English Heritage Battlefield Report: Stamford Bridge 1066

 

English Heritage Battlefield Report: Stamford Bridge 1066 

Stamford Bridge (25 September 1066)

Parish: Stamford Bridge  

District: East Yorkshire 

County: East Riding of Yorkshire  

Grid Ref: SE 720551

Published in 1995 by author unknown.

Whilst drawing on some primary sources for the battle and the events leading up to it, this document also incorporates the compounded errors of over 900 years of interpretation, guesswork, speculation and repetition of secondary citations.  It forms, if you like, a 'chinese whispers' result arising from successive generations of historians each drawing on the opinions and mistakes of the preceding generation.  Drawing heavily on Freeman, it repeats his error that the only description of the battle in saga sources came from the Saga of Haraldr Hardrada which he identifies by the name of the manuscript, Heimskringla, rather than that of the king's saga. This battlefield report also mis-identifies the location of the battle to Battle Flats, due to the underlying errors in its analysis.

The unknown author says " The Heimskringla weaves a rich tapestry of myth, fact and imagination into its account of the Battle of Stamford Bridge, while Sturlasson interprets the military events within a thoroughly thirteenth-century context. He was also ignorant of the topography of both the battlefield and East Yorkshire.."

https://historicengland.org.uk/content/docs/listing/battlefields/stamford-bridge/