THE BARBARIAN VS THE MONK: BRUTALITY OVER TECHNIQUE-PART III: THE BATTLE OF STAMFORD BRIDGE

Lord help me, I am going to write about Vikings in a strength blog.  But here’s the thing: when you write a series titled “The Barbarian vs The Monk”, you can’t NOT write about the Vikings.  They were LITERALY the original “barbarian vs the monk”.  And I don’t mean purely in the metaphorical sense, of a rage filled warrior battling one that was highly disciplined and trained: I mean they literally sacked monasteries and killed monks as part of their pillaging and looting.  While the rest of the western world had embraced Christianity some 800 years prior, or Judaism some 2500 years prior, or Islam some 200 years prior, the Vikings were still worshipping a pantheon of gods, sacrificing humans, dying valiantly in battle to reach Valhalla and, in general, being a bunch of pagans.  So when these folks wound up on the shores of Lindisfarne and found a bunch of pacifists monks, they all had the same thought: “Dude: FREE gold.”  Because while the monks had been relying on the rest of the world to have enough good taste and decency to not pillage holy sites and slaughter pacifist holy men as their means of protection, the Vikings, unfamiliar with such concepts, simply asked “but why?”

When this is how you envision the divine, that whole "love and noble sacrifice" thing sounds more like an invitation

And enough of this behavior over a couple of centuries got the local pretty righteously pissed off about Vikings such that, when the Viking King Harald Hardrada led a less than successful invasion of England, the English King Harold Godwinson felt the need to give chase to the retreating force in the hopes of completely eliminating them, which allowed us to know the story of the Battle of Stamford Bridge.  For the unaware, that name “Battle of Stamford Bridge” sounds quite dramatic, but it’s worth knowing 2 things about it.  1: it wasn’t so much a battle, as it was a siege.  For those aware of military jargon, a siege is an instance where a defending force is locked into a fixed location (such as a castle or fortified bunker) and an aggressing force tries to gain access to that location.  The old battering rams and boiling oil affair.  The other thing to know about this siege is that the defending force consisted of ONE Viking Berserker, while the aggressing force consisted of the entire English army.  …and the siege lasted for FAR longer than it should have, allowing the retreating Viking force to be able to re-group across the river, with the English suffering a 40 to 1 fatality rate.

To put that into some perspective, the famous Battle of Thermopylae, from “300” fame, had estimates of 300 Spartans to an estimated 20,000 Persians, meaning Spartans were averaging around 66.66 (repeating of course) Persians per Spartan.  HOWEVER, many claim that the 20k number for Persians is exaggerated, AND, it’s worth noting that though, yeah, there WERE 300 Spartans at the battle, there were ALSO other members of the fighting force present, with estimates of anywhere between an extra 700-1300 troops comprised of Helots and Thebans.   This means, under the most GRACIOUS estimates, where we make the Greek force as small as possible and the Persians as large as possible, with the Greeks killing EVERY Persian (which, spoiler alert, they did NOT) we're looking at 1000 Greeks to 20k Persians, averaging 20 fatalities to 1.  Then factor in that the 40 English killed by the berserker was the estimate from the ENGLISH side.  I’m sure the Viking stories place the numbers even higher!  Which means, at his worst, this Berserker doubled the effect of the Spartans at their best.

Sometimes, such solutions may seem obvious

Then factor in that the Spartans had persistent military training and unit tactics.  They had the phalanx: a shield wall that relied on the strength of each individual man to bolster the defenses of the unit and turn back the advances of the aggressor.  They had SHIELDS in order to make such a shield wall.  They had OTHER troops available to watch each other’s back and flanks.  From birth they were dedicated to warfare and lived a literal “Spartan lifestyle” to facilitate that.  Contrast that with this lone Viking Berserker, armed with a Dane Axe which occupied both of his hands and allowed no room for a shield and had most likely been trained for warfare by his uncle and “learned on the fly” through various raids and skirmishes.  He had but 2 advantages here.  One is that the passage on Stamford Bridge was even narrower than the one that the Spartans occupied, such that 1 Viking was enough to hold off passage and the English could only send a man or 2 at a time, and the other is that the Viking had the gift of berserker rage.

And again, here I am, writing in a strength blog about berserkers: how cliché.  But for our purposes today, that’s absolutely something worth considering: just how effective brutality was on this day when it came face to face with technique, refinement, civility, chivalry, etc etc.  Hell, it’s a microcosm for the Viking age itself: when you have to row yourself into battle, kill all the opposition, load up on heavy valuables and then row yourself all the way back home, you better be bringing a LOT of brutality.  The berserker’s gift that day was that, in the absence of armor, friends, advanced military training and tactics or even a shield, he had so much rage, fury and outright brutality that he was able to cut down 40 men before the English had to resort to “cheating” and sent a man UNDER the bridged to stab the Viking with a spear from below.  And just like I wrote about Jack Dempsey: when you’re so brutal that they HAVE to change the rules of the game just to have a chance of winning, it means, regardless of the outcome, you’ve won.  The English had to give up all semblance of chivalry, stabbing a man from a hidden position, in order to have ANY chance of defeating him.

Not to say it was in any way a fair fight to begin with

The historical precedents are abound: brutality CAN overcome superior technique, ability, numbers, height, reach, weight, etc etc.  The Vikings discovered this and came up with the berserker AS their solution: sending unarmored maniacs with axes headfirst into battle as shock troops to disrupt the defender’s ranks and destroy their morale.  You have that same solution available to you when you encounter your own odds that, at first, appear insurmountable.  When facing a challenge that appears overwhelming, better able, more talented, better equipped, better trained, etc etc, there’s always the option to just crash so hard into it with all of the fury you have inside of you that, despite all of its advantages, it flinches, cracks and shows weakness.

And for my historically inclined readers, I’ll admit that all the details in the above may not be sound, but hey, it still makes a good story.