Cnut

Cnut
Contemporary drawing of King Cnut
from the New Minster Liber Vitae, 1031
King of England
Reign1016–1035
Coronation1017 in London
PredecessorEdmund II[1]
SuccessorHarold I[1]
King of Denmark
Reign1018–1035
PredecessorHarald II
SuccessorHarthacnut[1]
King of Norway
Reign1028–1035
PredecessorSt Olaf II
SuccessorMagnus the Good
Co-KingSvein Knutsson
Bornc. 990[1][2]
Denmark
Died12 November 1035 (aged around 45)[1]
Shaftesbury, Dorset, England
Burial
Old Minster, Winchester, England. Bones now in Winchester Cathedral, Winchester, England.
Spouses
Issue
HouseJelling
FatherSweyn Forkbeard

Cnut (/kəˈnjt/;[3] Old Norse: Knútr Old Norse pronunciation: [ˈknuːtr];[a] c. 990 – 12 November 1035), also known as Canute and with the epithet the Great,[4][5][6] was King of England from 1016, King of Denmark from 1018, and King of Norway from 1028 until his death in 1035.[1] The three kingdoms united under Cnut's rule are referred to together as the North Sea Empire.

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 by the time of Cnut's death.[7][8]

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.[9] 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 within the Catholic Church and 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.[10] Medieval historian Norman Cantor called him "the most effective king in Anglo-Saxon history".[11]

He is popularly invoked in the context of the legend of King Canute and the tide.

  1. ^ a b c d e f Weir, Alison (1989). Britain's Royal Families. Vintage. p. 30. ISBN 9780099539735.
  2. ^ Somerville & McDonald 2014, p. 435.
  3. ^ "Cnut" Archived 8 November 2018 at the Wayback Machine. Collins English Dictionary.
  4. ^ "King Cnut The Great". Historic UK. Retrieved 9 October 2023.
  5. ^ Laurence M. Larson Canute the Great G. P. Putnam's Sons 1912
  6. ^ Article Royal Family website (2023)
  7. ^ Trow 2005, pp. 197–198.
  8. ^ ASC, Ms. D, s.a. 1031.
  9. ^ Forte, Oram & Pedersen 2005, p. 196.
  10. ^ Lawson 2004, p. 97.
  11. ^ Cantor, The Civilisation of the Middle Ages, 1995: 166.


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