This Single Battle Ended the Viking Age Forever

The Viking Age didn't die a slow, peaceful death. It was violently taken out in a single, mud-soaked afternoon in 1066. King Harald Hardrada was a seven-foot-tall Norse warlord who turned the battlefields of Europe into his personal meat grinder. He spent his life fighting as an elite mercenary in the Byzantine Varangian Guard. He slaughtered pirates. He crushed rebellions. He amassed half a kingdom's wealth. He was virtually undefeated. Then he marched five thousand unarmored warriors directly into a catastrophic Saxon ambush at Stamford Bridge.

Three hundred massive longships sailed to conquer the English throne. The Norsemen expected a swift surrender. They found a heavily armed army waiting in the mud. Completely surrounded and caught without their chainmail, the invaders were forced to rely on pure bloodlust. A single nameless berserker held a narrow choke point against an endless tide of thousands. The shield wall shattered. The suffocating hand-to-hand combat pushed Harald into a terrifying battle trance. The carnage on that bridge set off a brutal chain reaction. It sealed the fate of England at the Battle of Hastings just three weeks later.

00:00:00 - The Last Viking
00:01:04 - The Battle of Stiklestad
00:03:44 - The Kievan Rus Meat Grinder
00:05:20 - The Byzantine Varangian Guard
00:08:01 - Buying the Throne of Norway
00:09:52 - The 1066 Invasion of England
00:11:13 - The Battle of Fulford
00:12:48 - Ambush at Stamford Bridge
00:16:23 - The Nameless Berserker
00:18:40 - The Spear in the Barrel
00:19:20 - The Shield Wall Breaks
00:21:09 - The Death of Harald Hardrada
00:22:38 - How Harald Crowned William the Conqueror

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Narrated by Joe Cliff Thompson