I won't tell you what William was known as, because it might give away the plot of part two tonight. So they had to hobble off down to Hastings to take on William.
Harold's army was utterly depleted and knackered, and then came more bad news: the Normans were coming. Harald was slain, the invincible Vikings were vinced. If England had been the Glastonbury Green Field, it was now a Scandinavian death-metal festival on far too many magic mushrooms. It was a fierce and brutal battle, hundreds died, the river Derwent ran red. Harold of England vs Harald of Norway, hairy Saxons against even hairier Vikings. It all kicked off big time at Stamford Bridge (the village in East Riding, not the football ground in west London). So you can imagine how bummed out they were when all these Norwegian Metallica freaks turned up, the pillage people, and started to lop their heads off with big swords. Basically, the whole country was like one of those peripheral fields at the Glastonbury festival. Up to this point England had been a peaceful place, inhabited by hippies who sat around drinking mead, playing the lute, making love, occasionally getting off their arses to plough a tithe or wattle a pig. Just before the Normans and the Battle of Hastings, we were invaded by shiploads of hairy Norsemen.
Poor Eald Engaland was being attacked from all sides. It looks a lot closer to hell than heaven to me. I always thought Middle Earth was somewhere in New Zealand, but it turns out that for these olden days dudes, Middle Earth was the place between heaven and hell - ie the world as they knew it.