Cnut the Great

Cnut (c. 995 – 12 November 1035), often called Canute or Cnut the Great, was a Danish prince who became King of England in 1016, King of Denmark in 1018, and King of Norway in 1028. Historians refer to the three kingdoms he united as the North Sea Empire. He is best remembered in popular culture for the legend of King Canute and the tide. Cnut was the son of Swein Forkbeard, placing him in a line of Scandinavian rulers who helped unify Denmark. His exact birthplace and birth date are unknown. The Danish royal house traces back to the semi-legendary Harthacnut I in the early 10th century, followed by Gorm the Old, then Harald Bluetooth—Cnut’s grandfather—who was king during Denmark’s Christianization and one of the first Scandinavian kings to accept Christianity. The identity of Cnut’s mother is uncertain and contradictory across sources. Norse sagas, particularly Snorri Sturluson’s *Heimskringla*, name her Gunhild, a daughter of Burislav, king of the Wends (West Slavic Obotrite or Wendish territories). These accounts say she bore Cnut and later died, after which Swein married Sigrid the Haughty. Continental sources add confusion: the *Encomium Emmae Reginae* calls Cnut’s mother a daughter of Mieszko I of Poland (sometimes reconstructed as Świętosława), while Thietmar of Merseburg’s *Chronicon* mentions an unnamed daughter of Mieszko I who married Swein and became mother to his sons. Adam of Bremen equates Cnut’s mother with the former Queen of Sweden, but modern historians consider this an error. Mainstream scholarship views the figure as semi-legendary or a composite of diplomatic alliances. Many historians assume Swein had at least two wives: an earlier Wendish consort who was Cnut’s mother, and a later one identified as Sigrid the Haughty. Cnut’s brother Harald is described as the younger in the *Encomium Emmae*. Some hints of Cnut’s childhood appear in the 13th-century Icelandic *Flateyjarbók*, which says he was trained in soldiery by Thorkell the Tall, brother to Sigvaldi, Jarl of Jomsborg, and the Jomsvikings at their stronghold on Wollin, off Pomerania. His birth date remains unknown, but a *Knútsdrápa* by the skald Óttarr svarti states Cnut was “of no great age” when he first went to war, possibly during Swein Forkbeard’s invasion of England in 1003–04 after the St. Brice’s Day massacre of Danes in 1002. If so, his birth might be near 990 or even 980. If the poem refers to Swein’s conquest of England in 1013–14, his birth could be nearer 1000. As a Danish prince, Cnut won the English throne in 1016 after centuries of Viking activity in northwestern Europe. His accession to the Danish throne in 1018 united England and Denmark. He sought to maintain this power by uniting Danes and English through shared wealth and customs. After a decade of conflict in Scandinavia, he claimed the Norwegian crown in Trondheim in 1028. In 1031, Malcolm II of Scotland submitted to him, though Anglo-Norse influence over Scotland was weak and did not last beyond Cnut’s death. Dominion over England gave the Danes a key link to the maritime zone between Great Britain and Ireland, where Cnut—like his father—had strong interests and influence among the Norse–Gaels. Control of England’s dioceses and the continental Diocese of Denmark, claimed by the Holy Roman Empire’s Archdiocese of Hamburg-Bremen, brought him great prestige among Christendom’s magnates. He gained concessions, including one on the price of the pallium for his bishops (who still had to travel to obtain it) and on tolls his people paid on the way to Rome. After his 1026 victory over Norway and Sweden, and returning from Rome where he attended the Holy Roman Emperor’s coronation, Cnut called himself “King of all England and Denmark and the Norwegians and of some of the Swedes” in a letter to his subjects.