Shortly after the death of Siward, the country near York also became the theatre where one of the last celebrated Vikings of the north fell. Harald Haardraade was indeed a Christian, and a king in Norway; but with him, as with many of his cotemporaries, Christianity dwelt only on his lips. In his heart he was still the bold Viking, who valued Hildur’s bloody game more than holy psalms, and who preferred conquest on foreign shores to the peaceful government of an hereditary kingdom. Whilst still young he had distinguished himself in expeditions in the East, and in the Greek Empire. It seemed to him disgraceful that those lands, particularly in the north of England, which had once belonged to his forefathers, should for ever be wrested from Norway. He therefore agreed to assist Toste Godvinsön against his brother, the English King Harald Godvinsön; but on the condition that he himself, if he succeeded in conquering Harald, should have the dominion of England, whilst Toste was to have the half of it as jarl, or earl. They landed in the Humber; but in the battle which shortly afterwards took place (in 1066) at Stamford Bridge, a little to the east of York, both Toste and Harald fell. Thus the latter gained no more of England’s soil than the English King Harald had offered him before the battle, namely, “seven feet of earth, or as much as he was taller than other men.” This was one of the last serious attempts on the part of Denmark or Norway to reconquer England; and in the same year the Normans, after the battle of Hastings, in which King Harald fell, seized the kingdom which their Danish kinsmen had formerly possessed. William the Conqueror went in person against the Northumbrians; but before he disembarked he is said to have broken up the tumulus on the coast (by the Humber?) in which, according to the legend, Regner Lodbrog’s son, Ivar Beenlöse, had ordered himself to be buried, in order to avert the attacks of foreigners. William had to combat long before he could reduce Northumberland; but, as we shall afterwards see, he never succeeded in subduing that spirit of freedom and independence which the Danes and Norwegians had planted there. ---------- SECTION VI. Danish-Norwegian Memorials in the North of England.—Coins.—The Raven.—The Danish Flag. If even the old Saxon south England is distinguished by its richness in legends and still-existing memorials of the Danes, it is natural that they should be met with in still greater numbers in the old Danish districts to the north and east of Watlinga-Stræt.