"Your brother Harold sends you greeting and offers you peace and the rule of Northumberland. If he cannot gain your friendship for less, he will grant you one-third his kingdom."
"Last year he had only scorn and disdain to offer me," replied Tostig. "But if I should accept his proposal, what has he to offer my ally, the king of Norway?"
"He will grant him seven feet of English soil; or more if his length of body needs it."
"If that is your best offer," said Tostig, "ride back and bid Harold to begin the battle."
Harold of Norway had heard this brief colloquy, and as the English horsemen rode away asked Tostig who was the speaker.
"That was my brother, Harold himself," answered Tostig.
"I learn that too late," said Harold grimly.
The battle that followed was hotly contested. It began with a charge of the English cavalry, which was repulsed, and was followed up fiercely by the Norsemen, who fancied the flight of the English to mean a general rout. In this way they broke their ranks, which the king wished to preserve until reinforcements could reach him from the ships. Forward rushed the impatient Norsemen, King Harold throwing himself into their midst and fighting with savage fury. His men seconded him, the English ranks wavered and broke before the fierce onset, and victory seemed within the grasp of the invaders, when an arrow pierced King Harold's throat and he fell in a dying state from his horse.
His fall checked the onset, and the English king, hearing of his death, offered his brother an armistice. Tostig refused this and led his men back to the fray, which was resumed with all its old fury. But Tostig, too, was slain, and the king's brother-in-law, who arrived with reinforcements from the ships, met with the same fate. By this time the battlefield was covered with the bodies of the dead, and the Norsemen, dispirited by the loss of their leaders, gave way and retreated towards the ships, hotly pursued by their victorious foes. Of their great host only a small remnant succeeded in reaching the ships.
Thus ended the great fight at Stamford Bridge, and with it the reign and life of Harold Hardruler, who fell a victim to his ambition and love of strife. For years thereafter the bones of men lay scattered widely over that field, for none stayed to bury the dead, the Norsemen fleeing in their ships, while news of the landing of William of Normandy called Harold hastily to the south—where he fell in the midst of the fighting at Hastings as Harold of Norway had fallen on Stamford Field. Harold's invasion of England was the last great exploit of the vikings of the north, and though Ireland was invaded later by a Norseland fleet, no foreign foe after the fatal days at Stamford and Hastings ever landed on England's shores.