Cnut ( ;"Cnut" . Collins English Dictionary. ; – 12 November 1035), also known as Canute and with the epithet the Great,Laurence M. Larson Canute the Great G. P. Putnam's Sons 1912Article Royal Family website (2023) was King of England from 1016, King of Denmark from 1018, and King of Norway from 1028 until his death in 1035. The three kingdoms united under Cnut's rule are referred to together as the North Sea Empire by historians.
As a Danish prince, Cnut won the throne of England in 1016 in the wake of centuries of Viking activity in northwestern Europe. His later accession to the Danish throne in 1018 brought the crowns of England and Denmark together. Cnut sought to keep this power base by uniting Danes and English under cultural bonds of wealth and custom. After a decade of conflict with opponents in Scandinavia, Cnut claimed the crown of Norway in Trondheim in 1028. In 1031, Malcolm II of Scotland also submitted to him, though Anglo-Norse influence over Scotland was weak and ultimately did not last to the time of Cnut's death.ASC, Ms. D, s.a. 1031.
Dominion of England lent the Danes an important link to the maritime zone between the islands of Great Britain and Ireland, where Cnut, like his father before him, had a strong interest and wielded much influence among the Norse–Gaels. Cnut's possession of England's dioceses and the continental Diocese of Denmark – with a claim laid upon it by the Holy Roman Empire's Archdiocese of Hamburg-Bremen – was a source of great prestige and leverage among the magnates of Christendom (gaining notable concessions such as one on the price of the pallium of his bishops, though they still had to travel to obtain the pallium, as well as on the tolls his people had to pay on the way to Rome). After his 1026 victory against Norway and Sweden, and on his way back from Rome where he attended the coronation of the Holy Roman Emperor, Cnut deemed himself "King of all England and Denmark and the Norwegians and of some of the Swedes" in a letter written for the benefit of his subjects. Medieval historian Norman Cantor called him "the most effective king in Anglo-Saxon history".Cantor, The Civilisation of the Middle Ages, 1995: 166.
He is popularly invoked in the context of the legend of King Canute and the tide.
Birth and kingship
Cnut was the son (after Harald) of Swein Forkbeard, and thus came from a line of Scandinavian rulers central to the unification of Denmark.Trow, Cnut, pp. 30–31. Neither the place nor the date of his birth are known. Harthacnut I was the semi-legendary founder of the Danish royal house at the beginning of the 10th century, and his son, Gorm the Old, became the first in the official line (the "Old" in his name indicates this). Harald Bluetooth, Gorm's son and Cnut's grandfather, was the Danish king at the time of the Christianization of Denmark; he became one of the first Scandinavian kings to accept Christianity.
The identity of Cnut the Great's mother is uncertain and subject to significant contradictions between sources. Norse sagas of the High Middle Ages, most prominently Snorri Sturluson's Heimskringla, name her Gunhild, a daughter of Burislav, king of the Wends (referring to West Slavic Obotrite or Wendish territories in the southern Baltic). According to these accounts, she bore Cnut and later died, after which Sweyn Forkbeard married Sigrid the Haughty, the widow of Eric the Victorious. Contemporary and near-contemporary Continental sources add further complications. The Encomium Emmae Reginae refers to Cnut's mother as a daughter of Mieszko I of Poland (sometimes reconstructed as Świętosława in fringe revisionist scholarship). Thietmar of Merseburg's Chronicon also mentions an unnamed daughter of Mieszko I, the sister of Boleslaus, ruler of Poland and the widow of Erik, king of the Swedes (), who died between 992 and 995, married Sweyn and became mother to his sons, but provides no name or dramatic details. Adam of Bremen in his Gesta Hammaburgensis ecclesiae pontificum uniquely equates Cnut's mother with the former Queen of Sweden (wife of Eric the Victorious and mother of Olof Skötkonung), though this identification is widely regarded by modern historians as an error or conflation. Due to these inconsistencies, including differing timelines, names, and sequences of marriages—mainstream scholarship tends to view the figure as semi-legendary or a composite of diplomatic alliances common in the Baltic region during the late Viking Age. The "Polish princess" link remains a hypothesis rather than an established fact, while the Wendish/Obotrite connection in the sagas points to broader Wendish noble networks rather than a singular Piast origin.
Different theories regarding the number and identity of Sweyn's wives have been proposed. Many historians assume he had at least two wives: an earlier Wendish consort who was Cnut's mother, and a later one identified with Sigrid the Haughty. Cnut's brother Harald is described as the younger in the Encomium Emmae.
Some hint of Cnut's childhood can be found in the Flateyjarbók, a 13th-century Icelandic source that says he was taught his soldiery by the chieftain Thorkell the Tall, brother to Sigvaldi, Jarl of Jomsborg, and the legendary Jomsvikings, at their stronghold on the island of Wollin, off the coast of Pomerania. His date of birth, like his mother's name, is unknown. Contemporary works such as the Chronicon and the Encomium Emmae, do not mention this. Even so, in a Knútsdrápa by the skald Óttarr svarti, there is a statement that Cnut was "of no great age" when he first went to war.Douglas, English Historical Documents, pp. 335–36 It also mentions a battle identifiable with Swein Forkbeard's invasion of England and attack on the city of Norwich, in 1003–04, after the St. Brice's Day massacre of Danes by the English, in 1002. If Cnut indeed accompanied this expedition, his birthdate may be near 990, or even 980. If not, and if the skald's poetic verse references another assault, such as Swein's conquest of England in 1013–14, it may even suggest a birth date nearer 1000. There is a passage of the Encomiast (as the author of the Encomium Emmae is known) with a reference to the force Cnut led in his English conquest of 1015–16. Here (see below) it says all the Vikings were of "mature age" under Cnut "the king".
A description of Cnut appears in the 13th-century Icelandic Knýtlinga saga:
Hardly anything is known with certainty of Cnut's life until the year he was part of a Scandinavian force under his father, King Swein, in his invasion of England in summer 1013. Cnut was likely part of his father's 1003 and 1004 campaigns in England, although the evidence is not firm. The 1013 invasion was the climax to a succession of Viking raids spread over a number of decades. Following their landing in the Humber, the kingdom fell to the Vikings quickly, and near the end of the year King Æthelred fled to Normandy, leaving Swein Forkbeard in possession of England. In the winter, Swein was in the process of consolidating his kingship, with Cnut left in charge of the fleet and the base of the army at Gainsborough in Lincolnshire.
On the death of Swein Forkbeard after a few months as king, on Candlemas (Sunday 3 February 1014),William of Malms., Gesta Regnum Anglorum, pp. 308–10 Harald succeeded him as King of Denmark, while the Vikings and the people of the Danelaw immediately elected Cnut as king in England.Sawyer, History of the Vikings, p. 171 However, the English nobility took a different view, and the Witenagemot recalled Æthelred 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 in Kent. Cnut went to Harald and supposedly made the suggestion they might have a joint kingship, although this found no favour 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 succeeded in assembling a large fleet with which to launch another invasion.
Conquest of England
Among the allies of Denmark was Bolesław I the Brave, the duke of Poland (later crowned king) and a relative to the Danish royal house. He lent some Polish troops, likely to have been a pledge made to Cnut and his brother 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. This wedlock formed a strong alliance between the successor to the throne of Sweden, Olof Skötkonung, and the rulers of Denmark, his in-laws. Swedes were certainly among the allies in the English conquest. Another in-law to the Danish royal house, Eiríkr Hákonarson, was the earl of Lade and the co-ruler of Norway with his brother Sweyn Haakonsson – Norway having been under Danish sovereignty since the Battle of Svolder, in 999. Eiríkr's participation in the invasion left his son Hakon to rule Norway, with Sweyn.
In the summer of 1015, Cnut's fleet set sail for England with a Danish army of perhaps 10,000 in 200 longships.Trow, Cnut, p. ???. Cnut was at the head of an array of Vikings from all over Scandinavia. The invading army was composed primarily of mercenaries. The invasion force was to engage in often close and grisly warfare with the English for the next fourteen months. Practically all of the battles were fought against the eldest son of Æthelred, Edmund Ironside.
Landing in Wessex According to the Peterborough Chronicle manuscript, one of the major witnesses of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, early in September 1015 "[Cnut] came into Sandwich, and straightway sailed around Kent to Wessex, until he came to the mouth of the Frome, and harried in Dorset and Wiltshire and Somerset",Garmonsway, G.N. (ed. & trans.), The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Dent Dutton, 1972 & 1975, Peterborough (E) text, s.a. 1015, p. 146. beginning a campaign of an intensity not seen since the days of Alfred the Great. A passage from Queen Emma's Encomium provides a picture of Cnut's fleet:
Wessex, long ruled by the dynasty of Alfred and Æthelred, submitted to Cnut late in 1015, as it had to his father two years earlier. At this point Eadric Streona, the Ealdorman of Mercia, deserted Æthelred together with 40 ships and their crews and joined forces with Cnut. Another defector was Thorkell the Tall, a Jomsviking chief who had fought against the Viking invasion of Swein Forkbeard, with a pledge of allegiance to the English in 1012 – some explanation for this shift of allegiance may be found in a stanza of the Jómsvíkinga saga that mentions two attacks against Jomsborg's mercenaries while they were in England, with a man known as Henninge, a brother of Thorkell, among their casualties.Trow, Cnut, p. 57. If the Flateyjarbók is correct that this man was Cnut's childhood mentor, it explains his acceptance of his allegiance – with Jomvikings ultimately in the service of Jomsborg. The 40 ships Eadric came with, often thought to be of the Danelaw, were probably Thorkell's.
Advance into the North