LONDON

FRESH EVIDENCE THAT Anglo-Saxon monarch Harold Godwinson made his way to the Battle of Hastings mainly by sea, has sparked a new theory that his loss at that crucial encounter with William the Conqueror may have been due to his army being seasick.

Harold had earlier marched north to deal with an earlier invasion, this time by Norwegian hard man King Harald Hardrada. Upon defeating him, the story went that Godwinson then marched his army south again to fight the Normans and this played a part in his eventual defeat.

“This new evidence, that Harold did not make a forced march south to meet William at Hastings, but instead ferried his army by sea to London and then began marching, might explain why the Anglo-Saxon army had empty stomachs and seemed a little off balance during the fight,” says historian Professor Fergus Neilson, whose recent book Sick Of It traces the role of illness in key moments in history. “Harold is believed to have sent some of his navy to try and trap William by sea, but that came to nothing, too. We’re currently searching the Bayeux Tapestry now for any evidence of seasickness among the Anglo-Saxon Army. It’s conceivable that King Harold used Norwegian vessels in all this, and that was the reason his army suffered terrible seasickness on the journey down south. Such was the destruction of the Norwegian army near York, that its remnants only needed a fraction of the vessels that had brought them to England for their return journey. However, the Anglo-Saxons may not have been familiar with the Viking ships they took over and that could have caused their journey to London to be more uncomfortable for Harold’s army than it might have been.”