Northern Light on the Battle of Hastings

Abstract

Northern Lights on the Battle of Hastings. This study examines the description of the battle of Hastings and the events leading up to that battle in Morkinskinna, the earliest Old Norse-Icelandic compendium of the lives of the Norwegian kings. Unlike other Scandinavian, Anglo-Saxon, Norman, and Anglo-Norman sources Morkinskinna is the only history to reveal the identity of the relics on which Harold Godwinson swore his oath of allegiance to William the Conqueror (St. Odmarus). Gade's examination shows that the Morkinskinna version of these events must have been derived from excerpts of Ordericus Vitalis's Ecclesiastical History but that the information about Saint Odmarus must have been based on a separate tradition. She suggests that that tradition had its roots in historical events that took place in the autumn of 1056 at Saint-Omer, Flanders, and that Harold's oath of allegiance to William could have taken place on that occasion, and not in 1064, as most modern historians assume.