Dr. Wayne Bartlett

So he'd also been in discussions, of course, with William Normandy as well.

But anyway, he sent the message to Harold Hardrada saying,

saying, hey, there's this really wealthy kingdom, which a Scandinavian king, Cnut, already had control of half a century before.

There was a very tentative claim as a kind of successor of Cnut through various machinations that Harold Hardrada could say, well, you know what?

I'm the rightful king of England.

So he'd not really shown much evidence previously of pushing that claim home.

But he suddenly thinks to himself, I think, hey, there's a great opportunity.

There is this wealthy kingdom.

It's all a bit of a mess.

There's lots of turmoil going on.

You know, the Normans might get involved.

What a great opportunity to really make a name for myself.

So for someone of Harold Hardrada's personality, this is kind of just too good a chance to miss.

So eventually he thinks, okay, let's go for it.

Let's see if I can become the next king of England.

Yeah, so there's this great battle at a place called Fulford, which is literally just a couple of miles from York, and actually still a very interesting place to visit.

You can still kind of trace bits of the battleground there.

So he has this battle against Edwin and Morka of Mercia, who basically are there to try and resist this initial invasion led by Harold Hardrada along with Tostig.

And there's this battle just outside York.

in which eventually Harold Hardrada's army wins this crushing victory, creating huge amounts of carnage in the process.