Born: 985?-995?, Denmark
Died: November 12, 1035, in Shaftesbury, England
Early days. His father was Sweyn Forkbeard,( Old Norse: Sveinn Tjúguskegg),King of Denmark. According to Medieval chroniclers : Encomium Emmae by a monk of Saint-Omer, the contemporary Chronicon of Thietmar of Merseburgand , Norse sources of the High Middle Ages, most prominently Heimskringla by Snorri Sturluson, give a Polish princess as Cnut's mother, whom they call Gunhild and a daughter of Burislav, the king of Vindland. Since in the Norse sagas the king of Vindland is always Burislav, this is reconcilable with the assumption that her father was Mieszko I, duke of Poland, (not his son Bolesław). Conclusion: Cnut was the son of a Polish princess who was the daughter of Mieszko I and sister of Boleslaw I: this has been linked to Cnut's use of Polish troops in England and Cnut's sister's Anglicized Slavic name, Santslaue. Her name may have been Świętosława (see: Sigrid Storråda, also called Gunhild by some), but the Oxford DNB article on Cnut states that her name is unknown. Cnut's brother Harald was the first born and crown prince. Some hint of Cnut's childhood can be found in the Flateyjarbók, a 13th-century source, stating at one point that Cnut was taught his soldiery by the chieftain Thorkell the Tall, brother to Sigurd, Jarl of mythical Jomsborg, and the legendary Joms, at their Viking stronghold on the Island of Wollin, off the coast of Pomerania. His date of birth, like his mother's name, is unknown.
Ruler. As a prince of Denmark, Cnut won the throne of England in 1016. His accession to the Danish throne in 1018 brought the crowns of England and Denmark together. Cnut claimed the crown of Norway in Trondheim in 1028. The Swedish city Sigtuna was held by Cnut. He had coins struck there that called him king. Cnut's possession of England's dioceses and the continental Diocese of Denmark was a source of great leverage within the Church, gaining notable concessions from Pope Benedict VIII and his successor John XIX. After his 1026 victory against Norway and Sweden, and on his way to Rome for this coronation, Cnut, in a letter written for the benefit of his subjects, stated himself "king of all England and Denmark and the Norwegians and of some of the Swedes". On the death of Forkbeard after a few months as king, on Candlemas Sunday 3 February 1014, Harald succeeded him as King of Denmark, while Cnut was immediately elected king by the Vikings and the people of the Danelaw. However, the English nobility took a different view, and the Witenagemot recalled Aethelred from Normandy. The restored king swiftly led an army against Cnut, who fled with his army to Denmark, along the way mutilating the hostages they had taken and abandoning them on the beach at Sandwich. Cnut went to Harald and supposedly made the suggestion they might have a joint kingship, although this found no favor with his brother. Harald is thought to have offered Cnut command of his forces for another invasion of England, on the condition he did not continue to press his claim. In any case, Cnut was able to assemble a large fleet with which to launch another invasion.
Conquest of England. Among the allies of Denmark was Boleslaw the Brave (Boleslaw Chrobry), the King of Poland and a relative to the Danish royal house. He lent some Polish troops, likely to have been a pledge made to Cnut and Harald when, in the winter, they "went amongst the Wends" to fetch their mother back to the Danish court. She had been sent away by their father after the death of the Swedish king Eric the Victorious in 995, and his marriage to Sigrid the Haughty, the Swedish queen mother. Early in 1016, the Vikings crossed the Thames and harried Warwickshire, the chronicler says the English army disbanded because the king and the citizenry of London were not present. It was agreed that all of England north of the Thames was to be the domain of the Danish prince, while all to the south was kept by the English king, along with London. Accession to the reign of the entire realm was set to pass to Cnut upon Edmund's death. Edmund died (maybe murdered) on 30 November, within weeks of the agreement. In accord with the treaty, Cnut was left as king of all of England. Cnut ruled England for almost twenty years. The protection he lent against Viking raiders – many of them under his command – restored the prosperity that had been increasingly impaired since the resumption of Viking attacks in the 980s. The resources he commanded in England helped him to establish control of the majority of Scandinavia, too. In July 1017, Cnut wed Emma of Normandy, the widow of Æthelred and daughter of Richard the Fearless, the first Duke of Normandy. In 1018, having collected a Danegeld amounting to the colossal sum of £72,000 levied nationwide, with an additional £10,500 extracted from London, Cnut paid off his army and sent most of them home. He retained 40 ships and their crews as a standing force in England. An annual tax called heregeld (army payment) was collected. By the 1030s Cnut's direct administration of Wessex had come to an end. In general, after initial reliance on his Scandinavian followers in the first years of his reign, Cnut allowed those Anglo-Saxon families of the existing English nobility who had earned his trust to assume rulership of his Earldoms.
Statesmanship. Cnut was generally remembered as a wise and successful king of England. Under his reign, Cnut brought together the English and Danish kingdoms, and the people saw a golden age of dominance across Scandinavia, as well as within the British Isles. He reinstated the Laws of King Edgar to allow for the constitution of a Danelaw, and for the activity of Scandinavians at large. He also reinstituted the extant laws with a series of proclamations to assuage common grievances brought to his attention, including: On Inheritance in case of Intestacy, and On Heriots and Reliefs He also strengthened the currency, initiating a series of coins of equal weight to those being used in Denmark and other parts of Scandinavia.
Journey to Rome. His enemies in Scandinavia subdued, and apparently at his leisure, Cnut was able to accept an invitation to witness the accession of the Holy Roman Emperor Conrad II. Consistent with his role as a Christian king, Cnut says he went to Rome to repent for his sins, to pray for redemption and the security of his subjects, and to negotiate with the Pope for a reduction in the costs of the pallium for English archbishops and for a resolution to the competition over the archdioceses of Canterbury and Hamburg-Bremen for superiority over the Danish dioceses Cnut's actions as a Viking conqueror and his ruthless treatment of the overthrown dynasty had made him uneasy with the Church. In an effort to reconcile himself with his churchmen, Cnut repaired all the English churches and monasteries that were victims of Viking plunder and refilled their coffers. He also built new churches and was an earnest patron of monastic communities. Cnut’s journey to Rome in 1027 is another sign of his dedication to the Christian religion.
Conrad gave Cnut lands in the Mark of Schleswig — the land-bridge between the Scandinavian kingdoms and the continent — as a token of their treaty of friendship. Centuries of conflict in this area between the Danes and the Germans led to construction of the Danevirke, from Schleswig, on the Schlei, an inlet of the Baltic Sea, to the North Sea. Cnut also stated his intention of proceeding to Denmark to secure peace between the kingdoms of Scandinavia. In 1028, after his return from Rome through Denmark, Cnut set off from England to Norway, and the city of Trondheim, with a fleet of fifty ships. Cnut was crowned king, now of England, Denmark, and Norway, as well as part of Sweden. Cnut's subsequent attempt to rule Norway without the key support of the Trondejarls, through Ælfgifu of Northampton, and his eldest son by her, Sweyn Knutsson, was not a success. The period is known as Aelfgifu's Time in Norway, with heavy taxation, a rebellion, and the restoration of the former Norwegian dynasty under Saint Olaf's illegitimate son Magnus the Good. As Cnut was preparing his re-invasion of England, the Battle of Clontarf on 23 April 1014 pitted an array of armies laid out on the fields before the walls of Dublin. There was a brief period of freedom in the Irish Sea zone for the Vikings of Dublin, with a political vacuum felt throughout the entire Western Maritime Zone of the North Atlantic Archipelago. Prominent among those who stood to fill the void was Cnut, "whose leadership of the Scandinavian world gave him a unique influence over the western colonies and whose control of their commercial arteries gave an economic edge to political domination". Later Cnut went to Scotland with an army, and the navy in the Irish Sea, in 1031, to receive, without bloodshed, the submission of three Scottish kings: Maelcolm, Maelbeth, and Iehmarc.
Family. Wife Emma of Normandy . Children: Daughter (c. 1012 – 1020); Sweyn Knutsson, King of Norway; Harold Harefoot, King of England. Concubine Ælfgifu of Northampton. Children: Harthacnut, King of Denmark and England; Gunhilda of Denmark, wed Henry III, Holy Roman Emperor.
This article uses, among others, considerably abbreviated material from the Wikipedia article "Cnut the Great". Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may apply.
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