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Tostig Godwinson (1026? – September 25, 1066) was an Anglo-Saxon earl of Northumbria and brother of King Harold II of England, the last crowned Anglo-Saxon King of England.

Tostig was born the third child of Godwin, Earl of Wessex and Kent, and Gytha Thorkelsdóttir. In 1051, he married Judith, the daughter of Count Baldwin IV, half-sister of Baldwin V of Flanders, and aunt of Matilda who married William the Conqueror. This made him William's uncle-in-law.

That same year, 1051, Tostig and his father were banished from England to which they forcefully returned in 1052. Three years later in 1055, Tostig became the Earl of Northumbria upon the death of Earl Siward.

Tostig appears to have governed in Northumbria with some difficulty. He was never popular with the Northumbrian ruling class, a mix of Danish invaders,and Anglo Saxon survivors of the last Norse invasion. The reasons for this are not clear. Tostig was known to have taken a heavy hand against those who resisted his rule, including the murder of several scions of Northumbrian families. The reasons for this resistance include frequent absences at the court of King Edward in the south, and possibly a lack of leadership against the Scots, voracious raiders, whose king was a personal friend of Tostig. This was a Catch-22 situation, however; Tostig's unpopularity made it difficult to raise local levies to combat the Scots. He resorted to using a strong force of Danish mercenaries (housecarles) as his main force, an expensive and resented policy (the housecarle's leaders were later slaughtered by rebels). Local biases probably also played a part. Tostig was of the south of England, a distinctly different culture from the north, which had not bent its head to a southern earl in many lifetimes. In 1063, still immersed in the confused local politics of Northumbria, his popularity apparently plummeted to a new and dangerous level. Many of the inhabitants of Northumbria were Danes, who had enjoyed lesser taxation than in other parts of England. Yet the wars in Wales, of which Tostig's constituents were principle beneficiaries, needed paying for. Tostig had been a major commander in these wars attacking in the North whilst his brother Harold marched up from the South.

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