As brothers, a contemporary wrote in the Life of King Edward, Harold and Tostig Godwinson were ‘handsome and graceful … similar in strength … equally brave’. For that he had to look to Harold Hardrada, the Norwegian king. ‘There are no English who are very trustworthy’, Hardrada said; he had a claim to the whole of England too. Together they defeated a northern English army at Fulford on 20 September. On 25 September, at Stamford Bridge, on the River Derwent east of York, they surprised the invaders.