About

HIC EST

"HIC" is the first word of most of the Bayeux Tapestry's captions. It means here: here Harold sailed the sea, here they marvel at the star, here King Harold was killed. This site lets you write your own "here".

Why today?

On 14 October 1066, Harold II of England and Duke William of Normandy fought on a ridge in Sussex from about nine in the morning until dusk. Harold died, William was crowned on Christmas Day, and English changed for good. Today is the 960th anniversary.

This year the anniversary has a special guest. On 10 September 2026 the Bayeux Tapestry went on display at the British Museum in London, its first time in Britain in more than 900 years. It stays until 11 July 2027. Tickets for the autumn sold out within days, and the British papers have called it "Tapestry-mania". 2026 is also the 60th year of the annual re-enactment at Battle Abbey.

What's here

• Tapestry Maker — name your hero, choose a figure and wool colours, and string up to 8 scenes (from 35 patterns) into your own embroidered saga with Latin captions. Download it as an image or share a link that rebuilds it exactly.
• Walk the Tapestry — every captioned scene of the real tapestry, with the real Latin, a tap-to-translate word decoder, and short notes.
• If Harold Had Won — a Saxon-o-meter that finds French and Latin borrowings in your writing, an "Anglish" rewrite, and a 60-second Norman-or-Saxon word sprint.
• Shield Wall Quiz — 12 random questions from a pool of 40, with 5 ranks to earn.

1066 in nine dates

1. 5 January — Edward the Confessor dies with no clear heir.
2. 6 January — Harold Godwinson is crowned King of England.
3. April — Halley's Comet blazes across the sky, and people take it as an omen.
4. 20 September — Harald Hardrada of Norway and Harold's brother Tostig win the Battle of Fulford and take York.
5. 25 September — Harold destroys the Norwegian army at Stamford Bridge.
6. 28 September — William's fleet lands at Pevensey in Sussex.
7. 13–14 October — Harold camps on Caldbec Hill. The next morning the battle begins at about 9 a.m.
8. 14 October, dusk — Harold is dead and the English break and flee.
9. 25 December — William is crowned in Westminster Abbey.

How the drawings work

Nothing here is a photograph or a copy of the tapestry. Every figure, horse, ship, tree and border beast is drawn in code as simple vector shapes, then "stitched" with dashed outlines, hatched fills that imitate laid-and-couched woolwork, and a slight wobble filter. The palette follows the tapestry's wool colours (terracotta, blue-green, dull gold, olive, blue, dark blue and sage) on a linen ground. The Walk page drawings are simplified retellings of each scene, not copies.

The Latin in the maker is our own playful Latin. CAFFEAM BIBIT and TELEPHONUM INSPICIT are not in the original, though the real captions break plenty of grammar rules too. Names are left undeclined, just as the tapestry leaves HAROLD undeclined in several captions.

Accuracy notes

• The tapestry is really an embroidery: wool stitched onto linen, not woven.
• Counts of scenes and figures vary between sources. We use 58 scenes, 623 people, 994 animals, 37 buildings and 41 ships (Wikipedia).
• The "arrow in the eye" is genuinely disputed, and so is what the Ælfgyva scene means.
• The Saxon-o-meter only knows the words in its own list, so treat the score as an estimate. The Anglish swaps mix revived Old English words with modern coinages.
• The popular story that Normans ate "beef" while Saxons herded "cows" is simplified. The French meat words only appear in English writing around 1300.

Sources

• Battle of Hastings — Wikipedia (timeline, forces, tactics, aftermath)
• Bayeux Tapestry — Wikipedia (size, materials, colours, figure counts, patron, 2026 loan)
• Bayeux Tapestry tituli — Wikipedia (Latin captions, scene list, 2,226 characters)
• Bayeux Tapestry exhibition drives record British Museum ticket sales (dates, sell-out)
• £2.5m of tickets in one day — Art Dependence
• Year of the Normans — Visit 1066 Country (960th anniversary and re-enactment)
• List of Germanic and Latinate equivalents in English — Wikipedia
• Linguistic purism and the push for Anglish — Babbel Magazine (Paul Jennings, 1966)
• List of English words of French origin — Wikipedia (≈10,000 Middle English borrowings)

Credits & privacy

Design, drawings, code and writing are original to this site. Fonts are Cinzel and Alegreya from Google Fonts. There are no trackers, accounts or servers. Your saved tapestries and best scores stay in your own browser's local storage.

HIC EST is one of the daily sites at dailyma.de. It was made for 14 October 2026 and lives on at its archive address.