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It's the year 1028, somewhere on the south coast of England. It's a cold day. There's a stiff onshore breeze. Up on the coastal path, armed heavies keep a lookout. Down on the beach, pages hold horses while their masters are. A group of Anglo Norse noblemen gather at the water's edge. They stand there in their finest cloaks and furs, looking rather awkward, ranged behind a man sitting in a large oak chair. He stares out to sea, raises his hand as if in command, and holds it there as the waves roar in scuds of foam washing over his soft leather shoes. It's a fast tide, but the man is implacable. Within a couple of minutes, the water is up to his knees. His nervous entourage getting soaked now themselves plead with him to withdraw. The man nods and rises. He has made his point. On his head rests a gold crown. He's not just king of England, but of Denmark and Norway, too, ruler of a vast North Sea, North Atlantic Empire. Contrary to the later myth that will develop around him, he does not believe he has the power to control the elements. Rather, it is that not even he, an ordained Christian monarch, one of such expansive realms, can stem the tide. No one is above God's law. Afterwards, it is said back in Winchester, he will hang his crown on the royal chapel's crucifix, never to be worn again. Alongside Alfred, he will be the only king of England known as the Great. And his act today, much misconstrued, will become a colorful vignette in the long history of the English monarchy. His name is Canute. I'm ian glenn and from the noiser podcast network. This is real vikings part 9. Going into the 11th century, the medieval world is transforming. At the dawn of the Viking era, Norsemen had exploded onto the scene as heathen raiders. As pillaging turned to trading, then to settling, Viking colonies have been established in England and France, the Dane Law and Normandy. In Ireland, there are Norse enclaves known as longports. Out on the wild ocean, Scandinavian navigators have extended their reach through Iceland and Greenland, all the way to North America. To the east. Meanwhile, Nordic entrepreneurs dominate the river networks that snake down through Russia to the Black Sea and Constantinople. One of the biggest motivators for settling lands anew had always been that prospects abroad were rosier than those at home. But the old world has been evolving, too. Professor Davide Zari Part of the legacy
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of the Viking age for the homelands of Scandinavia is the emergence of three states, three kingdoms in Denmark, Norway and Sweden.
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In this series We've used the terms Norway, Denmark and Sweden for geographical convenience rather than as defined nation states. Descriptions are complicated by the terminology of the age, particularly in the lands the Vikings invade. The word Norse, for example, sometimes reserved for things that are specifically Norwegian, is often deployed as a generic term. In Anglo Saxon England, by contrast, it is Dane, which is the catch all label for anyone pitching up from across the North Sea. In terms of the lands from whence they hail, Norway means simply the Northway, the great sea lane that winds up the islands and fjords of Scandinavia's west coast. In Denmark, it is not the sea, but the gentle terrain which gives it its name. Dan means low ground mark, like the English marches. Indeed, like the Anglo Saxon kingdom called Mercia means a territory, particularly a borderland. Denmark is thus the flatland or flat borderland. The name Sweden, meanwhile, refers to its people, the Sver, who have tussled with the Yurtars or Geats, for dominance of southeast Scandinavia. It is one Geat, a monster slaying one, who is the hero of the epic old English poem that is a big hit of the day, Beowulf. But all three regions have been evolving into distinct self contained units. Professor Stefan Brink.
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The beginning of the emergence of the kingdoms or states Denmark, Norway and Sweden takes place in the seven hundreds and eight hundreds, when kings over the Danes especially are mentioned in Frankish annals. However, it is first around the year thousand that we see Denmark and Norway consolidated as larger territorial kingdoms.
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In the reign of King Godfrid, who rules from 804, the Danes strengthened their defensive earthworks, known as the Darnavirk, to resist Frankish aggression from the south. With this land border secure, Godtfrid begins unifying his territory from the Jutland peninsula across Tuscania in today's southern Sweden. By the reign of Gorm the old in 936, it is being administered from the ancient capital of Yelling. Gorm will be buried in Yelling in one of two massive mounds built by his son Harald Gormson on the giant runestones erected there. Both kings refer to their realm as Denmark. When Harald becomes king In 958, the Danish state becomes part of Christendom. It's 1997. We're in Santa Clara, California, deep in Silicon Valley, amid the tech startups, computer companies and software developers. It's an exciting place to be, the epicenter of the digital big bang, populated by hip young techies and jean and T shirt CEOs. At one company, intel, known for its microprocessors, they've been developing a short range wireless technology, something that originated with partners Ericsson, the Swedish mobile phone company. It will do away with cables and link devices remotely laptops, headphones, MP3 players, printers, televisions. It's especially important with the new generation of handheld devices that are being finessed the so called smartphones. Intel's owner Jim Kardack has a code word for this new kit. He came up with it over a few beers at a recent conference. A nod to its Nordic origins, it was inspired by a novel that was lent to him, the Longships by Franz T. Bengtsson. The book features King Harald Gormson and highlights his skills at bringing people together, uniting them as one. He's an inspirational figure, Kardak reckons, one worthy of naming their new technology after. Though not Gormson, that would be silly. Rather Harald's nickname due to a dental quirk. A prominent decaying incisor. The King of Denmark was known to everyone as Harald Bluetooth. Look. Kardak demonstrates they can deploy the runic version of his initials HB as the new text logo. There's a deafening silence, a few winces. Don't worry, he adds. Bluetooth. It's just a working title. We can always change it later.
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Harold Bluetooth, in my mind is the king who does the most to form a state out of Denmark. The birth certificate, in the sense of Denmark, is sometimes named as the Yelling Runestone. The Yelling Runestone has the first depiction of Christ in a kind of crucified pose. And it's got a text where Harald claims that he built these monuments in memory of his parents and that he united all of Denmark and Norway and made the Danes Christian. Those are big claims, but archaeology has largely supported this claim.
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In a previous episode, we followed the settlement of Iceland. Its population had swelled due to an exodus of people from Norway, driven out by the rule of Harald Fairhair. Fairhair had united Norway, or much of it, on acceding to the throne in 872. Although unlike the fairy tale version, his rule will turn out to be far from pg.
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His power doesn't last, and I don't think he fashions what any of us would consider a true state. And it disintegrates after his death. And there's meddling of the Danish king in the Norwegian politics. So the Danish king often controls the Oslo Fjord area of Norway in a way that limits the power that any Norwegian king can gather for himself.
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With at least 20 sons vying for the crown, there is an almighty scrap brewing over the running of the family business. The last man Standing is someone we've referenced earlier in this series, the splendidly monikered Eric Bloodaxe, so called for his enthusiastic elimination of his brothers, he will hack his way to the Norwegian throne in 931. Eric's portfolio will for a while include kingships of both Norway and Northumbria, over in the north of England. And it is there, across the water, where there will be a further twist to a family drama. It seems the youngest brother had escaped Eric's hand hatchet. Spirited out of harm's way. The boy named Haakon has been brought up in England, adopted by King Athelstan and baptized. Known as Haakon the Good. And who wouldn't be compared to Eric? He will soon be at war with his sibling. Haakon the Good will become Norway's first Christian King in 934. Though ongoing blood feuds will lead to years of instability and Danish intervention, Eric Bloodaxe will be forced out of York and will make a last stand in Cumbria in the year 954. Sweden will not find Jesus until the 12th century. It is also slower in achieving nationhood. But with the accession of Erik The Victorious in 970, its warring factions put aside their differences.
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But the situation is much more wobbly. And with the strife between two realms, the Jtar in the south and the Sverjar in the east, central Sweden. And this strife shifted back and forth for hundreds of years. So Sweden can best be described as a federation between the Jutar and the Svjar.
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And thus Denmark, Norway and Sweden grow from patchwork collectives of petty kingdoms into bona fide countries, Christian ones, the very type of entities that their Viking warriors once plundered. And with their royal houses and dynastic claims, they are once again to have a huge impact on the lands with whom they interact. And most significantly, Anglo Saxon England. When we were last in England, Alfred the Great had an made his peace with the Danish king Guthrum. This had seen the establishment of an autonomous Viking region. The Danelaw Guthrum had converted to Christianity, ruling East Anglia personally under a new name, Athelstan. Not to be confused with the later King Athelstan, the one who adopted Prince Haakon to create the Danelaw. England is bisected on a diagonal south east to northwest. The boundary follows approximately the path of the old Roman road, Watling street, whose main leg runs from London to Chester, Pretty much the route of today's A5. But the Danelaw was never a homogenous entity. It's all rather fragmented. Professor Levi Roach.
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So we've got polities there, plural, but the precise nature of them is actually quite hard to establish. What we do know, though, is all of these are areas that have seen significant Scandinavian settlement.
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The biggest part, Northumbria, literally the land north of the Humber, had extended as an Anglo Saxon kingdom from northern England up into the lowlands of modern Scotland, under Danish control. Its southern portion evolves into the Kingdom of York, ruled jointly at times with the Norse king of Dublin. The Danish East Midlands, meanwhile, is subdivided into what are known as the five Leicester, Lincoln, Nottingham, Stamford and Derby. South of the border, by contrast, the Anglo Saxon lands are beginning to coalesce, though not without internal turmoil. It will take until the rule of Alfred's grandson, the aforementioned King Athelstan, to solidify the realm. After decades of uneasy coexistence with the Nordic settlers, conflict will once more break out. Athelstan will beat the Danes at York in 927. Ten years later, at the Battle of Brenanburgh, an undetermined location somewhere in northern England, he defeats a combined army led by the kings of Scotland, Strathclyde and Norse Dunman. The coins Athelstan Mintz declare himself Rex Totius Britanniae, or King of the whole of Britain. But it is an ever shifting landscape, one of conquest and reconquest. It is Athelstan's successor, Edmund, who regains the five boroughs in 944. And it is not until the advent of king Edgar in 959 that the monarch is recognized definitively as the ruler and lord of the whole Isle of Albion. On Edgar's death in 975, his two young sons are next in line as rulers of this new entity, the land of Angles, Englerland, England. When the eldest son dies in suspicious circumstances at Corfe Castle, almost certainly murdered, it is his 10 year old brother who comes to the throne. His given name, Aethelred, will forever be conjoined with a nickname deriving from an ironic Anglo Saxon sense of humor. Enter into the frame, the boy king of England, Aethelred the unready. Doctor Pragya Vora.
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It's highly likely that this is something that is sort of retrospectively being applied to Aethelred. His name itself means noble counsel, and the unready part comes from the Anglo Saxon unred, which means ill counsel. So it seems to be some kind of play on his name.
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He will, at a stroke, undo the work of his forebears. The England Aethelred inherits is in a very healthy state. It is A unitary entity, well governed and above all, wealthy. Such things do not go unnoticed, not least by a Norwegian warlord, Olaf Tryggvason. As the great grandson of Harald Fairhair, violence is in Olaf's DNA. He's an unreconstructed pagan to boot, nicknamed Crowbone for his ritualized shredding of bird carcasses. Aware of England's growing riches, this Viking throwback sails an army over to East Anglia to loot and pillage. It will culminate in the Battle of Maldon, where in the mud of the Essex marshlands, Olaf defeats an English army. Aethelred, now in his 20s, seems as ill counseled as the legend suggests. Learning nothing from history, he bungs Olaf a huge amount of silver to go away, together with a rather hopeful suggestion that the hairy heathen might undertake some Bible study.
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So after the Battle of Maldon, which is recorded in 991 in the Anglo Saxon Chronicle, the invaders are paid £10,000 and asked to please leave, thank you very much. Which they do. But that only highlights to these Viking raiders just how wealthy the kingdom of England is. And so they come back, and they keep coming back.
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200 years on from Lindisfarne, the reemergence of a barbarian horde must have struck terror into the shires. There's an old English poem of the day called simply the Battle of Maldon. It will, with its foreboding sense of good versus evil, be hugely influential on J.R.R. tolkien's Lord of the Rings.
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Aethelred generally gets a bit of a reputation as being a poor king or a bad king, and that's perhaps a little bit unfortunate rather than indicative of his capabilities as a ruler. He inherits his kingdom at a particularly difficult time in the time of his father and his brother. We've got this period of sort of relative calm. And then as soon as Aethelred comes to the throne, the Viking raids begin again.
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Olaf Tryggvason will return home and seize the Norwegian throne. He will overthrow the sitting king, Haakon. Not hearken the good, but hearken the bad. But maybe Aethelred's plea, registered after all, ruling as Olaf I, Tryggveson will become a fervent evangelical Christian. He is said to have personally baptized explorer Leif Eriksson. Prior to his mission to Vinland in 997, Olaf will found a Norwegian capital, Trondheim, halfway up the country, far removed from neighboring Denmark, which has become increasingly embroiled in Norwegian affairs. Back in England, Ethelred, newly emboldened, decides to go on the offensive. He leads a raid against Normandy, which is becoming a safe haven again for Viking raiders. A piece concludes with Aethelred's marriage in 1002. He ties the knot with a Norman princess named Emma, herself half Danish. But it is a false dawn. The raiding does not stop. It is the Old Norse problem all over again, exactly as is happening over in Ireland.
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I mean, once we come to the end of direct Scandinavian rule in Northumbria in this mid 10th century period, the historical record really falls silent completely until it starts to record the raids at the end of the 10th century. So Vikings appear on the horizon once again in the 990s. And in some historical texts, you'll find people talking about the first Viking Age and the second Viking age.
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There has to be an explanation for this phenomenon. The king's men suggest. With advisors whispering in Ethelred's ear about an enemy within and a fifth column, he decides to take drastic action. He will purge his realm of anyone with Norse blood. There is a major complication here. The settled Norse and the Anglo Saxons have, over the past century, been intermingling, particularly in the north of Aethelred's kingdom, where the female locals have been rather taken with the new arrivals. Dr. Eleanor Barraclough.
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There's some absolutely wonderful material written from the point of view of the Anglo Saxons, or the English later, who come into contact with them, and they tell us things like, they're really quite clean. They wash, maybe even every week, heaven forbid. There's a wonderful later source that says, essentially the Anglo Saxons are absolutely furious because the Scandinavian settlers used to bathe and used to brush their hair and change their clothes and their socks. There were lots of women who were very attracted to these clean Scandinavians.
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It's an easy fit. The English and the Norse are culturally and ethnically similar. Fellow Germanic travelers, not so long before, Anglo Saxons worshipped the same pagan gods. They speak languages that are to some extent, mutually intelligible.
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Whether or not it's accurate that speakers of Old English and Old Norse could somehow communicate with each other, they could somehow interact enough to be able to create some sort of hybrid language. And we see a lot of that hybridity even in the language that we speak today. So, for instance, if you ate an egg for breakfast this morning, you have the Vikings to thank for that word, egg. If you died, I know that's grim. You have the Vikings to thank for the word that tells you that you have died.
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The Norse impact on the English language to this very day remains significant. Words like yule window, foot, bug, not to mention excess of terms associated with raiding, keel, starboard, berserk, ugly, skull, knife, slaughter, ransack, club. There's everyday nouns like lad, sky, fellow, husband, oaf, which means literally elf, and countless more besides. Our days of the week, Tuesday through to Friday, are named after the old Norse gods or their Anglo Saxon variants. Tyr, Odin, Thor and Frigg. To cut a long story short, by the turn of the 11th century the Norse Aravistes have bred generations who were born in England, speak the lingo, are Christian and would consider themselves English, just ones with Scandinavian heritage. Nordic English if you will, or Anglo Norse.
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And we have a different and unique culture, Anglo Scandinavian culture that we see manifested in the archaeology as well as in the laws that they're following. Other elements of Scandinavian culture we see decorated in places like the Daws fourth Cross where you have Scandinavian mythological scenes combined with cross Christian symbols. So the Vikings, the Scandinavians we should call them now because they're no longer seaborne pirates, they're Scandinavians settling in England are pretty quickly, it seems, adopting Christianity and mingling some of their own artistic and ideological traditions. It seems like a multi faith community.
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It is a state of affairs that does not seem to have been thought through. By Ethelred. It's November 13, 1002, St. Bryce's Day. We're in Oxford. In the marketplace, a group of young men, Anglo Danes, have been cornered by a baying mob. They huddle against the chill wind blowing in from the east and from the abuse stones and rotten fruit that are being hurled at them. The aggression is reaching fever pitch. Soldiers loiter, enjoying the spectacle rather than intervening civilians and unarmed, the young men appear harmless enough. They protest the their innocence at whatever it is they seem to have been accused of, something about being foreigners not welcome. They are English born, they repeat Christian and owe their allegiance to the King. It was ever thus. But their words fall on deaf ears. Under a hail of rocks, they cower. With hands raised to protect their heads, they dash for a nearby church, the church of St Frithis, with and force their way in. Here at least they can seek sanctuary. The soldiers nod knowingly. In a premeditated move, a wooden beam is lowered to lock them in. Soldiers climb ladders and smear the wooden roof with pitch. Once out of the way and two gleeful cheers from the crowd. Archers loose flaming arrows to set the building ablaze. Within minutes, the church is a raging inferno. From inside, a frantic banging against the door is replaced by screams of terror and agony. And then as the rafters Collapse. Silence. A shout goes up from the ranks. Some have escaped. Look. They must have got out round the back. There they are in the distance, staggering, spluttering towards the river. Cavalry are dispatched to cut them down, every last man. Their 37 bodies will be buried in a mass grave. They will lie there till a 2008 excavation at St John's College, later built over the site. Analysis will confirm the skeletons to have been male, aged 16 to 25, containing Danish DNA. They died from serious defensive wounds and slashes to their backs. A similar grave, only with the young male victims dismembered this time, will be found on Ridgeway Hill near Weymouth. And there will be more acts like this repeated up and down the country. It is, according to Aethelred's decree, a most just extermination comeuppance for all the Danes who had sprung up in this island, sprouting like cockle amongst the wheat.
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And this is a biblical metaphor for sinful elements. In the Middle Ages, this was often interpreted as being like a reference to things like heresy and heretics. And it's a line that's frequently invoked in later years for burning heretics. So there it is, this strong image of pollution in our kingdom and of these being the polluting elements in a religious as well as a secular sense.
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There remains debate to this day about Aethelred's true intentions, allegedly tipped off about a plot against him. Some say the plan was merely to snuff out the ringleaders, others that it was carte blanche to exterminate anyone of Nordic extraction living in England.
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The St. Bryce's Day massacre conjures up images that I think are in some ways helpful, in other ways not in terms of modern events and ethnic cleansing and the like. There's no signature of this. It would have been impossible to ascertain Dane versus English. So it's clearly not that actually. It's clearly something targeted. It's not nice, it's. It's a nasty move. But it seems to be a targeted move against recent arrivals and probably recent mercenaries.
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It doesn't seem to have been a widespread phenomenon. It doesn't seem to have sort of taken the whole of the English kingdom by store.
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Not.
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There seem to have been pockets of violence directed against, quote, unquote, Danes. And there is some suggestion that the people that were targeted were people who had come as part of these renewed raids, rather than the settled populations that had been part of the English kingdom.
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Either way, it has the same repercussions for among the Casualties of the massacre just happens to be a noblewoman named Gunhilda, wife of the Alderman of Devonshire, who just happens to be the sister of the latest king of Denmark, a man with an idiosyncratic grooming style, Sven Forkbeard. Sven Forkbeard is not one to mess about. A son of Harald Bluetooth, he had forced his own father into exile and allegedly colluded in his grisly death. It is said he died with an arrow up his rectum. All the better for his son to grab the Danish crown and along the way, amid some Danish Norwegian rancor, find himself king of Norman Norway too. In 1003, Sven Forkbeard lands on the southwest coast of England with a vast armada and burns down Exeter. He has plunged a dagger into the very heart of Old Wessex.
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And so when Sven invades England, the explanation is that this is revenge for his sister's murder as part of the St. Brice's Day Massacre. Whether this is a real story or not is almost impossible to tell. But what we do know is that after St. Brice's Day massacre, the amount of tribute money demanded and paid increases exponentially. But what it does lead to is a huge amount of unrest and instability in Aethelred's own kingdom.
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But Sax of Danegelt aren't going to buy peace this time. This thing is personal. Sweyn has a blade with Aethelred's name on it. Aethelred's son from a previous marriage, Edmund, will do his best to help dad man the defences, quite valiantly, it turns out, an effort which will earn him the nickname Edmund Ironside. Sweyn is unsuccessful in 1003, but he will try again in 1009 and in 1013. For Sven, like the Chinese military philosopher Sun Tzu, knows his enemy. He is fully aware that Aethelred's rule is now fragile. In particular, the Northern English, the Anglo Scandinavians, have been completely alienated by his attempt to wipe them out. When Sven sends a Danish fleet up the River Humber in the northeast, many of the locals welcome him as a liberator. Fearing for the lives of his family, Aethelred dispatches Queen Emma and their three young children off to Normandy.
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D
There's still very much this sense of parts of England being perhaps more Scandinavian, and that's being layered on top of the fact that there were strong regional identities anyway. So there certainly is a very strong sense, above all in Yorkshire, of uncertainty about this southern dynasty who never historically ruled us, and this willingness, therefore, to have certain Scandinavian warlords come over and rule them.
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One could argue that in England or in Britain generally, a north south divide persists to this day. At the very least, northern linguistic differences remain in all of these areas.
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What we really start to see is that this merger, we see Old Norse loanwords being borrowed into English and then everyone speaking a shared distinctive regional dialect that does set them apart from the southerners.
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The Norse influence on the English language, as already mentioned, runs deep, but you can see it too reflected in northern English place names. The suffix Thorp, as in Scunthorpe or Maplethorpe, is a term meaning a settlement. Thingwall on the Mersey, like Tingwall in Shetland, was once the seat of an assembly, a thing. The word also lends itself to the Isle of Man Parliament, Tynwald, the by b on the end of Derby, Grimsby, Whitby and many others. It means simply town. In fact, a word we take for granted by law, translates literally from the Norse as the law of the town. From bec meaning stream to nass meaning headland, to fell meaning hill, it goes on and on. In England, still, the great accent division, the long R versus the short a path, and Bath southern versus path bath northern, still pretty much delineates according to the old Danelaw boundary. Pursuing a peerless PR campaign, Sven leads his army south into the Mercian Midlands, where it turns out they're none too fond of Aethelred either. The English king knows his number is up. He is soon sailing across the Channel to join his family. With a hop and a step, Sven Forkbeard is in London. He is declared on Christmas Day 1013, not just King of England, but the first Viking King of England. Not that the history books ever give him much credit, probably because after a mere five weeks, and having never formally been crowned, he suddenly dies, possibly as a result of falling off his horse. From his base in Gainsborough, Lincolnshire, Sven had reportedly been on his way to his coronation in York. Back down south, it prompts the Council of Wessex elders, the Witan, to summon Aethelred back again. Returning in the spring of 1014, Aethelred and his allies restore England to Anglo Saxon rule. Though no sooner has Aethelred done so than he too takes a turn for the worse and delegates his son, Edmund Ironside, to rule in his stead. This does not sit well with a rival claimant, Sven's own son, someone who had fought alongside his father in the invasion and has substantial support in the English north. That man is Canute. Little is known about the early life of Cnut he was most likely born in Denmark around 990. Sources suggest his mother was Polish, probably Sviatoslava, daughter of King Mieshkov I and a former wife of Sweden's Erik the Victorious. While his brother rules Denmark as Harald ii, Prince Cnut is invited over by the northern English jarls, or earls, as their preferred choice as king of England. Aethelred, it seems, is not just unready, but unpopular. Intent on restoring his father's legacy, Cnut assembles another invasion force and lands at Sandwich on the Kent coast in September 1015 with about 10,000 men in 200 ships.
- [41:21]
E
We have from the later chronicle, which is the encomium Emma Reginae. We've got a wonderful description of what these ships looked like sailing into England with many kinds of shields and gold shining on the prows and silver flashing. It's an absolutely incredible description of Cnut's fleet. Coming into Wessex,
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Canute has assembled a coalition of the willing. It is a mix of Scandinavians, men from the Baltic regions, and includes a contingent of Polish troops loaned by his uncle, Duke Boleslav. As erudite and philosophical as Canute has been painted, he's no shrinking violet. On landing, his first task is to order what is described politely as the mutilation of the English hostages, those Anglo Saxon noblemen who had been held for diplomatic leverage in the manner of the day. It's a marker to lay down. This is war. Just as his father had done, Canute exploits his support in the north. He also persuades a number of English nobles to defect. By late 10:15, Wessex has submitted. Cnut begins a mopping up operation. But when Ethelred does eventually die, on April 23, 1016, the question of royal succession is thrown wide open again. With Edmund Ironside in nominal charge, it only stiffens Cnut's resolve. England has two pretenders, a northern one and a southern one. In a war that has been raging for 14 months, Edmund Ironside has seen off several attacks on London, not yet the capital, but fast becoming England's most important city. One devastating assault, launched by a Norwegian warlord will become the source of a nursery rhyme. London Bridge is falling down. But in October 1016, at the battle of Assenden, believed to be near Saffron Walden, Essex, Cnut John, just like his father, wallops the English army once and for all. Edmund flees west. It results in another territorial division of England, though this time on far less favorable terms for the English than had been agreed when setting up the old Danelaw. All land north of the Thames goes To Canute, no ifs or buts. Edmund Ironside gets everything south of the river, plus London. In terms of territory, that's about 70, 30 split in favor of the Norsemen. With a winner takes all twist, the two would be kings come to an agreement. Should one of them die first, the other will inherit the other's kingdom in its entirety. It should come as no surprise that Edmund Ironside perishes in peculiar circumstances pretty soon after, quite possibly murdered while sitting on the toilet. And so Canute becomes the second Viking King of England, crowned in London by the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1017. For good measure, he will see to it that all immediate dynastic rights are bumped off, including Edmund's brother. And with the cherry on top, he will take Aethelred's widow, Queen Emma, as his wife. He fetches her back from Normandy. If it seems a macho humiliation of the vanquished, it probably is. But it is also smart politics. The English princes stranded in Normandy are now Cnut's own stepsons and at his disposal. Plase Emma, if you remember, is actually half Danish, half Norman. Cnut is shoring up his rule, giving himself international legitimacy. And if she can bear him a son. Edmund Ironside has a couple of lads of his own, it should be pointed out. They are banished by Canute to Sweden. The plan is for them to meet unfortunate accidents on the quiet, but shipped on by the Swedes, the princes will travel to Kyiv, then end up in Hungary. To the loyalists, the eldest will always be the legitimate heir to the throne of England. He will be known as Edward the Exile. Queen Emma, as it happens, is fully on board with the new arrangement. Canute has a certain swagger. Way more rock and roll than Wimpy Aethelred for a red blooded man of Viking stock. One wife will never be enough. However, his union with Emma is blessed by the Church and she does deliver him a baby boy. Arthur can. But Papa has another love interest up in the Midlands. Her name is Elf Guefu, Elf Gifu of Northampton, a second common law wife. And she too will bear Canute a brace of sons. Another Sven and another Harold. Throw in Emma's kids. With Aethelred hauled up across the Channel, plus those Wessex heirs in Hungary, and there are going to be plenty of candidates when Canute shuffles off this mortal coil. As a king, Canute tempers the bloodlust. The Archbishop of York makes him promise to rule evenhandedly. As we saw at the start, Cnut is often presented around erroneously as an egotist A man who believed he could actually turn back the tide.
- [48:09]
D
Canute in the Tides is one of those kind of great set pieces. It's all the more a pity. It's a bit like Alfred burning the cakes in that. It's only recorded a couple centuries later, so we don't really have any reason to believe it's true. But it's one of those anecdotes that is meant to sum up the. The essence of a ruler who's been seen as being a foundational figure. It's a statement of actually saying, no, I'm not, you know, don't put me on too much of a pedestal. I'm not God. Only. Only God controls the waves. So it's a kind of a correction to hyperbolic praise at his court. It's also then meant to redound to his kind of Christian humility.
- [48:51]
A
Under Cnut, the English economy remains strong. He also builds up the navy. And crucially, Viking raiding stops in 1018, when his brother Harold II dies. He inherits the Danish crown too, though there will be complications back in the old country. In something of a role reversal, an Anglo Danish expedition is launched to put down a Swedish Norwegian threat. It results in victory for Cnut in an epic naval showdown, the Battle of Helgir. Cnut will then attack Norway, take Trondheim, depose Olaf II, and in 1028, declare himself king there too.
- [49:43]
C
He was thus the king of a huge North Atlantic Empire consisting of England, Denmark and all the colonies in North Atlantic. And in a letter, he also claims that he controlled parts of Sweden.
- [50:02]
A
It will become known as the North Sea Empire. Overlordship will, in fact, via dependencies and colonies, extend all the way briefly to North American Vinland. In 1031, three kings of Scotland will submit to Malcolm II e Mark. And another who will feature in English literature, a gentleman whose name we should perhaps not utter for fear of ill fortune. Macbeth. And then there are the Norse Gael fealties that remain after the Battle of Clondarf in Ireland. Cnut's domain is of such geographical scope that it will not be rivaled till the advent of Genghis Khan's Mongol empire in the 13th century. It's March 26, 1027, Easter Sunday. We're in Rome in the sumptuous old St. Peter's Basilica. A vast crowd has lined the streets there to witness the coronation of the new Holy Roman Emperor, Conrad ii. He's a descendant of Charlemagne, heir of the Caesars, arguably the most powerful man in Europe, if not the known world. The supreme ruler of what today constitutes Burgundy, Germany and northern Italy. And here today comes his anointing. The ceremony to be conducted by Pope John XIX himself. It's the culmination of a seven day event enacted before the crowned heads of Europe. Only in friendly recognition of Conrad's power, another king has been permitted to stand at his side. A fellow emperor, to all intents and purposes, Canute the Great, and whose own daughter has just been pledged to Conrad's son. Canute's rule is secure enough to have afforded him the long journey to Rome. Not only that, he is now, at the behest of Conrad, presented to the world, if not as an equal, then as near as damn, Is the absolute zenith of Norse glory, the pinnacle of the Viking age. With Canute's most prosperous, populous kingdom, England, seemingly secure as the centerpiece of the Scandinavian universe,
- [52:54]
D
there is an alternative history in which parts of Scandinavia are held by England or parts of England or England, and the British Isles are held by Scandinavia. Well, you know, into the early modern period and beyond. Of course, that actually is true of places like, you know, Hebrody and some of the Isles. Different story there. But there's no reason why that couldn't be the case with places like Yorkshire or even places like Kent and things that are quite accessible. East Anglia. So Knut's king really does allow us to see a different kind of world and how it could be created. And the fact that he's able to rule these kingdoms, these realms in a unified manner shows us that this is very much achievable.
- [53:34]
C
Canute the Great, that the Englishmen call him, was generally remembered as a wise and very successful king of England. Good reputation. Although this view may in part be attributed to his good treatment of the Church, which is notably coming from pagan Scandinavia.
- [53:58]
A
Lars Brownworth, he's one of the greatest
- [54:02]
B
of the English kings, I think, if we can call him an English king. And he ruled this great North Sea empire, which no other Viking before him
- [54:11]
A
had managed to do.
- [54:12]
B
He is the epitome of Viking power and prestige. He's accepted as a brother in law
- [54:17]
A
by the Holy Roman Emperor.
- [54:18]
B
It's quite a change from the beginning from these raiders who were just kind of smash and grabbing their way through Europe.
- [54:32]
A
With so many balls to juggle, Canute must delegate his mistress, Helfgifu, like Queen Emma, seems a shrewd political operator. At one point, she is dispatched to implement Canute's rule in Norway, quaintly known as Elfgifu's time. This period will be marked by crippling taxes and growing resistance. There are austerity measures in England too. It's not just the economy. Canute's frequent absences from England do not endear him to his subjects either.
- [55:08]
B
He's this remote figure, you know, his citizens respected him, but they never loved him, despite all the churches he built. And he took two pilgrimages to Jerusalem and Rome.
- [55:17]
D
They always thought he was a heathen.
- [55:19]
B
They never kind of accepted him into their hearts in a way.
- [55:25]
A
To maintain control, Canute groups the shires into regional entities. They will each come under the purview of assigned earls and one in particular, a mid ranking English thane who has risen beyond his station to be appointed Earl of Wessex, his status sealed by marriage to a Danish noblewoman. As Canute's enforcer, his right hand man, head of the most significant earldom, he will become the second most important person in the country. His name is Godwin. Ambitious and tough, he has embedded himself into the royal power structure. And he has big plans for his own Anglo Danish boys, including one named Harold. Harold Godwinson. Next time in the final episode, Varangian warrior Harald Hardrada becomes King of Norway. The title comes with a claim to the throne of England.
- [56:38]
D
England.
- [56:39]
A
In Normandy, Duke William, a descendant of Rollo, lays out his own case for seizing the disputed crown. It will spell disaster for Harold Godwinson, the sitting ruler of the Anglo Saxon realm. The year 1066 will usher in the ultimate Norse showdown, bringing down the curtain on the Viking age. That's next time in the final episode of Real Vikings. You can listen right now without waiting and without adverts by joining Noiser plus. Click the banner at the top of the feed or head to noiza.comsubscriptions to find out more.