Now, groundbreaking new evidence uncovered by metal detectorists and archaeologists is shattering the accepted history. In History Hit’s documentary 1066: The Lost Battlefield, Dan Snow follows a landmark investigation that pinpoints what’s now thought to be the real battlefield, roughly a mile south from its traditional location – unearthing weaponry and military gear that reconnect us with a pivotal moment in English history.

Unearthing the evidence

The search for the true site began when lead metal detectorists Simon Richardson and John Benfield, working alongside the Battle of Stamford Bridge Heritage Society, targeted an area near the village of Low Catton. Aerial surveys and crop marks revealed that during the 11th century, the main crossing point over the River Derwent was not the modern town site, but an older Roman bridge further south.

Stamford Bridge detectorists at work

Image Credit: History Hit

Armed with careful grid plans and working under strict archaeological licenses, the team began surveying the fields and the riverbed. What emerged was an extraordinary, concentrated concentration of 11th-century military artefacts. No civilian items were mixed in.

Metal detectorist Simon Richardson shows some of the finds to Dan

Image Credit: History Hit

Key discoveries uncovered:

• A Viking sword and armour: A heavy 11th-century iron sword pommel and shattered links from a riveted iron mail shirt (‘hauberk’)
• Buckled Weaponry: A sharp Viking battle-axe head with a unique wooden sheath peg-hole, alongside a S-bent Norwegian arrowhead that must have struck a hard target at high speed.
• River Artefacts: Massive hand-forged iron ship nails, bridge timbers, and a rare Khazar-style sword guard from Southeastern Europe – a tantalising link to Hardrada’s early career in the Byzantine Varangian Guard.

Some of the new discoveries

Image Credit: History Hit

The road to Stamford Bridge

To understand the importance of this discovery, Dan explores the events of the volatile summer of 1066. After the death of King Edward the Confessor in January, Harold Godwinson claimed the English throne. However, he faced immediate threats on two fronts: Duke William of Normandy in the south, and his own exiled brother Tostig, who allied with King Harald Hardrada of Norway, in the north.

Following their victory over Anglo-Saxon earls at Fulford on 20 September, Hardrada’s invading Norse forces marched to the River Derwent expecting a routine exchange of hostages.

Dan by River Derwent

Image Credit: History Hit

Expecting no resistance, many of the Norse warriors left their heavy mail armour at their ships 10 miles away in Riccall. Unbeknown to the Vikings, King Harold had force-marched his English army 180 miles north in just five days, catching the invaders completely off-guard.

Despite ferocious resistance – including the legendary Viking warrior who single-handedly held the narrow wooden bridge until an Englishman pierced him from beneath – the unarmoured Viking’s desperate shield wall eventually collapsed. Although Viking reinforcements had rushed overland from Riccall to join the fray, they arrived exhausted and too late. By evening, both Hardrada and Harold’s traitorous brother Tostig were dead.

Lead metal detectorists Simon Richardson and John Benfield, working alongside the Battle of Stamford Bridge Heritage Society, with Bill Locke and Dan Snow from History Hit

Image Credit: History Hit

1066: The Lost Battlefield feels like a live-action archaeological detective story, pairing state-of-the-art metal detecting and river dives with historical chronicles and expert re-enactments to rewrite the story of this momentous day. Yet King Harold’s triumph would be fleeting. Just three days later, William, Duke of Normandy, landed near Hastings, setting the stage for the ultimate battle for the English crown.

Experience the thrill of discovery up close and stream 1066: The Lost Battlefield exclusively on History Hit

Yet there was another battle that occurred on English soil that year, one that preceded both Stamford Bridge and Hastings: the Battle of Fulford, also known as the Battle of Gate Fulford.

Here are ten facts about the battle.

1. Fighting was sparked by the arrival in England of Harald Hardrada

The Norwegian king, Harald Hardrada reached the Humber estuary on 18 September 1066 with up to 12,000 men.

His aim was to take the English throne from King Harold II, arguing he should have the crown because of arrangements made between the late King Edward the Confessor and the sons of King Cnut.

2. Hardrada had a Saxon ally

Tostig, the exiled brother of King Harold II, supported Harald’s claim to the English throne and had been the one who initially convince Harald to invade.

When the Norwegian king landed in Yorkshire, Tostig reinforced him with soldiers and ships.

3. The battle occurred south of York

An image of Harald Hardrada in Lerwick Town Hall in the Shetland Islands. Credit: Colin Smith / Commons.

Although Hardrada’s ultimate aim was to gain control of the English crown, he first marched north to York, a city that was once the epicentre of Viking power in England.

Hardrada’s army, however, soon found themselves confronted by an Anglo-Saxon army just south of York on the eastern side of the Ouse River near Fulford.

4. The Anglo-Saxon army was led by two brothers

They were Earl Morcar of Northumbria and Earl Edwin of Mercia, who earlier in the year had decisively defeated Tostig. For Tostig this was round two.

The week before the battle, Morcar and Edwin hastily gathered together an army to confront Hardrada’s invasion force. At Fulford they fielded some 5,000 men.

5. Morcar and Edwin occupied a strong defensive position…

Their right flank was protected by the River Ouse, while their left flank was protected by ground too swampy for an army to march through.

The Saxons also had a formidable defence to their front: a stream three metres wide and one metre deep, that the Vikings would have to cross if they were to reach York.

Swampland by the River Ouse south of York. Similar land protected the Saxon’s left flank at Fulford. Credit: Geographbot / Commons.

6. …but this soon worked against them

Initially only Harald and a small portion of his army arrived at the battlefield facing Morcar and Edwin’s army as most of Harald’s men were still some distance away. Thus for a time the Anglo-Saxon army outnumbered their foe.

Morcar and Edwin knew that this was a golden opportunity to attack but the River Ouse’s tide was then at its highest and the stream in front of them was flooded.

Unable to advance, Morcar and Edwin were forced to delay their attack, watching with frustration as more and more of Harald’s troops began to assemble on the far side of the stream.

7. The defenders struck first

At around midday on 20 September 1066 the tide finally receded. Still bent on attacking their foe before the full might of Harald’s force could arrive, Morcar then led an attack on Harald’s right flank.

After a melee in the marshlands, Morcar’s Saxons began to push Hardrada’s right flank back, but the advance soon petered out and came to a standstill.

8. Harald gave the decisive order

He pushed forwards his best men against Edwin’s Saxon soldiers stationed nearest the Ouse River, quickly overwhelming and routing that wing of the Saxon army.

As a small hill ensured Edwin’s force was not within sight of them, Morcar and his men probably did not realise their right wing had collapsed until it was too late.

Harald’s best men routed the right flank of the Saxon army. Credit: Wolfmann / Commons.

9. The Vikings then surrounded the remaining English

Having chased Edwin’s men away from the riverbank, Harald and his veterans now charged the rear of Morcar’s already engaged men. Outnumbered and outmanoeuvred, Morcar sounded the retreat.

The English lost nearly 1,000 men although both Morcar and Edwin survived. It did not come without cost for the Vikings however as they too had lost a similar number of men, presumably mostly against Morcar’s forces.

10. Hardrada did not have long to savour his victory at Fulford

After Fulford York surrendered to Harald and ‘the Last Viking’ prepared to march south. He didn’t need to, however, as barely five days after Fulford, he and his army were attacked by Harold Godwinson and his army at the Battle of Stamford Bridge.

This article is an edited transcript of 1066: Battle of Hastings with Marc Morris, available on History Hit TV.

King Harold Godwinson spent much of 1066 anticipating a Norman invasion in the south of England, led by the Duke of Normandy, the future William the Conqueror. Since Scandinavia had been wracked by internal conflict for the last decade, the English monarch was not expecting a Viking attack.

After waiting around four months for a Norman invasion, Harold could not sustain his army any longer, and disbanded it on the 8 September.

He sent his men back to the provinces, and then proceeded to ride inland to London.

The Vikings arrive

When Harold returned to London two or three days later, he was informed that an invasion had taken place – but that it wasn’t a Norman invasion. Instead, it was an invasion by Harold Hardrada, King of Norway, and Tostig Godwinson, Harold’s very own estranged and bitter brother, who had a large fleet of Vikings with them.

Harold was probably very frustrated at that point, because he had held an army together for around four months to resist William, and, as he was literally in the process of standing it down, the Norwegians arrived in northern England.

If they had arrived any sooner then the news would have reached Harold in time for him to keep his army together.

It was very bad timing for Harold. He then had to race northwards with his own bodyguard, the Housecarls, and his household cavalry, all while sending out fresh writs to the shires saying that there was a new muster in the north to deal with the Viking invasion. He marched north from the end of the second week in September.

The Normans had been waiting in Saint-Valery since mid-September. But they must have known about the Viking invasion because it only took up to around 24 hours to get a ship across the Channel at that time, and usually less than that.

We know there were spies and information passing between the two countries the whole time. The Normans know the Norwegians had landed and that Harold had set off to confront them.

But the extraordinary thing is that when the Normans set sail for England on the 27 or 28 September, they could not have known the outcome of that clash in the north.

Harold Godwinson destroys them

We know that on 25 September, Harold Godwinson met Harald Hardrada at Stamford Bridge and smashed the Viking army to pieces.

It was a great victory for Harold. But the news could not have travelled the 300 odd miles from Yorkshire to Poitiers – where the Normans were waiting – in two days. When they set sail, and even when they landed in England, they didn’t know which King Harold (or Harald) they were going to have to fight.

The amazing thing about the Battle of Stamford Bridge is that, if it had been the only thing to happen that year, 1066 would still have been a famous year.

It was one of the great early medieval victories in English history, and Harold Godwinson completely annihilated a Viking army.

We’re told the Vikings turned up in 200 or 300 ships, and that they returned in 24, or somewhere close to that. Critically, King Hardrada was killed, and he was one of the foremost warriors in Europe at that point.

Described by William of Poitiers (William the Conquerer’s biographer) as the strongest man in Europe, he was known as the “Thunderbolt of the North”. Thus, Harold’s was a huge victory. If the Norman invasion hadn’t happened then we might still be singing songs about King Harold Godwinson and his famous victory.

The Vikings did threaten to come back frequently, including in 1070, 1075 and, in a very serious way, 1085 – with the latter provoking Domesday. But Harald Hardrada’s invasion marked the last major Viking incursion into England, and Stamford Bridge the last big Viking battle. There were, however, other battles that happened in Scotland in the later Middle Ages.

Following Stamford Bridge, Harold believed that he had secured his kingdom. Autumn was coming on, and the king had nearly got through his first year on the throne.

Responding to the Norman invasion

We don’t know exactly where or when Harold got the news that William had landed on the south coast because, with this period, determining certainties is like trying to nail jelly to the wall a lot of the time.

The certainties when it comes to Harold’s movements are Stamford Bridge on 25 September, and Hastings on 14 October. But where he was in the meantime is a matter of supposition.

Because he had already stood down his army in the south, a reasonable supposition is that Harold’s assumption – or maybe his prayer – must have been that the Normans weren’t coming.

The Battle of Stamford Bridge marked the last major Viking engagement in England.

The unexpected invasion by the Norwegians had forced Harold to call out an army again and rush north. On the morrow of Stamford Bridge, Harold would probably still have assumed that the Normans weren’t coming. He had won his victory against the Vikings. They had been decimated.

Like any commander in the Middle Ages, with the battle won and the dragon slain, Harold disbanded his army for a second time. All the call-up troops were sent home. Mission accomplished.

Until about a week later, it is reasonable to assume that Harold was still in Yorkshire, because he needed to pacify the region. Lots of people in Yorkshire had been very pleased to see the arrival of a Scandinavian king because that part of the world has strong cultural ties, political and cultural ties to Scandinavia.

Harold, therefore, would have wanted to spend time in Yorkshire, pacifying the locals and having a serious conversation with the people of York about their loyalty, while also burying his dead brother, Tostig, among other things.

Then, just as he was settling down again, a messenger arrived posthaste from the south and informed him of William the Conqueror’s invasion.

1. It was sparked by the invasion of Viking king Harold Hardrada

Harald, King of Norway, was one of at least five claimants to the English throne in 1066. After Edward the Confessor died in January of that year, his right-hand man, Harold Godwinson, ascended the throne. But the Harald with an “a” believed that he had a rightful claim to the crown and in September landed in Yorkshire with an invading force.

2. Harald had teamed up with Harold’s own brother

Tostig Godwinson wanted vengeance after being exiled by King Edward and Harold in November 1065. The decision to outlaw Tostig had come about after he refused to step down from his position as Earl of Northumbria in the face of a rebellion against him. But Tostig saw the move as unjust and, after first attempting to bring Harold down himself, eventually asked Harald Hardrada to invade England.

3. Harold’s force caught Harald’s men by surprise with their armour off

The Vikings hadn’t been expecting a clash to take place at Stamford Bridge; they had been waiting there for hostages to arrive from nearby York, which they had just invaded. But when Harold got wind of the northern invasion, he raced north, gathering an army along the way and catching Harald and Tostig’s forces unawares.

5. Nearly half of the Viking army was elsewhere

The invading force was made up of around 11,000 Norwegians and Flemish mercenaries – the latter hired by Tostig. But only some 6,000 of them were at Stamford Bridge when Harold arrived with his army. The other 5,000 were about 15 miles to the south, guarding the Norse ships that had been beached at Riccall.

Some of the Vikings at Riccall did rush to Stamford Bridge to join the fight, but the battle was almost over by the time they got there and many of them were exhausted.

6. Accounts talk of a giant Viking axeman…

Harold’s approaching army was reportedly on one side of a single narrow bridge crossing the River Derwent, and the Vikings on the other. When Harold’s men tried to cross the bridge in single file, sources say they were held up by a giant axeman who cut them down, one by one.

7. … who suffered a gruesome death

Sources say this axeman soon got his comeuppance, however. A member of Harold’s army reportedly floated under the bridge in a half-barrel and rammed a large spear up into the vitals of the axeman standing above.

8. Harald was killed early in the battle in a state of berserkergang

The Norwegian was struck in the throat with an arrow while fighting in the trance-like fury for which the berserkers are famed. The Viking army went on to be heavily beaten, with Tostig also killed.

Although a number of major Scandinavian campaigns took place in the British Isles over the next few decades, Harald is commonly held to be the last of the great Viking kings and so historians often use the Battle of Stamford Bridge as a convenient end point for the Viking Age.

9. The battle was incredibly bloody

The Vikings may have ultimately been defeated but both sides suffered heavy losses. Around 6,000 of the invading army were killed while around 5,000 of Harold’s men died.

10. Harold’s victory was short-lived

As Harold was busy fighting off the Vikings in the north of England, William the Conqueror was en route to southern England with his Norman army. Harold’s victorious forces were still in the north celebrating their win at Stamford Bridge when the Normans landed at Sussex on 29 September.

Harold then had to march his men south and gather up reinforcements on the way. By the time his army met with William’s men at the Battle of Hastings on 14 October it was battle-weary and exhausted. The Normans, meanwhile, had had two weeks to prepare for the confrontation.

Hastings would ultimately prove to be Harold’s doing. By the end of the battle, the king was dead and William was on his way to taking the English crown.