Post-classical history

Prologue: “King of Danes, Irish, English and Island-Dwellers”: An Audience with Knútr inn Ríki

Erin Goeres

Richard North

In the year 1027, or thereabouts, the Icelandic poet Óttarr svarti (“the dark-haired”) composed a verse in honor of Knútr inn ríki (“the mighty”) Sveinsson, whom we call King Cnut the Great:

Svá skal kveðja konung Dana,

Íra ok Engla ok Eybúa,

at hans fari með himinkrǫptum

lǫndum ǫllum lof víðara.¹

[So shall I greet the king of the Danes,

Of the Irish, and of English and Island-Dwellers,

That his praise may travel, with heavenly support,

More widely through all lands.]

Poets who flocked to the royal courts of Scandinavia are well known for the bombastic – some would say propagandistic – nature of their works, but the claim in Óttarr’s verse is broadly true: by the time of his death in 1035, Cnut’s influence did stretch across much of the northern world over the seas from Dublin and the Western and Northern Isles to Norway, western and southern Sweden and the kingdom of Denmark, with friends in Normandy and vassals in Flanders, Pomerania, and Poland, and with subject territories as far east as Skåne, Bornholm, Öland, perhaps even Estonia.² Who was the man at the helm of this thalassocracy?

Rise of a Younger Son

The story of Knútr begins with a long war in England in which victory shifted from one side to the other for more than twenty years.³ Viking hosts who had raided the kingdom of Æthelred II (978–1016) in the 980s took vast sums of Danegeld from the country after the battle of Maldon in 991 and continued to raid between payments for the rest of the decade.⁴ Early in this period, possibly in ca. 995 in Jelling in Jutland, Knútr was born to King Sveinn Forkbeard Haraldsson of Denmark (ca. 986–1014) and a Polish princess whose name does not survive. Sveinn raided less, enlarging his power in Scandinavia, until St Brice’s Day, November 13, 1002, when King Æthelred ordered the death of as many Danes as could be found in his kingdom outside the Danelaw. Eying up perhaps this as well as the main chance for conquest, King Sveinn brought his fleet to East Anglia in the following spring. Although his invasion there was checked militarily and by famine, so that in 1005 he was forced to sail home, a new fleet arrived in 1009, led by an earl from Skåne, Thorkell the Tall, soon followed by another led by Hemming, Thorkell’s brother.⁵ While these armies laid waste to the east of England, closing in on Canterbury, Sveinn was busy recruiting in Scandinavia, preparing for an even bigger campaign. In July 1013 he left his elder son Haraldr to hold Denmark and took Knútr with him on the long-awaited expedition to England. The royal Danish fleet first sighted Sandwich, from where Sveinn steered north along the coast into the river Humber and then south for some 25 miles up the Trent to Gainsborough in West Lindsey, the inmost inland port in the Danelaw.⁶ Almost at once, Ealdorman Uhtred of Northumbria and the rulers of Yorkshire and Midland Anglo-Danish territories yielded to Sveinn and gave him hostages. These he left with young Knútr, who stayed in the northern Midlands and contracted a marriage there with Ælfgifu, a lady from Northampton.⁷ Ælfgifu’s highborn family could call on support right through the north of England up to the borders of Scotland.⁸ Sveinn, meanwhile, led his companies south to Watling Street and the border with non-Danish England, where they “worhton þæt mæste yfel þæt ænig her don mihte” (wrought the greatest evil that any raiding-army could do).⁹ He took Oxford and then Winchester before meeting resistance at London, in a failed assault in which many of his Vikings drowned in the Thames. From there Sveinn withdrew to Wallingford and took the submission of the west and then the rest of England. Nonetheless, his acts of devastation continued until Æthelred left London for safety in Normandy, parting company with Earl Thorkell, who had helped him repulse Sveinn’s attack on London. Thorkell, following his murder of Archbishop Ælfheah of Canterbury, had hired himself and his forty-five ships out to Æthelred in 1012. With the king’s departure, the fate of the southern English was sealed. Only then did London, the great trading capital of southern England, yield to King Sveinn.

Sveinn’s victory was short-lived, however. Just over a month into the following year, on February 2 or 3, 1014, the new king of Denmark and England died where he had first disembarked, in Gainsborough. It has been argued that he had been planning to have himself crowned in York, to the dismay of the English “witan” (council of wise men).¹⁰ These southern magnates responded to their king’s death not by accepting Knútr, his son, as the fleet had done, but by asking Æthelred home from exile, “gif he hi rihtlicor healdan wolde þonne he ær dyde” (if he would rule them more justly than he did before).¹¹ Ealdorman Uhtred rejoined King Æthelred when he came home. Having made the outlawry of Danish kings a prerequisite, Æthelred attacked Lincolnshire “mid fulre fyrde” (in full force) before Knútr could muster, “⁊ mann þær hergode ⁊ bærnde ⁊ sloh eall þet mancynn þet man aræcan mihte” (and there was plundering and burning and slaying of any human being they could find).¹² Leaving his people to face these reprisals without him, Knútr steered his fleet home to Denmark.¹³ Before crossing the North Sea at Sandwich, however, he left the witan a message about agreements: “læt man þær up þa gislas þe his fæder gesealde wæron, ⁊ cearf of heora handa ⁊ earan ⁊ nosa” (there he put ashore the hostages which were granted to his father, and carved off their hands and ears and noses).¹⁴

Knútr was back a year later, making land at Sandwich in September 1015. Unlike his father before him, he turned his fleet south, rounded Kent and sailed to the coast of Wessex, where his new soldiers from all over Scandinavia and Frisia disembarked, laying waste to Æthelred’s heartland with fire and sword. Knútr had chosen a rift between the king and his surviving son Edmund as the moment to strike.¹⁵ Sailing north and raiding the eastern coast, Knútr went further inland and devastated Bedfordshire, Huntingdonshire, Northamptonshire, Lincolnshire, and Nottinghamshire. He marched his army into Uhtred’s territory around Bamburgh, while this northern earl was busy ravaging in the south, near Chester, helping Edmund to punish the people of Staffordshire, Shropshire, and Leicestershire for not joining the war effort against Knútr. To save his patrimony, Uhtred was forced to retire north and submit to Knútr, who promptly had him killed.¹⁶ In the south, Æthelred suffered an even worse defection, that of his rapacious enforcer Eadric “Streona” (Acquisitor). Knútr was also joined by Thorkell the Tall, who had offered to help him after reappearing in Denmark.¹⁷ As their skalds bear witness, Knútr’s hardbitten brother-in-law from the Trøndelag, Earl Eiríkr Hákonarson, was already helping him in the devastation of England.¹⁸ This man had fled to the Humber from Norway when Óláfr Haraldsson defeated him in the battle of Nesjar in 1015. Now, early in 1016, Knútr appointed Eiríkr earl over some of Uhtred’s territory in the north of Northumbria.¹⁹ Later these men would run his kingdom effectively as viceroys: Earl Thorkell in 1017–1021, Earl Eiríkr in 1021–1023, finally Earl Godwine in 1023–1035.²⁰

Edmund Ironside had all these experienced commanders and armies ranged against him. By good generalship, nonetheless, he began to turn the tide against the Danes in battle. When Æthelred died on April 23 (St. George’s Day), probably in London, the Londoners chose Edmund as their king. Meanwhile, since the rest of southern England had elected “Cnut” as Æthelred’s successor, London became the key to the young Dane’s wealth and power. Perhaps he saw his father’s choice of York as a mistake. After Easter, not long after May, Cnut laid siege to London, in which Æthelred’s body rested within St. Paul’s.²¹ When his mercenaries, descending on London from Greenwich, failed to make headway because of the city’s old Roman walls, Cnut and Thorkell made them dig a channel in Southwark for their ships to pass around by the southern end of London Bridge; this would also stop movement in and out of the town. Meanwhile Cnut and possibly (according to the Encomium Emmae) also Thorkell moved west from London into Wiltshire, drawing Edmund into a battle at Sherston that lasted two days, apparently the first in which Cnut had English troops on his side. This battle was inconclusive and chiefly notable for seeing Ealdorman Eadric, who had served Sveinn but had reconciled with Edmund after Æthelred’s death, change sides again.²² By offering money or favour, Cnut was drawing ever more allies of King Edmund into his orbit.²³ Edmund fell back to Wessex for reinforcements, allowing Cnut to rejoin the siege of London. Edmund relieved the siege of London at the Battle of Brentford, in which he defeated the Danes, then returned to Wessex. Having reengaged successfully in Kent, he saw his army destroyed by Cnut in Assandun (Ashingdon or Ashdon) in Essex and withdrew again westwards. This time Edmund was again defeated and this time seriously wounded near the Forest of Dean, whereupon he sued for peace. In this way, his war with Cnut came to an end near the end of the summer of 1016. The Chronicle says that they met on “Olanige” (Olney or Alney), an island on the Severn in Gloucestershire, swore brotherly love and “þæt gyld setton wið þone here” (set the payment for the raiding-army).²⁴

Edmund was thus left with Wessex, while Cnut took Mercia, the East and the North. The city of London, whose garrison had almost thwarted Cnut’s campaigns, was obliged to make a separate peace:

⁊ Lundenwaru griðode wið þone here ⁊ him frið gebohton, ⁊ se here gebrohton hyra scipu on Lundene ⁊ him wintersetl ðærinne namon.²⁵

[And the people of London made peace with the raiders and bought their security, and the army brought their ships to London, and therein provided themselves with winter-quarters.]

When Edmund died, probably of an infection from his wounds, on November 30, the whole kingdom fell into Cnut’s hands.²⁶ The Londoners, besides contributing to the national English payment of £72,000, are said to have paid him an extra massive sum, £10,500. Moreover, when some of the Scandinavian army returned to Denmark, “xl. scypa belaf mid þam cynige Cnute” (forty ships were left with King Cnut).²⁷ Like a rich prisoner, in this way, London was forced to pay fees to her jailers.

Cnut established one garrison in Southwark and later another to the west of London’s walls, on the Strand near St. Clement Danes.²⁸ London had seen Norsemen before, on decks and siege-ladders, but the poem Liðsmannaflokkr (Soldiers’ Song), composed apparently by Danish officers in ca. 1017–1019, a year or two after the peace of 1016, portrays them more constructively.²⁹ After attributing much presence of mind to Knútr in a stanza in which he is said to order his troops to pause, not to attack, one of the officers composing this poem diverts from the failure of this action with an implication that some of them are planning to stay on, now that the siege has been lifted.³⁰ As he says to his putative lady, in what appears to be the end of this sequence of skaldic verses:

Dag vas hvern, þats Hǫgna hurð rjóðask nam blóði

ár, þars úti várum, Ilmr, í fǫr með hilmi.

Kneigum vér, síz vígum varð nýlokit hǫrðum,

fyllar dags, í fǫgrum, fit, Lundúnum sitja.³¹

[Early it was each day that Hǫgni’s door went red

With blood, when we marched out, Lady, with the Protector;

O meadow of the ocean’s sun, now that the harsh battles

Have concluded, we may settle down in fair London.

His shield-kenning “Hǫgna hurð” (Hǫgni’s door) refers to the tale of Hildr, a princess over whom Hǫgni and Heðinn, respectively father and abducting lover, are doomed to fight till the end of time. Whether or not his gold-adorned companion is English, like Ælfgifu, Cnut’s wife from Northampton, the unnamed, probably Danish, officer makes clear that the present war is over and the capital a promising place to live in.³² It was a different story with Cnut, however. It seems that Cnut never warmed to London. The old Roman city, which had never surrendered, holding out against both him and his father before him, was his only by treaty. Small wonder that Cnut kept a watchful eye, even while he made London the center of his government to the west of the North Sea.

On the eastern side lay Jutland and Viborg, where, as we shall see later in this volume, Cnut began to succeed his brother Haraldr formally as king of Denmark in 1019.³³ From here and later from England his foreign ventures continued within a wider frame. There was an expedition to the Baltic in 1022–23, then a campaign in north-eastern Skåne which succeeded in halting a combined Norwegian-Swedish army at the Battle of Holy River in 1026, from which time Cnut was overlord over southern and southwestern Sweden. In 1028 this was followed by a successful campaign in Norway that saw his leading rival, King Óláfr Haraldsson, driven into Ukrainian exile and then two years later, in 1030, put down at Stiklestad in the Trøndelag. The historical record also hints at Cnut’s conflicts with Welsh and Irish forces around the same time, and at a series of military engagements with the Scottish kings, from which Cnut emerged victorious in the early 1030s.³⁴ War, however, was not the only form of interaction that took place between Cnut and his neighbours. The king actively pursued diplomatic relations with the dukes of Normandy, in 1017 marrying Emma, sister of Duke Richard II and widow of his defeated rival, King Æthelred, and later, probably in the eary 1020s, arranging the marriage of his own sister Ástríðr or Estrith to Richard’s son Count Robert I.³⁵ In February or March 1027, Cnut went on pilgrimage to Rome, where he attended the coronation of the Holy Roman Emperor, Conrad II (1027–1039). Cnut became a major player in European politics. Praise of him must indeed have traveled widely throughout Europe the more he drew England into this empire of his making, which lasted until 1042. Having visited Denmark and the Baltic thus in 1019–1020 and 1022–1023, Skåne, Germany, and Rome in 1026 and 1027, Norway in 1028, and perhaps even Scotland in 1031, Cnut spent more time in England, where he died in Shaftesbury, Dorset, on November 12, 1035. He was interred in the Old Minster, Winchester, possibly near the tomb of St. Swithun.³⁶

Overview of the Companion

This book is interdisciplinary, but without its chapters being grouped by discipline or theme. Unlike the other great millennial tribute, a Plutarchian one to Cnut and William,³⁷ it is set out with an overarching narrative that follows Cnut to the English throne and from there to the rise of his great domain through conquest, kingdom, and empire. The first of these titular sections, “Cnut’s Conquest,” traces the end of Anglo-Saxon rule in England and the beginning of a new Danish regime. Focusing for three chapters on London, as the lingering hold-out to Cnut and his least willing English prize, this section lays out a background to the final Danish victory. Both the decline of the Anglo-Saxon kings and Cnut’s winning strategy are studied in archaeological, historical, and literary records. To start with the archaeology: Andrew Reynolds (chap. 1) lays foundations for this section by assessing how early and with what boundaries the city of London took shape and what roles therein were played by Kings Æthelred and Cnut. Two more contributions on London’s material culture offer their own perspectives on the conflict. Julian Bowsher (chap. 2), in a study that gathers the results of many excavations at various riverside locations over the past thirty years, discusses a small but notable corpus of coins produced for both kings. Bowsher evaluates these new discoveries and argues that, despite the upheaval London suffered during the numerous sieges of the Anglo-Danish conflict, some stability may be seen in the smooth transition from the use of coins minted for Æthelred to those minted for Cnut. John Clark (chap. 3) discusses a group of weapons, apparently of Scandinavian origin, found in the old bed of the River Thames. Setting these weapons in the context of other early medieval river finds, he argues for their possible role in the Scandinavian attacks on the London area during the early eleventh century. The war is discussed in more detail in four more chapters. A commentary on the conflict as portrayed in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is provided by Simon Keynes (chap. 4), with the aid of twelve detailed maps of the war which Sveinn initiated and his son inherited in the last years of King Æthelred II. Going into the form as well as the content of the sources, Zoya Metlitskaya (chap. 5) evaluates the style and ideology of the author of the so-called Æthelredian Fragment of the Chronicle. In her study of the formulae of this and related texts, Metlitskaya argues that the author seems to have been influenced more by the heroic values of the Anglo-Saxon past than by such overtly Christian ideals as penance and divine punishment. She makes the case that this author was affiliated with the supporters of Æthelred’s sons and began to compose this part of the Chronicle just after the accession of Edmund II. The poignant portrayal of Æthelred’s death in the same account is also discussed by Michael Treschow (chap. 6), who suggests that the king’s death in London, as Cnut’s ships approach, is emblematic of a personal inability, demonstrated throughout his reign, to deal with the problem of the Danish invasions and of the costly tribute which these entailed. Treschow reveals the tone of futility surrounding Æthelred and his death to be established in imitation of biblical chronicle, while the story of political catastrophe takes on a cathartic role. Hereby the traumatized reader is prepared for Cnut’s triumph through a subtle acquiescence to the hidden workings of providence. Lastly, David McDermott (chap. 7) gives pride of place to Æthelred’s son and successor, Edmund II Ironside. Acknowledging that the Second Viking Age in England is usually portrayed as a struggle between Æthelred and Cnut, McDermott observes that the campaign against Cnut in 1015–1016 was led by Edmund, Cnut’s last English antagonist. Focusing on the increasing political significance of London during the period, McDermott notes that the Londoners, besieged so many times during the Anglo-Danish conflict, spurred Edmund on to resist the invaders and regarded him as a liberator, forever hating Cnut for defeating him.

The Companion’s second and third sections focus on Cnut’s reigns in England and abroad and on the changing relationship between England, Scandinavia, and the European continent. The second section, “Cnut’s Kingdom,” reflects first the political skill with which Cnut continued to cultivate allies and amass power in his new English kingdom, then the effects of his rule on the awakening political and literary culture of a new “Anglo-Danish” environment. Ryan Lavelle (chap. 8) looks at the early years of Cnut’s reign and at the mechanisms employed by the young king as he sought to assert his legitimacy as the new ruler. Lavelle describes how Cnut was able to adapt himself to Anglo-Saxon forms of kingship and argues that this was particularly necessary during the early years of his reign, when, before the birth of his son Harthacnut, the king’s long-term control over England remained vulnerable to the survival of Æthelred’s sons and other pretenders from the previous dynasty. Eleanor Parker (chap. 9) examines one of the most widespread stories about Cnut in post-Conquest historical writing, namely, his disposal of Eadric Streona, reportedly executed by Cnut himself as his reward for betraying Edmund Ironside. Tracing the development of this tale from its likely origins at the Anglo-Danish court, Parker notes ways in which the narrative deflects any notion of duplicity in Cnut, its protagonist, before considering ways in which it shaped the later accounts of his conquest and reign. Barbara Yorke (chap. 10) reconsiders and revises the belief that Cnut had much to do with Winchester in his reign. For all that Cnut assimilated into the family of King Æthelred II, Yorke argues that he concentrated his patronage of the city in two distinct phases, at the start and end of his reign. She finds, on the one hand, that such acts on Cnut’s part as the issue of an Anglo-Saxon-style law code at a council in Winchester served to demonstrate the king’s desire for reconciliation with his conquered subjects; on the other, that the king’s later interaction with Winchester was more limited, until he prepared a mausoleum for himself and his queen in the Old Minster. Observing that Winchester was thus the Dane’s ideological capital, Simon Thomson (chap. 11) discusses the fragment of a relief carving in stone from the same minster, in the first of three chapters on the Anglo-Danish character of the literature associated with Cnut. On the basis of this and of the detailed archaeology of Martin Biddle, Thomson argues that the stone depicts Sigmundr, later known as a hero of Vǫlsunga saga (Saga of the Volsungs), in a story which both features in the saga and predates it by a long way. Insofar as he suggests that Sigmundr at this time, as with Sigemund in Beowulf, was celebrated as a dragon-slayer, Thomson argues that the stone reveals a lively interest in Germanic myth and legend at Cnut’s court, whether in Winchester or elsewhere in England. The theme of a new Anglo-Danish hybridity continues with Russell Poole (chap. 12), who draws attention to a striking quantity of non-Scandinavian-derived vocabulary and expressions in the work of the most prolific and widely traveled Icelandic poet, Sigvatr Þórðarson. Poole links the language of Sigvatr’s poetry to his journeys through France, England, and Italy. Focusing, in particular, on the influence of English literary discourse on the poet’s work, he argues that Sigvatr may have become a vernacular spokesman for members of the English-influenced Scandinavian elite. Finally in this section, Richard North (chap. 13) posits the existence of at least two copies of Beowulf in Cnut’s reign. Proposing that one of them, the one in the Nowell Codex that we have now, was made just after Cnut’s conquest, North sees an attempt in the copying to insinuate a kinship between Beowulf and the ancient kings of Denmark. Referring to the work of four skaldic poets, he suggests that Cnut created a Skjǫldung ideology on the basis of the opening folio of another copy of Beowulf, one perhaps in Winchester. North ends with a speculation that in 1019–1020 Cnut took this folio, like a charter with the names of his ancestors, to Zealand and Skåne as the proof of his right to rule Denmark.

“Cnut’s Empire,” the third and final section, offers a broader perspective in its consideration of how Cnut’s reign affected England’s relationship with mainland Scandinavia as far north as Norway and with Continental Europe as far east as Ukraine. The first two chapters draw firstly on archaeological evidence to examine Cnut’s Danish heritage and the uses to which this was put in the consolidation of his royal power in Denmark. Turning to Viborg, near to an important assembly site where it seems Cnut was first crowned king of Denmark in 1019, Jesper Hjermind (chap. 14) discusses recent excavations from the northern banks of Viborg’s Lake Søndersø. Detailing a number of the most impressive finds, including a fragment of painted Middle Eastern glass, a turned boxwood bowl, English-style pottery, and gaming pieces, he argues that such objects, associated as they are with royal and aristocratic courts, provide a material witness to Cnut’s journey to Viborg in this year. Marie Bønløkke Spejlborg (chap. 15) reviews the evidence for further Danish arrivals, mostly returning Danish settlers, from England over the sea. Observing that that the material record of eleventh-century connections between the two countries has improved significantly in the last thirty years, Spejlborg shows that modern archaeology reveals many types of contact between all levels of English and Danish society, and that the period surrounding the conquest of England by Cnut was one of the most intense for such interactions, usually through the English church. Caitlin Ellis (chap. 16) examines Cnut’s ecclesiastical policy in Scandinavia during his years of expansion, taking the famous image of Cnut in the Winchester Liber Vitae as a starting-point. Regarding King Cnut’s imports of English and English-trained clergy in the context of rivalry between the York-Canterbury axis and the ambitious diocese of Hamburg-Bremen, Ellis studies his use of ecclesiastical patronage for political ends. Taking this beyond England and Denmark, Eldbjørg Haug (chap. 17) discusses Cnut’s connections with the cult of St. Swithun in Norway, as well as the claim, made in a vita of the saint, that the king was responsible for translating one of the saint’s relics to Scandinavia. Within this context Haug sets the cult of St. Swithun in Stavanger, associating the translation with Norway rather than Denmark and particularly with respect to the untimely death of the local magnate Erlingr Skjálgsson. Turning to lands further east, the next two chapters consider a highly complicated but relatively under-studied aspect of Cnut’s life: his and his family’s relationship with the Western Slavs and Poles. Laura Amalasunta Gazzoli (chap. 18) traces a connection between Cnut’s dynasty and the Slavs of what is now the North German coast, revealing an association that began with his grandfather, Haraldr blátǫnn (“Bluetooth”) Gormsson. Gazzoli demonstrates that this connection played an important role in the conquests of England, first by Sveinn and later by Cnut, and that it continued to play a role in the formation of Danish royal identity in the generations that followed. Jakub Morawiec (chap. 19) concentrates on Cnut’s Polish connections in a renewed discussion of his and his brother Haraldr’s mother, who was an anonymous daughter of Duke Mieszko I. Morawiec finds instances in which these connections influenced Danish policy with European neighbours, even while he shows that Cnut’s kinship with such Polish royals as his cousin, Mieszko II, did not make him side with the latter in his conflict with Conrad II, the Holy Roman Emperor. From here we move further east, to the Ukrainian principality of the Rus’ in search of St. Clement, whom Barbara Crawford (chap. 20) shows to have been patron of Cnut’s dynasty. Crawford concludes this third section on “Cnut’s Empire” with a survey of the evidence for the proliferation of St. Clement in the many churches dedicated to this maritime saint. As she shows, these extend from Kyiv to Norway and from Denmark to London and Oxford and elsewhere in England, from east to west in a movement which follows the fleets of Cnut’s thalassocracy and may indicate the presence of the garrisons that maintained it.

In the course of these chapters, the reader may notice that their authors sometimes disagree on matters of historical fact, and indeed that there is little in the field that may be called secure. Consequently, this book is equipped with an Epilogue in which Timothy Bolton reflects on the utility of the sources, particularly on kings’ sagas from thirteenth-century Iceland. He gives an overview of King Cnut’s reception, not only in these and other medieval Scandinavian histories that narrate his life and times and those of his foes and friends, but also in the modern historical trends which have caused the information within these sources to be accepted, rejected, or even ignored, by historians of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. In effect, Bolton, who is Cnut’s leading biographer, restores old pathways to the subject of this Companion by showing how narratives in later Old Norse (or Old Icelandic) literature, particularly skaldic verse, may be trusted to deliver a credible account of actual historical events.

Central to each chapter is the young man who rose without trace to become England’s first royal player on the international stage. As a younger son of the Danish royal family, Knútr had no choice but to succeed in England, which he did by campaigning with such sure strategy and instinct that he won the war and made himself an empire. This Prologue will end with an attempt to glimpse the workings of Cnut’s mind some seven years later, on a June evening in 1023, when he “translated” Archbishop Ælfheah’s body from St. Paul’s back to his old diocese in Canterbury.

Knútr inn ríki, Tomb-Raider

The story is told by the Kentish monk Osbern in his Translatio sancti Ælfegi (translation of St. Elphege) of ca. 1080.³⁸ Archbishop Ælfheah of Canterbury (1006–1012) achieved sanctity when he was killed by Earl Thorkell’s men on April 19, 1012 in an assembly in Greenwich, more than half a year after they took him prisoner upon breaking into Canterbury on September 29, 1011.³⁹ One day after his murder, the Danes sold Ælfheah’s corpse to the men of St. Paul’s Church in London, where it was swiftly interred. His tomb became a site of pilgrimage and brought the church significant income. The Worcester Chronicle, which gives the longest contemporary account, opens by saying that in 1023 “Cnut kyning binnan Lundene on Sancte Paules mynstre sealde fulle leafe Æðelnoðe arcebiscope” (King Cnut, within St. Paul’s Minster in London, gave full leave to Archbishop Æthelnoth) to have St. Ælfheah translated to Canterbury.⁴⁰ Thus the initiative came from Æthelnoth, who had arrived in London on June 1. The location of the first scene in St. Paul’s is common to both accounts. Osbern’s Translatio matches or follows the Chronicle in which Ælfheah’s body is shipped from there “ofer Temese to Suðgeweorke, ⁊ þær þone halgan martyr þan arcebiscope ⁊ his geferum betæhton” (over the Thames to Southwark, and there they committed the holy martyr to the archbishop and his companions). On the evidence of this annal, it seems likely that Æthelnoth had presented his claim to Cnut, whose relations with Canterbury were always good, within a few years of the king’s taking power. Nonetheless, to save Canterbury’s blushes about the manner of removal, Osbern tells the story as if the idea for the saint’s translation were Cnut’s. Lavelle calls it “an early medieval ‘special operation’”; Bolton, a “heist”; Sarah Foot, “an opportunity to use major public spectacle to demonstrate visually and symbolically his repentance for the violence of the Danish army during his father’s lifetime, and his willingness to do reparation for their sins.”⁴¹ Thus the space which Osbern opens up for Cnut in his story causes disagreement even today. To us, however, it may afford a glimpse of the man as he was remembered by witnesses.

In this respect, Osbern’s story, which he based on the witness of Godric, a man who was there, is so far from relating an orderly translation that it resembles stories, written in thirteenth-century Iceland, but mostly set elsewhere in Scandinavia, in which an aristocratic haugbrjóti (mound-breaker) breaks into a haugr (grave-mound) to steal a precious object such as a sword from a relatively benign haugbúi (barrow-dweller) inside.⁴² Although it is the body of the dead that is stolen in his account, Osbern’s image of Cnut, in a role that translates as “tomb-raider” for our days, is rather similar. It is this story that gives the most vivid picture of Cnut’s involvement with a city that had no love for him.

Osbern wrote the Translatio as a sequel to his Passio sancti Ælfegi (Passion of St. Elphege) of ca. 1075, in which he says that the people of London brought the archbishop to St. Paul’s, having bought his body from the Danes after his martyrdom in Greenwich in 1012. The mention of money makes that part of the Passio credible. Less credibly there, however, Osbern goes on to say that some twelve thousand Danes and Englishmen, having wept floods of tears in repentance for the archbishop’s demise, now danced with joy in the streets while his body “ad ęcclesiam Doctoris Gentium aduectus, in eadem conclamatus honoratus collacatus est” (was conveyed to the Church of the Teacher of the Gentiles, acclaimed therein, and honorably laid in state).⁴³

Eleven years later, according to the Translatio, Cnut summons Archbishop Æthelnoth and tells him the plan for retranslation. Osbern says that Cnut first summons Æthelnoth to see him in London on Saturday, the eve of Pentecost 1023 (i.e. on June 1), letting him know that he wishes to make good on a promise he had made to the English in 1016, to translate Ælfheah “ad sedem patriarchatus sui seruato more antiquorum” (to the see of his patriarchate in the traditional way of the ancients).⁴⁴ Archbishop Æthelnoth, arriving in London, goes straight to the church. Osbern says that he “mandauit \regi/ in balneas descendenti se adesse. & quid ipse uelit statuere. in ęcclesia Beati Pauli apostoli expectare” (commanded the king, who, as it happened, was getting into the bath, to come to him in the church of the blessed apostle Paul and declare what he wished to have done).⁴⁵ There is a distinct possibility that Cnut was bathing in the former Roman public bathhouses at Huggin Hill, between St. Paul’s and the river, on the site of a tenement which, in the late ninth century, belonged to the bishop of Worcester;⁴⁶ perhaps it is not coincidental that the Worcester text gives the fullest Chronicle account. Cnut falls in with the archbishop’s command as if this were the most natural thing in the world:

Quo ille accepto sine mora de lauacro surgit, clamide solummodo nudum corpus obtegit simplices pedibus subtalares inducit sicque ad presulem impigro gradu tendit.⁴⁷

[When he heard this, he rose up from his ablutions without delay and, wrapping merely a cloak around his naked body, placed his feet in plain sandals and thus quickly made his way to the archbishop.]

To us the Dane’s towel and sandals might lend him a careless air, belying the gravity of a situation in which Æthelnoth will have dressed for an audience in archiepiscopal robes. In the story that follows, nonetheless, Cnut puts a plan into action, ordering “omnibus familię suę militibus quos lingua Danorum huscarles uocant” (all the soldiers of his household, who are called “housecarls” in the Danish tongue) to divide into groups: one to perform a diversion, the other a raid. Cnut orders “ut eorum alij per extremas ciuitatis portas seditiones concitent” (that some of them should incite rebellions at the outer gates of the city: these would have been from the garrison by St. Clement Danes on the Strand); and that others “pontem & ripas fluminis armati obsidant, ne exeuntes eos cum corpore sancti Lundanus populus prępedire ualeat” (arm themselves and occupy the bridge and the banks of the river, so that the people of London would not be able to stand in the way of those leaving with the saint’s body).⁴⁸ These words of Osbern’s presuppose an English citizenry then in control of the Roman city of London, north of the river, whom the Danes of Southwark were watching from the southern end of London Bridge. Cnut’s plan for a diversion by some or all the gates of the City of London may indicate that he expected capture from any Londoners he ran into on the way to the foreshore.

Once Cnut arrives in the church, according to Osbern, he announces his plan to the archbishop “lętabunda simul ac tremebunda uoce” (in a voice which was shaking with joy).⁴⁹ In contrast, the archbishop bewails his hearing of this only now, the prospect of capture by the Londoners outside, and above all the small number of Danes in their party: for who will move the stone at the entrance of Ælfheah’s tomb? These cares the king brushes aside with words which entrust the outcome to the dead man himself:

In hoc pater sancte maxime apparebit quia nobiscum beatus ille uolet transire. si quod impossibile hominibus est. ipse sua uirtute fecerit esse possibile. semper enim difficultas miraculum gignere consueuit.⁵⁰

[This, Holy Father, is just how the blessed man will make clear his wish to cross with us. Whatever is impossible for men, he will make possible through his own power. Ever is it the way of difficulty to beget a miracle.]

Despite the affective piety of Osbern’s record, it is as if Ælfheah interacts with his rescuers. Is there is a Scandinavian touch to the idea that the corpse, like a Norse haugbúi, has its own role to play?⁵¹ At any rate, Cnut stays outside, offers to stand guard, and asks Æthelnoth to pray for help and his monks to move the stonework. The monks are given as Godric – later dean of Christ Church, Canterbury, where he became the younger Osbern’s source⁵² – and the older Ælfweard the Tall, who, if he truly was a servant of Archbishop Dunstan of Canterbury (d. 988), may have been tested some forty years later. With Æthelnoth’s blessing, they tear open the chamber’s plaster wall with an iron candelabrum and push the stone cover of the inner tomb easily aside. St. Ælfheah is discovered lying uncorrupted within. Finding a board providentially the right size, the monks carry the saint’s body through a dark narrow street (possibly Paul’s Wharf Hill) down to the shore, followed by Cnut and the archbishop, whose surprise is left to us to imagine

cum ecce regia navis aureis rostrata draconibus, armigeris repleta militibus, uenienti martyri obuia offertur. quam citius dictu rex insiliens, expansis brachiis martyrem suscepit, deinde protensa dextera pontificem induxit.⁵³

[when lo! a royal longship with golden dragon prows, full of armed men, come to meet the martyr, is placed in their way. Quick as a flash, the king jumped in and with arms open picked up the martyr. Then, offering his right hand, he helped the pontif aboard.]

The longship shoots off with King Cnut at the helm, east and downstream to the opposite bank. At this moment, God’s great favor to St. Ælfheah is revealed, “dum hinc pontem & totas fluminis ripas loricatis stratas militibus conspiceres” (as here you would have seen the bridge and the entire banks of the river lined with armed men).⁵⁴ That the south bank lay outside London is probably why we may take the words “totas fluminis ripas” to exclude the northern side. Albeit in reverse, the scene is painted as vividly as the day St. Ælfheah’s body first entered London:

Illinc per extremas urbis portas simulatorias seditiones excitatas audires, attenderes regem nauem regentem, remigem nobilem remos trahentem, orantem archiepiscopum & sanctos monachos obsequium pręstantes.⁵⁵

[over there you would have heard the pretended rebellions incited at the outer gates of the city; you would have espied the king steering the ship, the noble oarsmen pulling on the oars, the archbishop praying and the holy monks performing obsequies.]

Out of sight, the fighting in progress by London’s Roman gates, as the Londoners fall for Cnut’s trick west, north, and east of St. Paul’s, is implied to have a sound of its own. Disembarking on the Southwark foreshore, Cnut has the saint loaded on a wagon, for a troop of monks and housecarls to escort him to Rochester along what is now the Old Kent Road. The king’s attention to detail emerges further in the way he prepares to cover their escape, “timebat nanque ciuium irruptiones” (for he feared attacks from the citizens). So had Æthelnoth on the crossing; perhaps his prayers were too loud:

Deinde surgens. & liberalibus iocis archiepiscopo alludens: “Liberatus es inquit & meoimunere de periculo mortis, de qua te liberari non posse arbitrabaris. Iam securus ad sanctum profiscere, atque ut nostris faueat temporibus humiliter deprecare. Ego uobiscum pariter irem. Si magnis ut nosti regni negotiis occupatus non essem.”⁵⁶

[Then Cnut rose, and with great good humour, jested with the archbishop, saying: “With my help you are freed from the threat of a death from which you were thinking you could not be delivered. Go now to the saint in safety, and humbly beg him to bless us with more favourable times. I would go with you too if I were not, as you know, busy with affairs of state.”]

Teasing his beneficiary thus, Cnut turns to face a crowd of Londoners advancing from the northern end of the bridge. Perhaps they, too, hope to recover the martyr’s remains. Enjoying the fury of his least favorite city, Cnut promises Æthelnoth that he will ask Queen Emma, now in Kent with their young son Harthacnut, to join the archbishop and his party in Canterbury “cum tota nobilitate” (with all the nobility).⁵⁷ Cnut had married Queen Emma in July 1017, a year after the death of her first husband, King Æthelred II. Then the party of archbishop, monks, and others sets off for Canterbury. There is more adventure down the road in Plumstead, where Cnut’s housecarls, supposing that the Londoners have come after them, take up position against them, making ready to die and to give Æthelnoth’s party time to escape. Yet their pursuers turn out to be friendly, not Londoners at all, and soon the archbishops are back home in Canterbury.⁵⁸

Opening Questions

This Companion will open with some questions about Cnut Sveinsson, supplanter of Edmund and Æthelred II and the first non-English ruler of England. How much Cnut changed of Æthelred’s England in the late tenth and early eleventh centuries, how much he allowed to remain; how much or little he valued Winchester, even while he made London, the city he disliked, into his political and economic capital; how much planning or improvization there was in his creation and upkeep of a maritime empire that he doubtless wished his children to inherit; what the aftermath of his power was in the later eleventh century in London, England, and Scandinavia: these wide-ranging questions are approached here by 22 scholars in order of the events. With recent research in history, archaeology, and literature, let us try for some answers.

Notes

“Óttarr svarti: Lausavísur,” ed. Townend, 786 (v. 2). Translated by Erin Goeres. “Island-dwellers” here probably refers to the inhabitants of the Orkneys, but the term may also encompass those of Shetland and the Hebrides: see Forte, Oram, and Pedersen, Viking Empires, 227. Óttarr’s epithet echoes Cnut’s styles in charters: “Anglorum cęterarumque adiacentium insularum basileus” (king of the English and the other islands lying nearby: S 959, from 1023), translated later in the century as “Ænglelandes kining ⁊ ealre ðare Eglande þe ðærto licgeð” (king of England and of all the islands that pertain to it: S 959); and “rex totius Albionis cęterarumque gentium triuiatim persistentium basileus” (king of all Albion and emperor of nation rising upon nation: S 963, from c. 1030). See Charters of Christ Church, Part 2, ed. Brooks and Kelly, 1080 (no. 151), 1094 (no. 151A), 1127 (no. 158).

Forte, Oram, and Pedersen, Viking Empires, 193–202.

For a breezy summary from the Old Danish point of view, see Lund, “Why did Cnut conquer England?,” 26–38.

£10,000 after Maldon in 991, £16,000 in 994, £24,000 in 1002, £30,000 in 1007, £3,000 interim geld to Thorkell’s host in 1009, £48,000 after the sack of Canterbury in 1012, £72,000 plus £10,500 from London to Cnut in 1018. See ASC (E), ed. Irvine, 61, 62, 64, 66, 67, 74–75.

Chronicle of John of Worcester, ed. Darlington and McGurk, 462–463 (s.a. 1009). On the earlier Viking campaigns and Æthelred’s response to them, see Keynes later in this volume, pp. 97–107.

Bolton, Cnut the Great, 55–56; Forte, Oram, and Pedersen, Viking Empires, 190–92.

Bolton, Cnut the Great, 67; see also Lavelle, p. 176, Yorke, pp. 230–31, and Spejlborg, pp. 341–42, in this volume.

Bolton, Cnut the Great, 70–71, and “Ælfgifu of Northampton.” Forte, Oram, and Pedersen, Viking Empires, 190–92.

ASC (D), ed. Cubbins, 58 (s.a. 1013); (E), ed. Irvine, 70 (s.a. 1013); (E), trans. Swanton, 143 (s.a. 1013). Translations of the Chronicle are here and elsewhere based on Swanton’s.

Wilcox, “Wulfstan’s Sermo Lupi ad Anglos,” 390; Bolton, Cnut the Great, 66–67.

ASC (D), ed. Cubbins, 59 (s.a. 1014); ASC (E), ed. Irvine, 71 (s.a. 1014).

Bolton, Cnut the Great, 71–73.

ASC (D), ed. Cubbins, 59 (s.a. 1014); (E), ed. Irvine, 71 (s.a. 1014); (E), trans. Swanton, 145 (s.a. 1014).

Bolton, Cnut the Great, 78–79. Insley, “Politics, Conflict and Kinship,” 32–35.

Bolton, Empire of Cnut, 118.

If we trust the relatively reliable Supplement (or Appendix) to Jómsvíkinga saga, Thorkell had fostered Knútr as a child. See Encomium Emmae, ed. Campbell, rev. Keynes, 92 (text); but see Campbell on p. 89: “perhaps a confused memory of Thorkell’s guardianship of Knútr’s son.”

Bolton, Cnut the Great, 80 (Þórðr Kolbeinsson and Óttarr svarti).

Bolton, Cnut the Great, 75.

Keynes, “Cnut’s Earls,” 43–88.

See McDermott later in this volume, pp. 148–51.

Bolton, Cnut the Great, 81–82.

Bolton, Cnut the Great, 82–87.

ASC (D), ed. Cubbins, 62 (s.a. 1016); (E), ed. Irvine, 74 (s.a. 1016); (E), trans. Swanton, 153 (s.a. 1016).

Bolton, Cnut the Great, 90.

ASC (D), ed. Cubbins, 62 (s.a. 1016); (E), ed. Irvine, 74 (s.a. 1016); (E), trans. Swanton, 153 (s.a. 1016).

See Clark, p. 95 and Crawford, pp. 450–52, later in this volume.

Poole, “Skaldic Verse and Anglo-Saxon History,” 284–86.

For a shrewd commentary, see Goeres, “Being Numerous,” 75–82.

Text based on “Liðsmannaflokkr,” ed. Poole, 1028 (v. 10). Translation by Richard North.

For other suggestions as to who this lady is, see Morawiec, “Liðsmannaflokkr,” 93–115 and in the present volume, p. 421 (Cnut’s mother), and Poole, Viking Poems, 113 (Cnut’s queen Emma).

See Hjermind later in this volume, pp. 321–31.

Bolton, Empire of Cnut, 138–150.

Bolton, Cnut the Great, 33, n. 17.

Crook, “‘A Worthy Antiquity,’” 173–176. For more on Cnut and St. Swithun, see Haug later in this volume, pp. 380–83.

Conquests in Eleventh-Century England, 1016, 1066, ed. Ashe and Ward.

Translatio Sancti Ælfegi, ed. and trans. Rumble and Morris. The present text is theirs, the translation based on theirs.

ASC (D), ed. Cubbins, 56–57 (s.a. 1011–12); (E), ed. Irvine, 68–69 (s.a. 1011–12); (E), trans. Swanton, 141–43 (s.a. 1011–12).

ASC (D), ed. Cubbins, 64 (s.a. 1023); (D), see also ASC (D), trans. Swanton, 156 (s.a. 1023).

Lavelle, Alfred’s Wars, 194–98 (p. 194). Bolton, Cnut the Great, 112. Foot, “Kings, Saints and Conquests,” 159.

On this tradition, see Guerrero, “Stranded in Miðgarðr,” 40–59.

Translatio Sancti Ælfegi, ed. and trans. Rumble and Morris, 283 (lines 11–12).

Translatio Sancti Ælfegi, ed. and trans. Rumble and Morris, 300 (lines 72–73).

Translatio Sancti Ælfegi, ed. and trans. Rumble and Morris, 302 (lines 83–85).

Pers. comm. Andrew Reynolds; see also Reynolds in this volume, pp. 24, 35 and Translatio Sancti Ælfegi, ed. and trans. Rumble and Morris, 302, n. 20.

Translatio Sancti Ælfegi, ed. and trans. Rumble and Morris, 302 (lines 86–88).

Translatio Sancti Ælfegi, ed. and trans. Rumble and Morris, 302 (lines 89–94).

Translatio Sancti Ælfegi, ed. and trans. Rumble and Morris, 302 (lines 96–97).

Translatio Sancti Ælfegi, ed. and trans. Rumble and Morris, 304 (lines 112–15).

Guerrero, “Stranded in Miðgarðr,” 49–51.

Translatio Sancti Ælfegi, ed. and trans. Rumble and Morris, 304 (lines 119–20).

Translatio Sancti Ælfegi, ed. and trans. Rumble and Morris, 308 (lines 171–74).

Translatio Sancti Ælfegi, ed. and trans. Rumble and Morris, 308 (lines 177–78).

Translatio Sancti Ælfegi, ed. and trans. Rumble and Morris, 308 (lines 178–81).

Translatio Sancti Ælfegi, ed. and trans. Rumble and Morris, 308 (lines 186–91).

Translatio Sancti Ælfegi, ed. and trans. Rumble and Morris, 308 (line 193). Emma arrives in Canterbury three days after Ælfheah, although, according to the Worcester text of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (D), s.a. 1023, she joins the party in Rochester.

Translatio Sancti Ælfegi, ed. and trans. Rumble and Morris, 308–312 (lines 195–217).

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