-men and the doom awaiting Harald himself. Apparitions very much like these are found elsewhere in the saga literature – perhaps most vividly in its record of ominous supernatural experiences surrounding the battle of Clontarf where the Orkney jarl Sigurd was slain in Ireland in 1014 – and represent a legacy from the darker side of pagan antiquity still preserved in the literary Christian culture of thirteenth-century Iceland. The association of such traditions with Harald may not be entirely accidental, however, and especially in the light of Adam of Bremen's claim that he ‘gave himself up to the magic arts'. In fact, Adam's remark most probably refers to nothing more sinister than Harald's accomplishment in the art of the skald which demanded of its practitioners an extensive knowledge of the ancient beliefs of the northlands to inform the imagery of their kennings. There is good reason – and, perhaps, on more than one count – to believe Harald well acquainted with Odin, the lord of battle among the old gods of the north. The last of the three apparitions described in Snorri's saga (and also included in the other collections) has no such pagan associations, however, because it concerns a dream – or, perhaps more properly, a vision – said to have occurred to Harald himself and in which ‘his brother Saint Olaf' brought him a warning: ‘Now I fear, great Harald, your death at last awaits you. . . .'

No ‘dreams and portents', however disturbingly prophetic, could turn back the great enterprise now because the invasion fleet was ready and word had long since been sent through all the kingdom to summon up a ‘half-levy of the whole army'. These terms ‘levy' and ‘half-levy' occur throughout the kings' sagas and yet there is still no full consensus in scholarly circles as to whether any such system of muster – of which there is no formal historical record until the twelfth century – was actually practised in the Scandinavian warfaring of Harald's time. While the forces raised by Svein Forkbeard and his son Cnut for their invasions of England certainly appear to have been of the order of national armies as distinct from viking warbands, one school of thought has still recognised them as an effective coalition of the king's own force (or
lið
) made up of his warrior retinue of housecarls (or
hirð
) with the semi-professional manpower of free farmers called bonders and those of his allied chieftains and client rulers, possibly drawn from a wider extent of the Scandinavian world.

The alternative view proposes a systematic levy (or
leiðang
) of ships and men, together with their weaponry and provisioning, called up by the king and supplied by his subjects on a proportional basis – such as that estimated for the early eleventh century in terms of three farmsteads required to supply one man with his war-gear and provisions. The terms of such a system, known only from later sources, provide for the mustering of a full levy for national defence, while only the half-levy was to be called up for a campaign of aggression such as Harald intended in 1066 and so Snorri's statement of his summoning ‘a half-levy of the full army' would correspond to what is known of the
leiðang
in the twelfth century. Indeed, one Norwegian historian has even proposed this same
leiðang
as Harald's own innovation – to which Kelly DeVries adds an observation of particular relevance here when he suggests that ‘it seems ludicrous to believe that someone like Harald Hardrada, who had served in what was probably the most organised army in the world at the time, the Byzantine army, would abandon such a logical notion once he had returned to Scandinavia'.
⁵

None of which, unfortunately, is of very great assistance in attempting to estimate either the size of fleet or the numbers of fighting-men which Harald brought to England in the autumn of 1066. As to ship numbers, Snorri records it being ‘said that the king had over two hundred warships as well as supply ships and smaller craft' assembled in the Solund Isles and his estimate is comparable (especially if reckoned in ‘long hundreds') to the round figure of three hundred vessels in the
Anglo-Saxon Chronicles
, a total which must also include the reinforcements acquired on route, principally those known to have joined the expedition by the time it set sail from Orkney. Other estimates supplied in the English sources tend to range upwards from that figure and even so far as the total of ‘five hundred great ships' claimed by the historian John (formerly known as ‘Florent' or ‘Florence') of Worcester writing in the early twelfth century, but the figure most widely accepted by modern historians would be around the three hundred recorded in the
Chronicles
and plausibly supported by the saga.