Fulford, 20 September 1066

The battle, stage by stage

1. Mid-September 1066

   The fleet in the Ouse

   Harald Hardrada, king of Norway, has crossed the North Sea with a fleet that Chronicle D puts at about 300 ships (John of Worcester says more than 500). The exiled earl Tostig Godwinson, driven out of Northumbria in 1065, has joined him. After raiding the Yorkshire coast they sail up the Humber and the Ouse and land at Riccall, about nine to ten miles south of York; the exact day is not recorded. In York the northern earls, Edwin of Mercia and his brother Morcar of Northumbria, who replaced Tostig, gather 'as great a force as they could', in the Chronicle's words. King Harold II is far to the south, where he has just stood down the fleet and levies that had waited all summer for William of Normandy.

2. 20 September 1066 (Wednesday)

   The earls block the road

   The Norwegians march north toward York along the road from Riccall, leaving a strong guard with the ships. About a mile and a half short of the city walls, the earls bar the way where the road crosses Germany Beck at a ford south of Gate Fulford. The English line runs from the tidal Ouse on its right, across the narrow moraine ridge carrying the road (no more than 400 meters wide, by the Battlefields Trust's description), to marshy ground on its left. In Snorri Sturluson's saga, written about 1230, Harald forms his line with his banner (Land-Ravager in Laing's translation, often called Landwaster) beside the river, where the line was thickest, and thinnest along a ditch where the weakest men stood, beside 'a morass, deep, broad, and full of water'. Most modern accounts put Edwin by the river and Morcar toward the marsh, and have the English strike before the whole Norwegian army is up. All positions are interpretive.

3. 20 September, the opening fight

   Morcar's attack

   Morcar's men go forward against the weakest part of the Norwegian line, the wing along the ditch away from the river, and drive it back toward the marsh. In the saga the English follow the giving wing, 'thinking the Northmen would fly', and Morcar's banner 'advanced then bravely'. The Chronicle (C) says the earls 'made great slaughter' of the invaders, and the Battlefields Trust notes that the English had the early advantage. Where exactly the line broke is not known; the fight is drawn here east of the old road, as most reconstructions place it.

4. 20 September, later

   The beck fills with dead

   Harald answers by sounding the charge and leading his best troops, with Landwaster carried before him, across the beck from the river side into the English flank. The Battlefields Trust suggests that Norwegians also got round the English left, perhaps along an old Roman road over the marsh several hundred meters east of the ford. The English line collapses. Edwin's men by the river are cut off and fall back toward York, and Morcar's are trapped between the beck and the marsh. Snorri says the ditch was 'so filled with dead that the Norsemen could go dry-foot over the fen', a saga image best taken as literary. The English sources say plainly that many English were 'slain or drowned or driven in flight' (Chronicle C), and John of Worcester writes that more drowned in the river than fell in the field. Snorri also has Morcar killed here, but both earls survived.

5. 20-24 September

   York submits

   The Norwegians hold the field, and the road to York lies open. Harald does not storm the city. York negotiates its surrender and agrees to give hostages: the Chronicle (C) says the invaders took hostages from the borough and offered 'an abiding peace', and John of Worcester says 150 hostages were exchanged each way. By C's account the Northumbrians were also to march south with Harald to win the kingdom. The army falls back to its ships at Riccall, and further hostages are apparently to be handed over at Stamford Bridge, east of York. The Fulford Battlefield Society argues that the victors spent these days reworking iron gathered from the field at small hearths just south of the beck. That claim is disputed.

6. 25 September 1066, and after

   Five days to Stamford Bridge

   On 25 September Harald and Tostig go to Stamford Bridge to collect the hostages, leaving about a third of the army at the ships. They are caught there by King Harold II, who has come north at great speed and passed through York that morning. Harald and Tostig are both killed, and the survivors go home in 24 ships (Chronicle D). Edwin and Morcar, whose levies were shattered at Fulford, take no further part in the year's fighting. Three days later, on 28 September, William of Normandy lands at Pevensey, and on 14 October Harold is killed at Hastings without the northern earls' men beside him. How much Fulford's losses cost him there is debated.