The Last Viking Warlord: Harald Hardrada
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Hello, everyone. Stuck. Are you here? And I'm Gabby. And welcome back to the podcast, my friends. Welcome back. And oh, my God, we are diving into Vikings. It's been a while since we dove into Vikings. I don't know how we ever dove into.

into viking we have briefly and when i say briefly i mean we've talked about vikings as part of other kinds of things that we have done but we haven't done like a dedicated full episode to specifically vikings and i mean even then the episode that we're talking about here today we're talking about one of the last great viking warriors specifically like this is a viking who fought in scandinavia the kievan rus the byzantine empire sicily atatolia holy land england this

This guy was quite literally everywhere. So we're not necessarily talking about the Vikings as a whole, but rather the insane story of one individual who honestly, none of the movies or things that really talk about him ever do him justice because this is a man in search of a throne. He was in search of glory.

And ultimately, his story is like one of those old Greek tragedies. Oh, it's bad. So he doesn't get any of that stuff. He sort of gets everything. And yet he loses everything. It's it's a very complicated story. Like his quest for the English throne would ultimately end in his downfall. And the Viking that we were discussing here today, for those who are curious, this is the story of Harold Sigurdsson, better known as Harold Hadrada.

But before we jump into that, I just want to let you guys know that we only have eight remaining spots for our Japan trip. So if you guys wanted to do that, make sure to sign up. I'm sure we'll have like the link in the bio and everything here. Okay. And without further ado, continue. Okay. Well, so as I said, this is a very famous figure. And before launching into today's story, we're going to need to explain a little bit of the background on Vikings, which again, as you said, I don't think we've really done a dedicated episode on Vikings.

on that, which we'll have to change here in the future. Anyway, the Vikings were Scandinavian seafarers from Norway, Sweden, and Denmark, who would go raid and pillage and settle all along different areas across Europe. And this is something that significantly impacted the cultures of Europe throughout the early medieval age. If you haven't heard of the Vikings, dear God, I don't know why you're even listening to a history podcast here in the first place. Like, this is something that is like the basic. It's like not hearing of Rome.

The term Viking, though, is something that only applied to those who took to the sea for the purpose of acquiring wealth by raiding other lands. And the word was primarily used by the writers that were talking about them, not necessarily by other cultures. Most Scandinavians were not Vikings, and those that traded with other cultures were just known as Northmen or Norsemen or something that basically designated them as being, oh, these are the people from the north.

Even as you would later learn, like, you know how you have Normandy, Norman France. That's the Normans, the French like North men, because they were the Vikings that settled down in that area.

Beginning in 793 AD and continuing on for the next 300 years, the Vikings would essentially raid coastal and inland regions in Europe and conduct trade as far as the Byzantine Empire in the east, even serving as part of the elite Varangian Guard for the Byzantine Emperor. Which, side note on this, and it's a cool little thing, and I know I'm shamelessly plugging this here right now. One of the LARPs that Gabi and I go to and that we do is we...

weekend warrior in south carolina where we play in the sea lords faction which is based off the rangel guard and it's the kevin ruse and all this and it's the kind of melting pot of all those different cultures it's fun it's very fun you get to do a lot of sea shanties and bash people's heads in it's great you're just looking at me with so much judgment you're plugging it but it always sells out like

Immediately. I know it does. I know. But I can still go and push. Anyway, the influence that they had on cultures that they interacted with was substantial in just about every single kind of way you could imagine. Both violent and not violent. We will go ahead and say as an example, Ireland, what's the most Irish place you can think of in there? Right. You think of Dublin.

I don't think of Dublin. I think of Cork. Okay, fair enough. You know, and that's actually more accurate when talking about places outside of Dublin, because Dublin and every major city in Europe pretty much is a conglomeration of everything else. I just want to know why it's called Cork. Like they don't make Corks there. No, they make Corks in Portugal. So why is it called Cork?

I would need to look. Do we have a listener from Cork? Can you tell us? I need to know. We're just going to get a random series of emails from Irishmen explaining like the origin of names, which I'll appreciate because I actually enjoy that sort of thing. But yet the Vikings were actually the ones that founded Dublin where it was Dublin. And this is something that they did in order to use as a staging point in order to raid further into Ireland. Because when we say that, oh, the Vikings controlled Ireland, it's like they didn't.

They controlled pretty much just the port area of Dublin and then used that as a base of operations for raids because it's in a pretty good position to do exactly that. They colonized Normandy, the land of the Northmen in France. They established the area of the Danelaw in Britain and they settled in numerous different communities all throughout Scotland. They would take over things in Sicily. They would take over areas in Russia. Dear God, they were doing a lot. Weren't they just supposed to be raiding? Well, they did. They did raid, but

But then after a while, Oh, is it like, you know, when you go on vacation and you're like, should we move here? Pretty much. I'm not even kidding. It kind of was like that because eventually after a series of raids and they're like, Hmm, this place is pretty weak, but they have good farmland. Hmm. We could take it.

And then they just kind of did. How are they so far? Weren't they farmers? Yeah, mostly. Yeah. Here's the thing that confuses a lot of people. Did they just grow really big and they were scary? Well, they were very effective at what they did. And also you have to remember decades of raiding set territories are going to weaken the people that are there because they're not going to be able to resist as much. I know that, but it's just they were not like an organized military. So how are they doing all of this?

the best way that they could do it was get in, get out. And also by simultaneously moving in with a large enough force in one case, like medieval battles were kind of crazy things. You don't need tens of thousands of men. In fact, most medieval battles, like a big battle was if you had 10,000 men, that was huge.

Most medieval battles were significantly smaller, especially back in the early medieval period. You're talking about literally several hundred guys fighting another several hundred guys or a couple thousand at most. That's just kind of how it operated. So if you get...

A whole bunch of people that are like, man, we had a really bad harvest this year. We're going to starve. All right. Everyone who's capable of fighting, join me. We're going to go and we're going to fight something else and try and take it over. And they did. Also, you have to remember the time that they grew very fast as well in different places because the Norse, if you were wealthy enough, you had multiple wives. And what happens when you have multiple wives as one man?

Uh, you lose all your hair from stress. You got a lot of babies, which might also cause that, but yes, which in turn means that you have a number of people that are going to have a lot of children and they're not going to have the land to divide amongst said children because there simply isn't enough because it's not good quality. So they're going to have a lot of extra mouths to feed. Whose only real ability at that point is to fish, uh,

or go somewhere else where they could potentially make more money or get more food. And that's what it is that they would do. So,

In the early years of the Viking Age in Europe, the sea raiders began as pretty much a little more than pirates. That's basically what they were. You had a little raiding season. You would go out and you would raid and you'd get some goods. You'd get some slaves. You'd get some like animals that you'd steal. The more wives. Literally, yes. That's one of the things that would happen. Wait, really? Oh, yeah. No, you'd steal. Women were some of the most valuable things to steal. You would.

Because you could steal them back and then a people, if you stole someone of value, you'd want to ransom them. And then B, oh, hey, here we can steal back a woman who can both be a maid, but then also simultaneously be sold for sex. They human trafficked. Gabby, welcome to the slave trade all across history. Yes, that's quite literally part of it. That's one of the big things that would end up happening. That's that's the reality of the world. Yeah.

Though, of course, it varies. Like as an example, different groups had different prioritizations for value. Like as an example, when you look at the North African trade for slaves for when they were when North African Muslims were going in raiding Europe to steal white Europeans to sell them into slavery. It was kind of mixed because if you were a male, then what happened is, is that they would take you in if you did not get ransomed.

Then you would go and work as a galley slave, or what that means is that they would put you onto one of their boats galleys and you had to row. And I want you to imagine conditions that were like what they kind of describe with the African slave ships that were taking people over to the West. Not as bad as that. Right. But you are working as a rower while being whipped.

And you are worked to death. I think the average life of a galley slave is that you only lived for like a couple of years and died. It was pretty much like being a sugar cane worker in the new world. If you are a woman, you are more likely to get ransom, but also then sold as basically a concubine to someone. Interesting. So we could do a whole thing on all that. It's very complicated. But either way, going with the Vikings, yeah, Vikings did stuff for a while, 300 years, as I said. And eventually the Viking Age was going to come to an end.

But the thing is, it was not from the Vikings being defeated en masse or anything like that. No, it was a gradual process, something that most historians would agree finished in the year 1066 with our boy, Harold Adrada, who this whole story is about at Stanford Bridge. Harold, as you are going to learn, he was the last great Viking warlord. And this, we've covered the background. This is his story.

So Harold was born in 1015 or 1016. We don't really know for certain in Norway. And he was given the name Harold Sigurdsson because his father, can you guess what his father's name was? Sigurd?

Sigurd. Yes, that's what they did, because in this case, this is one of those things that I find very interesting about a lot of older cultures for where you didn't have family lines necessarily from like a definitive last name unless you were noble. Instead, in many cases, it was, ah, yes, this person's son. So it's Sigurd's son. Or if you were a girl, if this was Helga, it would be Helga Sigurd's daughter.

Because he's Sigurd's daughter. That's what it would be. So his father, Sigurd, was a petty king. Basically a minor lord, you could say. Because when I say this, he was his ruler of his own territory and didn't necessarily owe... He didn't necessarily have like strong ties to kings. Which sounds a little bit complicated. I'm going to go and explain that a little bit here. When talking about a lot of political structure for the early medieval day...

You remember how I've described things in France where, ah, yes, the king of France basically only controlled Paris and then everything outside of it was just owned by all the other lords. Yeah. Imagine that, except instead of them being, oh, this is a baron of whatever. They're also basically kings. That's kind of how it was in Norway.

His father was a petty king and a wealthy noble due to his large agricultural holdings, which in Norway was very valuable if you had the good lands. And importantly, Harold was half brother to King Olaf II of Norway, which is now St. Olaf through his mother.

Not much is known about Harald in his early years. His first significant life event comes around in 1030, when he's either 14 or 15 years old. See, in 1028, Harald's half-brother, King Olaf, was forced into exile after a revolt. But in early 1030, King Olaf returned back to Norway, tried to raise an army in order to win back his crown.

And upon hearing this, because, you know, family is family, Harold went and gathered around 600 men and joined King Olaf in Eastern Norway. So it is then that on July 29th, 1030, Harold would take part in the Battle of Stiklestad at just 15 years old. You know, you just kind of did things. This was this was the teenage dream, really. It's what you did. Teenage dream. This was a teenage dream. I feel like Katy Perry's teenage dream and.

His are very different. Just let's go ahead and get insert random Viking metal group here of just a cover of Teenage Dream overplaying Vikings fighting.

Anyway, with Harold, King Olaf and their army faced off against the lower nobles and grand farmers who were loyal to King Knut. With that, that is another character that I absolutely need to cover. I find this guy fascinating. And for anyone who has read the manga Vinland Saga or seen the anime for it, this is part of the story. This is King Knut in that. This is the era and time period with the drama.

During this battle, Olaf died. He was cut down and Harald himself was badly wounded. Despite this, Harald is apparently regarded to have been fighting very well. He demonstrated good military prowess and he managed to escape the battle to a farm in Eastern Norway where he was able to rest enough and then travel through Sweden to the Kievan Rus in order to escape. Because at that point, King Canute would have killed him easily.

Harold and his men at that point, the ones who survived, were welcomed by Grand Prince Yaroslav the Wise, with whom his wife was a distant cousin of Harold. So it was, again, another case of trying to go and rely on family. He joined Yaroslav's forces in their campaign against the Poles in 1031, and he may have fought with them in other campaigns during the 1030s. But, you know, the history gets a little bit murky.

Either way, these conflicts allowed Harold to gain a lot of valuable experience outside of the traditional Viking raiding tradition and fighting styles that had been utilized. Now he was getting a bigger taste of grand scale warfare. So around 1033 to 1034, Harold and his 500 or so men would venture south to the lands of the Byzantine Empire. And from there, they went and joined the Varangian Guard. And that is just something that you did.

Here's the thing, and I've covered the Byzantines multiple times here in the past.

The Varangian Guard was an elite shock troop. Their whole goal was that they were the elite force that were the Praetorians of old, you could kind of say, except foreign mercenaries. They didn't have ties to local nobles. They didn't have ties to a lot of the local politics. Instead, they were foreigners who directly served the emperor. Thus, they were an elite force that were loyal specifically only to him.

Now, despite the Varangian Guard's mission of protecting the sovereign, Harold and his men are known to have fought independently in many campaigns around the empire that they just did

For fun, basically. Like, I kid you not, these guys would just go around and if there was a fight, hey, you know, we're going to participate. We're going to try and get some glory. We're going to try and get some gold. And they would just do this. He first fought against Arab pirates in the Mediterranean, and then he attacked their outpost in Asia Minor. And by 1035, the Byzantines had managed to push the Arabs out of Asia Minor, which was a really big deal because if you look at the previous centuries of the Muslim conquests,

There was a time where the Muslims could have taken Constantinople hundreds of years before they actually did. Thanks to the efforts of Harold and others at this time, that was delayed. So around 1036 to 1038, Harold is then known to have traveled to Jerusalem, possibly as an escort for members of the Byzantine royal family as a reason peace agreement allowed the Byzantines to travel to and then repair the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

Politics within Jerusalem and the relations are very complicated. This most likely gave Harold a chance to fight against bandits who threatened to harm Christian pilgrims on the road. Fast forward a little bit of time and in 1038, Harold pops up again in the historical record by joining the Byzantine expedition to Sicily.

Muslim Saracens had recently conquered the island and were attempting to establish their own Emirate of Sicily. Naturally, the Christians that were located there as well as on the Italian mainland did not want this to happen. And here, Harold came in contact with and fought alongside Norman knights, most notably William Ironarm. I have to say this again, full side note.

I'm going to have to do a thing on the Normans because again, they are related to the Vikings, but the same Normans, right? The Normans who were fighting out of Normandy in France, the guys who went and eventually conquered England. Yes, they were also in the southern tip of Italy in the boot, like it's Sicily. These guys were like

Basically, imagine Christian Vikings. I'm not even kidding. Christian Vikings, who their whole goal was, hey, we had a lot of children and we had a lot of landless young men. Let's go and conquer another new random territory so that we can spread our influence more. And they just kind of did that as the whole point. Anyway, Harold and his men are recorded as having captured multiple towns during the expeditions, which was great. They were making progress, but it turned around.

By 1041, Muslims had managed to fend off most of the invaders and secure ownership of Sicily. Around the same time, a revolt in southern Italy would break out, and Harold and his Varangians would cross the Straits of Messina to join the conflict. The revolt was led by the Normans, and Harold found himself now fighting against his former ally, William Ironarm.

The Normans and their Lombard allies would manage to defeat Byzantine forces in two decisive battles, in 1041 with the Battle of Olivento in March and the Battle of Montemaggiore in May. After these defeats, the Varangians were recalled to Constantinople to address more pressing issues with the empire. And on a side note, since I haven't, I've done one or a couple episodes where I talk about the stuff of the Byzantines, this was pretty much the point in which the Byzantines would lose most of their little remaining grip on Italy.

Either way, in late 1041, Harold and the Varangians were sent to southeastern Europe in order to deal with the Bulgar uprising. The Byzantine forces led by Harold would defeat the Bulgars, securing the area as a province within the empire until 1185. They were that effective. And Harold's actions at the battle earned him his first known epithet,

Harold, the Bulgar burner. Did he burn them? OK, so there was a whole thing here. You have to understand about what was exactly happening with the Bulgars and what it is they did to to stop people. This is around the time as well that the Bulgars are one of the ways to stop them was that an entire army of theirs had their men blinded like their eyes were gouged out.

And the whole reason that this was done without them being killed is because they were blinded and then sent back home so that they would now be not useless per se, because I'm not going to call people who are blind useless, but useless.

In a medieval period, they became a burden upon their families and society. They had to be cared for, which in turn limited any ability for the Bulgars to be able to rise up again because now they have additional mouths to feed. They can't really work and they are constantly reminded of this is what happens if you stand against the Byzantines. It's very effective, but simultaneously truly horrifying.

Harold, as it stands, was on the rise within the army of the Byzantine Empire, but his fortunes very quickly changed when the emperor died in late 1041. The dynasty began an internal conflict.

At some point during the turmoil, Harold was imprisoned for a reason that really the historical sources disagree with. We don't know exactly why. Like according to Saxo Grammaticus, he suggests that Harold was imprisoned for murder, which is a version of events that closely aligns with the author's preoccupation with excessive violence of pagans. He looked down upon anyone of Norse origin. And so, yes, naturally, these dirty savages just went and murdered people. So he got arrested.

Others accuse Harold of committing some form of embezzlement, but also other historians have advanced the possibility that Harold may have just been too close to the previous emperor, Michael IV, during the suppression of the Bulgarian revolt. After all, he was granted the rank, and I know I'm going to butcher the pronunciation of this here, Spathrokanditos Spathrokanditos.

which was a high rank within the military in the campaign's aftermath. And that suggests that, hey, this is a guy who performed really well and had caught the emperor's eye and been granted favor. I mean, how could he not as the principal commander of the victorious army's greatest shock infantry and elite guard of the emperor himself?

So according to this train of thought, it's possible that Michael V had Harold arrested as being a potential threat when he was purging his uncle's power base in order to take over the throne himself. It really at that point is unclear if Harold escaped prison or if he was let out after that. It's generally accepted that due to his service within the Varangian Guard, a faction within the unit that was disgruntled with the new emperor got him out somehow.

In mid 1042, Harold is then credited with leading the Barangians against Emperor Michael V. Harold would then arrest him, blinded him, and then exiled him to a monastery. So that whole thing is like Maximus in Gladiator. Yeah, yeah, it kind of is. You're right. It is. There is also a thing I didn't mention this here before because we were talking about a whole thing with blinding. Punishments in history and how they interpret things are weird, but there is also a sense of logic for how it goes.

If you were blind as a Byzantine emperor, as like part of the like the ruler, you were not allowed to be emperor. Why? Because you would not be able to kind of remember the exact justification. The idea of it is that the person who is in charge is blessed by God. They are a person who the will of God goes through. They are a person who in their whole body and mind is the embodiment of the state.

If they are maimed in some way, if they are a eunuch, they have no balls. If they are blinded, if something has happened. Doesn't mean they lost favor. It means they have lost favor. They are not allowed to be in charge as that could be a sign of disaster. And I'm probably butchering how it is that I'm presenting that in the first place. And I'll need to do a full thing explaining that. But the idea was if you were maimed or crippled in some way, you were not allowed to be in charge. So they just.

hurt people. I mean, no, literally one of the tactics in order to invalidate someone from being able to get to the throne. Like if you had a rival, you would blind them or cut their balls off or do something to them that would invalidate them from being able to take over the throne because that would not be accepted by the rest of the empire. It's cruel. It's awful.

But that's what would happen. Anyway, Harold had become immensely rich during his service to the Byzantine Empire through his wages, the war spoils, and possible also, you know, plundering the imperial palace every time one of the emperors that he served died. Romanos III, Michael IV, and Michael V. So they were just cool with him plundering the palace? Oh yeah. No, I'm not even kidding. So apparently, and this is something that's a little bit disputed, but it's recorded that

In the Byzantine Empire, a tradition developed that was every time an emperor died, the Varangian guard was allowed to basically go into the treasury and walk out with as much as they could physically carry themselves. I personally wouldn't. Sure.

We kept cycling through new emperors to make sure. So you start to see where there could be a little bit of a problem. This is actually very similar to what ended up happening with the Rome and the Praetorian Guard, where it's like every time a new emperor came into power, they had to bribe the Praetorian Guard to stay loyal to them. So it's the Praetorian Guard just started like extorting money from the emperor for further pay raises or bribes or just killing them over and over again so that they get a new emperor in charge who in turn would bribe them.

It has created a bit of a problem. Anyway, throughout his service to the empire, he continued to send his wealth back to the Kievan Rus with Yaroslav the Wise as caretaker. Now it was time to return.

Initially, Harold petitioned Empress Zoe for permission to return to Norway. She declined, and he was then forced to try and escape, setting sail into the Black Sea with two ships and some of his closest followers. One of his ships was then destroyed by the iron chains that had been laid across the strait, which is, that is a whole tactic that the Byzantines used to keep out Muslims for literally centuries, was a gigantic chain that if you tried to sail your ship in in order to lay siege to the city, it would rip your ship in half.

Like, really cool thing. But the other containing Harold was able to break through. He managed to land and make his way back to the Kievan Rus in late 1042, where he then married the daughter of Yaroslav the Wise and the granddaughter of King Olaf of Sweden.

After spending his time in the Kievan Rus', he then set out to claim the throne of Norway, the one his half-brother, King Olaf, had lost. He landed in Sweden at the end of 1045 or early 1046, loaded with all the wealth that he had earned abroad and was intent on raising an army. At the time of his landing, Olaf's illegitimate son, Magnus the Good, held the throne of Norway and recently acquired the throne of Denmark by defeating the royal pretender, Svein Estridsson.

Sweyn was exiled to Sweden, where Harald arranged a meeting with Sweyn and the King of Sweden. The three agreed to join forces against King Magnus and began raiding the Danish coast to try and convince the people of Denmark to turn against their master since he couldn't defend them. Which is honestly, it's kind of hilarious that that is one of the justifications that was used in history. And this was really done legitimately. It's like, hey, we want these people to side with us against the government. How are we going to do it?

We're going to raid and burn and kill a lot of them. Well, what does that do? Won't that make them hate us? Yes, but they'll also hate their lord, whose job it is to protect them. And so they'll refuse to help him. Yeah. Anyway, Magnus understood this ploy, but decided to move all of his forces to Norway, anticipating that it was the prize that Harald truly wanted. When the people of Denmark did not turn against their king, and with Magnus' entire army now stationed in Norway, Harald was forced to negotiate.

A compromise was reached whereby Magnus and Harald would rule Norway jointly, with Magnus taking precedence, and Magnus would retain his position as the sole ruler of Denmark. In exchange, Harald agreed to share half of his wealth with Magnus, who at this point was effectively bankrupt, so he basically got bribed to be king. The resulting co-rulership was, um...

Absolutely fine. Nothing bad happened. Everything was good and fine and dandy. Liar. Yeah, no, that's not how it works in history at all. It was not amicable. They held separate courts and they rarely met with one another. How does that work if you're holding separate courts and you're not unified? I know, but that's kind of the whole point for why it doesn't work. In fact, the few meetings that they did end up having with each other have been recorded as, and I quote, ending in physical violence.

Who would have thought? So less than a year into their co-rule, Magnus died without an heir. Magnus had declared that Sweyn was going to rule Denmark upon his death, but Harald moved quickly to try and secure Denmark before his former ally could. However, the Norwegian chieftains refused to engage in an invasion at Denmark, and Sweyn was able to secure the throne.

From 1048 to 1064, Harold would then engage in endless raiding against Denmark with typical speed and violence of the time. In 1049, he managed to plunder and burn the town of Hedeby, which was the most important and well-guarded trade center within Denmark. The devastation was so bad that the town never really recovered.

It was rare that Swain would engage in a pitched battle with Harald, but it did happen. Harald always won. Never decisively, mind you, but he did win, and he was never able to sufficiently occupy all of Denmark because of it.

Unable to capture Sweyn or successfully occupy Denmark, Harald sought peace in 1064. What amounted was essentially a white peace where Harald retained the Kingdom of Norway and Sweyn would retain the Kingdom of Denmark with no payments or reparations being exchanged. In other words, a bunch of people died, a bunch of things got burned to the ground, and a lot of hardship was created for nothing. Harald returned to Norway and began a program of... How do we put this?

Oppression. First claiming that farmers had withheld taxes owed to him. He brutally killed and maimed those he thought were most guilty as a warning to others. He also introduced a new policy that allowed only the monarch to retain a professional standing army, preventing local warlords from ever gaining enough support to challenge him.

It was during this time of oppression and conflict with the aristocracy that Harold would earn the epithet Hadrata, which best translates to harsh ruler. That is not what I thought that meant. Yeah, yeah, you know, so hard Rada, hard ruler, Hadrata. It's pretty cool. Despite some conflict with his nobles and the initial oppression upon his return, his rule in Norway was actually largely peaceful. I mean, remember, you have the whole thing with the, um,

removing of private armies which means that people aren't going to be fighting nearly as much he continued the advancement of christianity in his lands and developed a norwegian currency which advanced the economy greatly by making international trade viable with you know they have a new currency not just we'll trade you a sheepskin it was good it is believed that soon after making peace with king swain of denmark harold was already developing a plan to conquer england

So, you see, in 1038, Magnus had made an agreement with the King of England that whoever died first would inherit the other's throne. When the English king died childless in 1042, Magnus began preparations for an invasion, but he was delayed due to Sweyn's rebellion in Denmark. Instead, Edward the Confessor became King of England with the assistance of Earl Godwin, who is the father of Harold Godwinson, and we're going to be talking more about him later.

When Magnus died in 1047, Harold assumed Magnus' claim since they were co-rulers of Norway. However, Edward the Confessor continued to play the potential claimants against each other, insinuating to each other that, oh hey, either one would succeed him upon his death. And so when Edward eventually died in 1066, Harold Godwinson was proclaimed King of England.

Harold quickly gathered an invasion force and set sail for England. Intent on claiming the throne of England, he crowned his son the new king of Norway. Harold picked up some Scottish allies and from there began to raid the coast of northeastern England. Towns that did not immediately surrender were massacred and burned as a warning. Then, Harold marched his army south towards York and met an army led by northern English earls.

On the 20th of September, Harold's army decisively defeated that of the English earls, though casualties were heavy on both sides. York surrendered without a fight, and Harold was able to resupply his army. But crucially, he did not station any troops inside. Instead, he set a meeting a few days later at Stamford Bridge with some leaders from York to determine how they would manage the town under Harold's rule.

Because of this, Harold Godwinson was able to march his forces right through York uncontested straight for Stamford Bridge. Believing to be meeting the people of York, Harold left a third of his force at camp and only brought light armor to Stamford Bridge. Once Harold saw Godwinson's forces approach heavily armed and greatly outnumbering his own, a large Viking warrior blocked the bridge by himself in order to give time for Harold to regroup his forces into a shield wall formation according to legend.

Once the English army was able to kill that lone Viking warrior, it poured across the bridge and lined up opposite of the Norwegian forces. The battle reportedly lasted for hours, but it soon became apparent that the lack of heavy armor, or also the significant number of men, put the Norwegians at a severe disadvantage. As the Norwegian line buckled and fractured, English troops were able to exploit the gaps and kill at will. At some point during the melee, an arrow would pierce Harald Hadrada's windpipe and kill him.

His second in command was also cut down. And with no leadership and a broken shield wall, Norwegian forces were annihilated. Harald's son, Olaf, would survive the battle and negotiated a truce with King Harald Godlundsen so long as Olaf and his Norwegians left and never returned. Olaf was able to negotiate these terms because King Harald had to face another threat to the south, William of Normandy. Of the 300 ships that left Norway, only 24 were needed to ferry the survivors home.

It was that severe of losses. When Olaf returned home, he and his brother Magnus would share rule of the kingdom. Did that go well? Well, that would be a story for another time.

Really, at that point, Norway was going to end up getting divided several more times. The whole history of Scandinavia is something that is very messy for many more years. And Harold Hadrada's legacy in the end is pretty mixed among historians. I mean, as we already talked about, his introduction of Norwegian currency is something that greatly advanced the economy and opened up the kingdom to international trade. The first trade partners or the first partners to engage in this kind of trade were the Kievan Rus and Byzantine Empire, no doubt due to his contacts during the early previous service.

He is certainly considered a great warrior at this time, but not necessarily an amazing tactician. He demonstrated his power and rating in capturing towns in Sicily, to Anatolia, from Bulgaria to Poland, but he wasn't ever able to fully achieve his ultimate objectives in either Denmark or England. And even when he was able to claim co-rulership of Norway, it was through negotiation, not tactics.

Harold was always concerned with his image and how he was portrayed. He employed a number of skulls to tell a story in the most positive light imaginable, which is one of the reasons why we have so many stories of him.

We also see Harold tried to undrew the Hadrata by endorsing his own new nickname, Harold Fair Hair. Was his hair light? Yeah, Tom. So it's regarded as being like long and beautiful, basically. Was it actually? Yeah. And the Vikings would comb a lot. Did he try to do like a rebrand? He tried to do his own rebrand. Yes. Did it work? I mean, to some people. Was he hot? You can rebrand anything if you're hot. I don't we don't have any like.

Here's the thing. If you look at artwork of him for anything created at the time, it was ugly. There were not very good artists. I will say here in comparison to what you'd see several hundred years later in Europe, the art of the day I'm looking at like, ah, I mean, if anyone listening to this right now, just go look up an image of Harold Hadrata. Like, I'm sure he was nice in his own way there, but I don't know what he if he was actually pleasant to look at.

Either way, by far the biggest ripple effect of Harold Hadrada's actions came just a few weeks later when King Harold Godwinson was then defeated at the Battle of Hastings by William, Duke of Normandy. The English army forced march north to meet the Norwegian forces and just days after an exhausting battle, they had to turn around and force march again south in order to meet the Norman invasion.

This is widely seen as a primary reason for William of Normandy's victory at the Battle of Hastings. I mean, in Vikings Valhalla, is that what it is? Yeah. He's cute. Oh, my God.

Now I gotta watch that. You want to watch this show with me? I hate that show. I hate that show. I hate Vikings. I hate Vikings Valhalla because what it is that they did with the characters, their characters are awful. They're composites of things that forget the whole thing. It's supposed to be. It's it's it's based on history, not historical. No, it's bad. It's bad. They did how they what they do with people, what they do with armor, what they do with weapons, what they do with tactics, what they do.

set in a hospital it's not scientific oh yeah fair enough yeah that's pretty much what it is uh yeah vikings is just medieval gray's anatomy is it is there spice in vikings yeah i think so i feel like it'd just be like a lot of violence and like blonde men doing blonde men stuff

Which I'm not going to say that on here. Sorry, y'all. Okay. All right. I know exactly what you're going to say here, Gabby. All right. You have delved into your secrets before. I know what you're talking about.

Anyway, yeah, this is seen as one of the primary reasons for William of Normandy's victory. And by that logic, Harold Hadrata is one of the key reasons as to why England as a country exists today. So he was a good person? No, because then the British did all of the British stuff. It's complicated. This is one of those things of butterfly effects of like, if Harold Hadrata did not exist, the amount of things that would be different in world history is insane. Because... Oh, we should make a video on it.

For like an old history. That'd be such a fun video to do. God, that would that would take so much because the amount of things that would spin off from that, you can't even go further into the future because the amount of things that just change. Anyway, at this point, you all can see before I go into some kind of rant that the irony that one of Harold Hadrod's most consequential contributions would be to put another man on the throne. That was the big thing that in the end he managed to contribute.

So ends the story of the last great Viking warlord of Europe. With that, my friends, we're going to end things here today. I know at some point I'll probably have to do a full deep dive on two different things for Vikings, but this kind of tells the end of them in the first place. So that is where we're going to end things here today. Thank you, everyone, for listening, and I'll see you here next time. Goodbye, my friends. Bye.

I hate most business podcasts. It's all blah, blah, blah. Tell me your background. No, nobody has time for that. I'm Jason Pfeiffer, editor-in-chief of Entrepreneur Magazine and host of the podcast Problem Solvers. So I know you are busy running a business and you just need answers and I find them.

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