549. The Road to 1066: Revenge of the Vikings (Part 2)

Summary

The Rest Is History: Episode 549 - The Road to 1066: Revenge of the Vikings (Part 2)

Hosts: Dominic Sandbrook and Tom Holland
Release Date: March 20, 2025
Podcast: The Rest Is History by Goalhanger

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Introduction to the Viking Conquest

The Road to 1066: Revenge of the Vikings (Part 2) delves deeper into the tumultuous events leading up to the Norman Conquest of England. Dominic Sandbrook and Tom Holland explore the intricate dynamics of Viking leadership, their conversion to Christianity, and the ensuing power struggles that reshaped England.

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Olaf Tryggvason: The Pagan Viking Turned Christian Monarch

Dominic Sandbrook (00:46):
Sandbrook introduces Olaf Tryggvason, a formidable Viking leader who epitomizes the transformation occurring in Scandinavia. Olaf's rejection of Odin's traditions in favor of Christianity marks a significant cultural shift.

Tom Holland (06:06):
Holland elaborates on Olaf's strategic conversion, suggesting, "Everything he does is very finely calculated to make him look good, to kind of redound to his glory." Olaf’s conversion is not merely spiritual but a calculated move to align with the prosperous and powerful Christian kingdoms, enhancing his own authority and wealth.

Key Points:

• Olaf's transformation from pagan chieftain to Christian king.
• His efforts to eradicate pagan idols and enforce Christianity.
• The political and economic motivations behind his conversion.

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Sweyn Forkbeard: Denmark’s Resolute Avenger

Dominic Sandbrook (08:22):
Sandbrook emphasizes the pivotal role of Sweyn Forkbeard, Olaf’s son, describing him as a "destroyer" rather than a conventional ruler. Sweyn's leadership style is portrayed as more calculated and institutionalized compared to his pagan predecessors.

Tom Holland (14:07):
Holland recounts Sweyn’s ruthless tactics, including the assassination of his father, Harald Bluetooth, through a rather gruesome accident involving an arrow. "This will not be the last toilet-themed death that we will be touching on in the course of this series." Sweyn's ascent to power exemplifies the brutal and strategic nature of Viking leadership.

Key Points:

• Sweyn Forkbeard’s strategic rebellion against his father Harald Bluetooth.
• The formation and dominance of his formidable fleet.
• Sweyn's decisive victories against Olaf Tryggvason, culminating in Olaf's death.

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The Massacre of Danes and Its Aftermath

Dominic Sandbrook (18:49):
The hosts discuss the catastrophic consequences of King Æthelred the Unready’s policies, particularly the massacre of Danes, which is deemed "the worst policy decision in the whole of English history." This act exacerbates tensions, leading to Sweyn’s relentless invasions.

Tom Holland (23:05):
Holland compares Æthelred’s financial extortion to an endless cycle of borrowing, ultimately weakening England’s defenses. "It's like going to kind of endless, going to a cash point with somebody else's card." This financial drain empowers Sweyn to continuously bolster his army and fleet for further invasions.

Key Points:

• King Æthelred’s strategy of paying off Viking raiders (Danegeld) as a short-term solution.
• The long-term repercussions of these payments, enabling Sweyn to strengthen his forces.
• The psychological and political destabilization of England under Æthelred's reign.

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The Battle for England and the Rise of Cnut the Great

Dominic Sandbrook (30:15):
The narrative shifts to the decisive battles between Edmund Ironside and Cnut, culminating in the Treaty of Alney, which effectively divides England between the sons of Æthelred and Cnut.

Tom Holland (40:49):
Holland highlights Cnut's adept statecraft, comparing him to Augustus and Charlemagne. "Canute is a tremendously, you know, I know this is a violent age and he's behavior, but as a politician, as a statesman, he's a very impressive figure." Cnut's ability to integrate Viking brutality with Christian governance stabilizes his rule over England.

Key Points:

• The climactic Battle of Assandun in 1016, leading to the division of England.
• Edmund Ironside’s death shortly after the treaty, removing the last major opposition.
• Cnut the Great’s consolidation of power and his recognition as a legitimate Christian monarch.

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Cultural Integration and the Legacy of Cnut the Great

Dominic Sandbrook (47:11):
The discussion explores why Cnut’s conquest isn’t as prominently remembered as the Norman Conquest of 1066. The hosts suggest that cultural integration and shared Christian faith between Danes and English minimized the psychological impact.

Tom Holland (49:21):
Holland posits that Cnut’s respectful and strategic governance, including his pilgrimage to Rome, facilitated a smoother assimilation. "In 1027, amazingly, he takes time off from ruling this great North Sea empire that he's forged in Norway, Denmark, England... being received with the utmost honor and respect in Rome." This diplomatic prowess ensured stability and prosperity under Danish rule.

Key Points:

• Cnut’s efforts to rule as a Christian king, aligning with English traditions.
• The economic revival under Cnut’s 100% tax rate, initially oppressive but eventually stabilizing.
• The diminishing of Viking raids, replaced by internal governance and cultural amalgamation.

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Conclusion: The Unseen Conquest and Its Lasting Impact

The Road to 1066: Revenge of the Vikings (Part 2) concludes by highlighting the significant yet often overlooked Danish conquest of England. The hosts draw parallels between the Danish and Norman conquests, emphasizing the former’s lasting influence on English governance and culture.

Dominic Sandbrook (61:03):
Sandbrook raises a thought-provoking question about the relative obscurity of Cnut’s conquest compared to William’s in 1066, considering its comprehensive nature and profound impact on English society.

Tom Holland (60:39):
Holland underscores the effectiveness of Cnut’s rule, noting that under his leadership, England not only recovered but thrived, setting the stage for future stability and prosperity.

Key Points:

• The Danish conquest solidified England’s wealth and infrastructure.
• Cnut’s reign marked a period of relative peace and economic stability.
• The legacy of Viking integration laid the groundwork for subsequent historical developments, including the eventual Norman Conquest.

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Notable Quotes

• Tom Holland (06:06):
  "Everything he does is very finely calculated to make him look good, to kind of redound to his glory."

• Tom Holland (14:07):
  "This will not be the last toilet-themed death that we will be touching on in the course of this series."

• Tom Holland (23:05):
  "It's like going to kind of endless, going to a cash point with somebody else's card."

• Tom Holland (40:49):
  "Canute is a tremendously, you know, I know this is a violent age and he's behavior, but as a politician, as a statesman, he's a very impressive figure."

• Tom Holland (49:21):
  "In 1027, amazingly, he takes time off from ruling this great North Sea empire that he's forged in Norway, Denmark, England... being received with the utmost honor and respect in Rome."

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Key Takeaways

• Strategic Conversion: Viking leaders like Olaf Tryggvason converted to Christianity not solely for spiritual reasons but to enhance their political power and economic prosperity.

• Sweyn Forkbeard’s Ruthlessness: Sweyn’s calculated and brutal tactics exemplify the lethal efficiency of Viking leadership during this transformative period.

• Æthelred’s Short-Sighted Policies: King Æthelred’s reliance on Danegeld weakened England’s defenses, inadvertently empowering Viking invaders.

• Cnut the Great’s Mastery: Cnut’s ability to blend Viking and Christian traditions facilitated a stable and prosperous reign, often overlooked in mainstream historical narratives.

• Cultural Integration Over Conquest Memory: The seamless cultural assimilation under Cnut’s rule contributed to the diminished historical prominence of the Danish conquest compared to the later Norman Conquest.

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Note: This summary excludes advertisements, intros, outros, and non-content sections to focus solely on the informative discussions between Dominic Sandbrook and Tom Holland.

Transcript

[Dominic Sandbrook]

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[Tom Holland]

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[Dominic Sandbrook]

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[Dominic Sandbrook]

Strange tales were told of Olaf Tryggvason's return to Norway. One day, it was claimed the new king was in a fit mood to be entertained. At his side, there suddenly appeared an old man, cloaked and white haired with only a single eye, entering into conversation with the stranger Tryggveson found that there was nothing the old man did not seem to know, nor any question to which he could not give an answer. All evening the two of them talked, and even though the king was eventually persuaded to retire to bed by a twitchy English bishop who had grown suspicious of the one eyed stranger, Tryggveson could still not bear to end the conversation, but continued it even as he lay on his furs late into the night. At last the old man left him and the king fell asleep. But his dreams were strange and feverish, and waking up abruptly, he cried out for the stranger again, even though his servants searched high and low. However, the old man could not be found and Tryggveson, brought to his senses by daylight, shuddered at his close escape. When it was reported to him that two sides of beef, a gift from the stranger, had been used in a stew, he ordered the entire cooking pot flung out. A godly and responsible act, for clearly it was out of the question for him as a follower of Christ, to feast on meat supplied by Odin. Well, that riveting passage, finely wrought prose that was produced by none other than our very own Hollywood's own Tom Holland in his book Millennium. It's about the end of the world and the forging of Christendom. Is that what the subtitle of the book, Tom?

[Tom Holland]

Yeah, that kind of stuff.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Exactly.

[Tom Holland]

I thought a nice compliment to the reading from your own book on this subject with which we ended the previous episode. So a nice segue.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

They're a perfect match. We ended last time with a reading from Fury of the Vikings. Listeners may remember that Danish refugees, in the wake of a terrible massacre in the towns and villages of England, have fled across the North Sea to Scandinavia to bring the news to the Danish king. And revenge is coming. So today in this mighty series about the events of 1066, we turn from England to Scandinavia to the Northlands. We look north to the world of the Vikings, which is now beginning to change. And that opening reading about Olaf Tryggvason rejecting Odin's beef is a reminder of the throes of cultural and social change that are transforming Scandinavia. So Tom, you talked last time about this guy, Olaf Tryggvason. He is a terrifying, slightly sinister Viking leader who had beaten an English army in 991 at the Battle of Malden, who had led all these pillaging raids across southern England and has extorted a huge amount of silver from England's King Aethelred the Unready bars. Olaf Tryggvason is A is. Is an embodiment of change in himself, isn't he? Because he's converted to Christianity and he's been paid off by Aethelred and he has gone back to Norway. So tell us a little bit about him and why he matters.

[Tom Holland]

Yes. So he's returned to Norway the North way, the great road that kind of winds up the coast of Norway. And he is setting about transforming himself from a pagan Viking chieftain into the intimidating figure of a Christian king. And he does this with the same buccaneering enthusiasm that he had shown in extorting cash from the English. So he goes up and down the North Way and he smashes idols and he menaces local pagan leaders and he forces conversions of his countrymen at the point of a sword, and he throws out Odin's beef. And I think, as that story suggests, his. His conversion is, up to a point, pretty genuine. But the question then is why? Why would he, having imposed himself so formidably on our Christian kingdom, why would he then convert to the God of these seeming losers?

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah.

[Tom Holland]

And I think the answer is that everything he does is very finely calculated to make him look good, to kind of redound to his glory, to add to his potency and power. And the truth is that even though he had extorted money from the English, he can do that because England is rich. And I think he has seen enough of this great Christian kingdom ruled by Aethelred to think, well, I would quite like a bit of what Aethelred has. You know, he may. We may think of him as a loser, but Ethelred is heir to Alfred the Great. He's a figure of dignity, of splendor, of wealth, and Olaf wants it. To worship Odin is basically to be parochial, to be poor, to be someone who has to be a predator. And to worship Christ is to be powerful and rich and possessed of enough silver, if you have to, to kind of give it out.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah. I think it's important for people to get that into their heads, isn't it, that the Christianization of Scandinavia is the moment that really marks the end of the Viking age. But it's not because these warlords think kindness is brilliant. And, you know, I love turning the other cheek and all that kind of thing. It's because they think Christianity is a winner's religion.

[Tom Holland]

Yeah.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

People who are Christians are rich, they're powerful. And also, if you're a king, you know, to have one, one religion, one God, that sounds great. You know, get everyone to believe the same thing and therefore believe in you.

[Tom Holland]

And I think it's more than just about belief. It's also about the apparatus of power that Christianity provides, because it's very much a literate civilization. You have bishops who can serve you as ministers. That could then enable you to kind of construct the kind of kingdom that, that you find in England.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Right.

[Tom Holland]

It enables you to have more sophisticated ways essentially of raising troops. And therefore the offer is that you can be even more bloodthirsty and extort even more money. Yeah. Ultimately is the kind of the, the base practical reason and the degree to which this is something that is very much in the air in the early 11th century is the fact that Olaf Tryggveson is not the first Viking warlord to have clocked this. So south of the north way you go across these icy reef strewn waters that separate Norway from Denmark and there you come to the flatlands of Jutland and there stands the seat of the kings of Denmark. And we talked in the first episode about how England is very precocious. But it's not entirely unique because in Denmark, at the same time as the Kurda Kingas, the great dynasty of Alfred the Great, are establishing their rule over a united kingdom of England, a dynasty of kings in Denmark are doing much the same thing. And they set up a great kind of showcase of their dynasty's power at a place called Yelling, which is in the heart of Jutland. And it is, you know, we've already alluded to Tolkien, it is like something out of Lord of the Rings. It's a place of ancient graves and you've got gold ringed warriors with their swords and their spears standing on guard outside kind of great halls, great feasting halls. And you also have two huge mounds of earth that had been raised by Gorm. It's a great Gorm, the old, who is the founder of this dynasty and had been a pagan. But the amazing thing is, is that between these two great barrows, these two great pagan piles of earth, there stands a church. And beside the church there is a great block of granite that has been carved so into the stone with an image of a crucified Christ who is entangled with serpents. And it's inscribed with runes. And these runes read, and I quote, king Harald had this memorial made for Gorm his father, and Thierry his mother, that same Harold, who joined together all Denmark and Norway and made the Danes to be Christian.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah, it's an amazing site, actually. I'll tell you what, it's accessible within half a day from Legoland. I know, I remember it well, it's an excellent trip. The Danish Tourist Board, if they want to sponsor us, they really ought to, because I recommend it to the listeners as a long weekend, you can knock off Legoland and the yelling stones in the same trip. And of course, this is matters because these stones, the inspiration, the guy who set them up, King Harold, you mentioned his. His nickname is Bluetooth. And these stones showing the integration of. Of pagan and Christian, and of course, all Denmark and Norway being joined together are the inspiration for Bluetooth technology, would you believe?

[Tom Holland]

Yes. And the symbol for Bluetooth is kind of fusion of the runes for H and B, so that the two initials of Harold Bluet. Yeah. And the idea behind naming that technology Bluetooth was this idea that Harald had joined together Denmark and Norway. In fact, it was just the southern reaches of Norway, like, this is teaching all the world to sing Kumbaya. Wonderful. Of course, I mean, there was nothing touchy feely about it at all. It was a very brutal process of conquest. And you can see in this kind of great rock, this great stone with the symbol of Christ and carved on it, that the process of conquest is being aligned with the process of becoming Christian. And as you said, to be the servant of a kind of single omnipotent God rather than a whole host of gods, this is to be a Caesar. This is potentially to have power that is far more prestigious than anything that the pagan world could offer. And of course, as we said also, it brings bureaucracy. And bureaucracy in turn, enables the organization of a treasury. And a treasury enables the commissioning of infrastructure and the building of ships and the arming of ever larger armies. And the Danish king who best demonstrates this is not Harald himself, but his son, Sweyn Forkbeard, who at the end of the last episode. Yeah, you reminded us, had cold blue eyes.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

In his cold blue eyes, Tom, there was only death because Svein Fortbeard has just heard the news of the massacre of Danes in England. And he has also, according to some sources, heard that one of the victims is his own sister, Gunhilda. Right. And this is a man with whom you do not want to mess. So Tietmar, the Bishop of Merceburg, said that he was, and I quote, not a ruler, but a destroyer. And Svein Fortbeard, he may be, you know, a new kind of Dane in that he is a king in a Christianizing world and he has more bureaucracy behind him and all of this kind of thing. So he's not a Viking raider or a Viking warlord, but he's just as frightening and formidable as the most sinister and blood drenched of Alfred the Great's adversaries or whatever.

[Tom Holland]

Yeah, I think he's a much more frightening figure. Much more kind of chill and calculating than any of the pagan Vikings. Actually.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

The Knight and the boneless.

[Tom Holland]

Yes, precisely because he is starting to kind of institutionalize his menace. But you still have the slight vein of brutal comedy that you often get in Viking epics. So the story of how he comes to power, he actually topples his father, Harold bluetooth. So in 986 he leads a rebellion against Harold. And there are various stories that are told of Harold's ends and the most comical and therefore the one that we will go with.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Do you tell in your book? Not necessarily the truest, but the one that you enjoyed the most, Dom, I think it's fair to say.

[Tom Holland]

Yeah. So the father and son have a kind of parley on an island. They're just about, you know, they've got all their fleets behind them. And then Harold Bluetooth goes off to go to the toilet to have a dump. And as he sits down to start the process, an arrow is fired and it goes straight up his anus. And this will not be the last toilet themed death that we will be touching on in the course of this series.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

So Svein had been a comrade of Olaf Tryggvason, the guy who rejected Odin's beef. But they are rivals within the world of the North Sea, aren't they? One of them is Norway, the other's Denmark. Basically, yes.

[Tom Holland]

And Sweyn had fought with Olaf Tryggveson at Malden, so was fully aware of his potential and his formidable qualities, and so therefore decides that he's going to have to eliminate him. And one of the many ways, I think, in which Svein Fortbeard is a frightening figure is that he's a great man for delayed gratification. So he takes his time and he slowly builds up an ever more intimidating force with which to take on the Norwegian king. And in the year 1000, this great fleet set sail to destroy Olaf Tryggvason. Tryggvason himself is kind of ready for it. He's got an absolutely enormous kind of dragon ship called the Long Serpent, the largest dragon ship ever fashioned. He's got 60 ships that are kind of similarly impressive and intimidating. So these two great armadas sailing out to meet one another. But Forkbeard's force is ultimately far more intimidating. Olaf Tryggvason's fleet is rapidly wiped out and it ends with Tryggveson himself, who has got golden armour, bright red cloak, so kind of very on brand. His enemies have cornered him, they're about to grab him and Olaf Tryggvason leaps into the sea. And when Sveinfortbeard's men try to rescue him from the waters, he. He threw his shield over his head, it is said, and vanished beneath the waves. And so he dies as he had lived as a great Viking hero, a man whose name will be celebrated in song. But Svein Forkbeard has secured for himself power beyond the dreams of any previous Scandinavian king.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Right, so this is a thing, Svein Fortbeard at this point, who is this very formidable character, of course, famous for his beard. We should stress this. He has this forked beard, which I think in itself is quite intimidating.

[Tom Holland]

Yeah, yeah.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

So he is the man that Ethelred the Unready has basically chosen to provoke.

[Tom Holland]

It's mad, but I guess Ethelred thought.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

He had no choice. He just. He thought the Danes were a fifth column and he just had to get rid. But I mean, you've said in your notes that if he'd been facing somebody else, it might have been a reasonable calculation. But as it is, because word is bound to reach Svein Fort Beard. Yeah, it's, and I quote, the worst policy decision in the whole of English history. I mean, Bridget Phillipson might have something to say about that. Tom.

[Tom Holland]

I say there's a case for saying.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah, it's in the top two.

[Tom Holland]

I think it's a moral disaster, obviously, because actually murdering people who are your guests in your kingdom is a terrible look, no matter whether you have kind of apocalyptic justifications or not. But I think it's an insane misreading of not just Feinforbid himself, but the capabilities of the Danish kingdom. And I guess the reason that Ethelred misreads it is that he is thinking that Denmark is still the country, you know, that it was back in the pagan days. He hasn't clocked the fact that it is starting to become a kingdom very much like his own and the consequences are utterly disastrous. And I think that anyone in England listening to this who is currently depressed about the state of the country should sit back and reflect on the fact that it was actually a lot worse, okay, in the latter years of Aethelred's reign.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

So let's get into Svein Forkbeard's revenge. So he clearly spends the next few months mustering his forces, assembling his fleet, you know, sharpening their swords. And then a few months after the St Bryce's Day massacre in 10:03, he lands in Wessex, in the heartland of the English kingdom, at the head of this gigantic fleet and a massive expeditionary force. And Tom, he wants to bleeding and dry, as so many raiders have done, but also he's after Aethelred's authority, the symbols of his authority. And he heads for. Where else? For Wiltshire and the Salisbury area.

[Tom Holland]

It does. Yeah, he does. So he. He first of all lands in Devon, but he storms and burns Exeter and then he marches on my own native county of Wiltshire and its county town of Wilton. And Wilton is one of the great symbols of the authority of the Kurda Kingas, the dynasty of Alfred the Great, and particularly of its women. So Wilton is the site of an abbey that lies under the particular protection of the royal women of the royal dynasty. And so to attack it in a way is to insult Athelred's masculinity, his inability to defend the property of his women. And it has a kind of great spiritual potency. So two sisters of Athelstan, the first king of united England, had been nuns there. And in 955, this is very interesting for me, one of the brothers of Athelstan, who had ruled in succession to him as king, had granted to the nuns of Wilton two villages in the near by Chalk valley. So one of them was a village called Bower Chalk and the other was a village called Broad Chalk, and that's where I grew up. So this is very much my neck of the woods, and it means that I have a particular devotion to the memory of this great abbey. And one of the great saints of the Kurdicingass had also been there. So this is Edgar's daughter, Edith, and therefore the half sister of Aethelred. She'd been very devout, very holy, much loved by the locals for her kind of kindness and generosity. But she'd also been celebrated for her tremendous dress sense, by far the most stylishly dressed nun in England, and she had been criticized for this. But God demonstrated his approval of her kind of sassy dress sense by making a burning torch drop into the great chest where she kept her clothes. And the chest got kind of, you know, blackened, but her clothes completely survived. So it was a spectacular miracle.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah, that must have definitely happened.

[Tom Holland]

Well, you may scoff, Dominic, but when she dies, she's only kind of in her late 20s, the memory of this extraordinary miracle is such that she is enshrined as a saint. So what do you say? What do you make of that?

[Dominic Sandbrook]

I think it's bonkers.

[Tom Holland]

But I mean, God, honestly, mercy and Mercy and skeptics.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

I have no time for Wessex's saints, to be honest with you. I just. I look down on them.

[Tom Holland]

Well, I think that reflects poorly on you. And maybe you would have been at one with Sweyn.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

I would have thrown my lot in with Sweyn straight away.

[Tom Holland]

Sweyn is marching on Wilton, he's marching on Wiltshire and the Salisbury area at the head of a marauding hairy band of Vikings. And of course, it's the duty of the alderman of Wiltshire, a guy called Alfric, to stop them, to preserve this great symbol of West Saxon royal power. And he arrives on the crest of the hill, looking down at Wilton, he sees the Viking horde. All his men are lined up, waiting for him to sound the battle trump. Yeah. And instead he's so terrified that he voids his bowel and vomits all over the soil.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

That is the. That's what I associate with people from that neck of the woods, Tom. That's the behavior.

[Tom Holland]

He runs away and Swain torches Wilton, Lucy Abbey of its gold. And of course, you know, this is devastating to Athlet in every way.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Right?

[Tom Holland]

He's lost the money and he's been humiliated. This great symbol of his power has been devastated and Svein makes sure to extort everything that he can. And ultimately, you know, he only leaves in 1004 after Aethelred has given him yet more Dane Geld.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

So now we really are into the routine of Dane geld, aren't we? Because the issue now is that Svein knows he can just come back again and again, hit England, get more Dayngeld and use that Dayne Gelder. I mean, this is your Kipling lines, you know, if you pay Dane Geld, you will never get rid of the Dane, because Sweyn uses that to beef up his army, beef up his fleet, and then come back the next year or two years later for more money.

[Tom Holland]

Yeah, it's like going to. Kind of endless, going to a cash point with somebody else's card.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Right. Because every time the Danes return, 1006, 1009, they are better equipped, more formidable, more terrifying. I have to say, there's an absolutely brilliant book on this that I read a few years ago by a Norwegian historian called Taurus Scare, called the Wolf Age. And it does this in basically kind of week by week narrative, and it.

[Tom Holland]

Just goes on and on and on.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Of all of these conquests. And one of the key characters is a guy called Thorkel the Tall. And he. He's very tall.

[Tom Holland]

But also, yeah, we've established that.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

So he's really brutal and effective, isn't he? I mean, he keeps looting and pillaging all these towns. And so in 1011, they go for a place that's even more significant than Wiltshire and the Salisbury area, which is Canterbury.

[Tom Holland]

Yeah.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

The seat of Christianity in England.

[Tom Holland]

And they capture the archbishop, they lock him up in a cage, and they keep him there for six months. And then they hold a great celebratory feast at Greenwich, kind of downriver from London, at Easter.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah.

[Tom Holland]

Easter Saturday. Yeah. And they get absolutely wasted and they've been hiding mighty haunches of beef and they're a great, like, skulls of oxen and bones and stuff. And they all start pelting the archbishop with these bones and the poor guy dies.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Do you know the name of the man who. This is so Tolkien. The name of the man who finished the archbishop off. He was called Thrum.

[Tom Holland]

Yeah, Thorkel and Thrum.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah.

[Tom Holland]

And this is again to emphasize just abject humiliation for Athelred. I mean, it's bad enough to see the great abbey patronized by the women of your dynasty wiped out, but to have the archbishop of your kingdom pelted to death with ox bones, I mean, doesn't get worse than that, really.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

So in the long run, Ethelred's solution is, yet again, financial. He can't fight England. It's interesting, isn't it, that England, despite being so wealthy, just doesn't have the martial tradition, the martial culture.

[Tom Holland]

It does. And this is where I think the revisionism on Ethereum gets it wrong.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Okay.

[Tom Holland]

He. He has shown that he can fight. I mean, he invaded Scotland. He launched an attack on Normandy. Spoiler alert. His elder son will show that it's perfectly possible to raise troops and. And to fight.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

So why doesn't he do it in a convincing and effective way?

[Tom Holland]

I suspect that the humiliations heaped on him has broken his prestige and the resentment of him as a man who just keeps extorting money and handing it over.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah.

[Tom Holland]

Is kind of corroding the willingness of people to kind of go the extra length for him.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

People basically think he's a loser, and they don't.

[Tom Holland]

People do think he's a loser. And where I think it is, it is reasonable to say that Ethelred is unlucky is just to emphasize the fact that he is up against something new with this. The fact that Denmark is a state rather than a kind of consortium of raiders. I think this is something that he hasn't properly clocked, but he really should have done by this point. He should have fought. And in 1012, I think Aethelred decides the policy's not working. What I need to do is to try and specifically buy off some of these raiders and employ them as my mercenaries. And he targets Thorkel the Tall, this guy who had captured the Archbishop of Canterbury, gives him another massive bribe and wins Thorkel over together with 45 ships. But the problem is that this policy, which may be 10 or 20 years before, would have worked, is a failure because it just makes Svein alarmed. You know, he doesn't want to think of Athelred teaming up with someone as formidable as Thorkel. And so he decides the time has come for me to invade. And as he had done with Olaf Tryggvason, so with Aethelred, he's been playing a very long game. And his policy with Aethelred has been to. To bleed him dry of, you know, the lifeblood of silver and then to close in for decapitation.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Right.

[Tom Holland]

And so in 1013, that is what he does. He sails up the Humber estuary with a huge invasion force. And the Humber estuary, effectively, if you're facing Vikings from across the North Sea, is like a dagger point sticking into the heart of England, because it leads to York, the great second city of England, and which for so long had been a Viking capital.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

There's loads of Danes in this area. I mean, there are people with Danish surnames, there are Danish place names, Grimsby and so on. There are all these people who perhaps for whom it is perhaps not such a stretch to imagine having a Danish overlord rather than an English one. And it seems pretty clear at this point, doesn't it? Do you agree that Sweyn, he's. This isn't another raid. He's like, right, let's finish this now. I'm actually just going to take this over and this is going to become part of my empire.

[Tom Holland]

Yeah, he's been planning it and now the moment has come. And he combines menace with overtures to the local aristocracy in Mercia. And they are so battle scarred and weary that they start accepting Sweyn's terms and handing over hostages, offering homage to Sweyn. And by the end of that year, 1013, Aethelred is effectively staring down the barrel. He no longer has the run of his country, he's bottled himself up with Thork in London. But he knows that he can't hold out for long, that the whole country now effectively is submitting to the Danish king. And so he orders his queen, the Lady Emma, who is, of course the sister of the Duke of Normandy go on board a ship and to take with her their three children. So those are two boys, Edward and Alfred, and a girl called Gifu. And once they're on the ship, to set sailors for Normandy, and this will.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Be really important later on, the fact that these children, one of whom is called Edward, so listeners should remember him, are disappearing into exile in Normandy to her homeland.

[Tom Holland]

Exactly. Athelred still can't quite bring himself to endure the humiliation of seeking sanctuary with the Duke of Normandy. So instead he leaves London and he kind of hangs out on the Isle of Wight, spends Christmas there. And it's miserable because effectively he is now the Viking. His court has shrunk to his fleet, and in the New year, he kind of gives up. And in the dying days of 10:13. So in the days immediately after Christmas, he. He decides, oh, this is hopeless. And he too set sail for the Norman court.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

So now the dynasty that has ruled England for so long, the dynasty of Alfred and of Edward the Elder and of Athelstan, has gone off into exile. The Danes are the masters of England.

[Tom Holland]

And a Danish king.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

And a Danish king, yeah. In Sweyn Forkbeard. And then an unbelievable George R.R. martin style twist. 3 February 1014. Tell us what happens to Svein Fortbeard, Tom.

[Tom Holland]

Well, he dies. And there are conflicting accounts about what exactly happens to him. So some say that he died in his sleep, others that he fell off his horse and smashed his head. And others say that he was killed by St. Edmund, the king of East Anglia, who, back in the time of King Alfred, had been shot to death by pagan Vikings and had since been enshrined as the great patron saint of the east angles, that St Edmund had appeared to slain Forkbeard in a dream and struck him with a pole. And that had finished him off.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

So listeners make up their own minds, was he killed by St. Edmund in a dream with a pole, or did he, as I read in another, have a stroke near Scunthorpe?

[Tom Holland]

Isn't it?

[Dominic Sandbrook]

How basically you can divide the human race into people who think, go with the stroke and Scunthorpe or the pole people.

[Tom Holland]

What I will also say is, again, over the course of this story, people dying unexpectedly.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah.

[Tom Holland]

And often it's mentioned at feasts. Again, this is an enduring theme and people might want to ponder whether perhaps foul play was in operation, but we don't know. Anyway, so Sweyn Fort Beard is now off the scene. And so the Witan, this great assembly of the elder men, the men who lead the various counties in England. They get together and they decide actually maybe we should get Aethelred back. And the Anglo Saxon Chronicle gives the details of the invitation they send to Aethelred. They said no sovereign was dearer to them than their natural lord, if only he would govern them better than he previously done.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah, that's not really an endorsement. But Aethelred does obviously come back.

[Tom Holland]

He does. So Thorkel switched sides by this point.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Thorkel's now on back with the Danes.

[Tom Holland]

Yes. But there's a Norwegian on the scene, a guy called Olaf Haraldsson and Dominic, we'll be hearing about him again soon.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

He's this very stout man.

[Tom Holland]

Very stout, yes. And very saintly in the long run, despite being very murderous. So Olaf Haraldson helps capture London for Aethelred from the Danes. He sails up the Thames and he pulls down London Bridge. I'm never entirely sure how pulling down London Bridge helps him.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Helps him, but he does.

[Tom Holland]

And there's a kind of, there is a thesis that this is the origins of the nursery rhyme London Bridge is falling down. The other great champion of the English resistance to the Danes is Aethelred's eldest son. So that's not by Emma but by a previous queen. And this is a guy called Edmund. He had scorned to flee England when, when Aethelred and his sons by Emma had gone, he'd stayed in England. He's very charismatic, he's very brave and he's so formidable in battle that he wins the nickname of Ironside.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

He's a tremendous man, isn't he?

[Tom Holland]

And actually you could say he is the last English king in the sense that he is the last king to rule who is of purely English descent.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

When we make this as a TV drama, he should be played by an AI de aged Sean Bean. That will give people a clue as to what happens when he's gonna win.

[Tom Holland]

Yeah, in fact, yes, more toilet based deaths are approaching, but for now he's done very well. In fact, he's so cross with Aethelred that he's basically kind of binned him and is saying, oh, well, I should be king. And between them, Edmund Ironside and Olaf Haraldson succeed in re establishing the rule of the Kurda Kingass. The prospects for Edmund Dyerside as a future king are all the brighter for the fact that his father by now is a dying man. And in 1016 he duly shuffles off this mortal coil. But his passing actually is barely noted because by now everyone's eyes is on Edmund Ironside, you know, he's tremendous. He's dashing, his sides are made of iron, and he claims the throne.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah.

[Tom Holland]

There is, however, a problem because he is not the only claimant to this throne. There is a rival. And who that is and how the contest of this rival with Edmund Ironside develops, we will discover after the break.

[David O'Neill]

I'm David or the shogga historian and broadcaster.

[Sarah Churchill]

And I'm Sarah Churchill, author, journalist, and academic.

[David O'Neill]

And together we are hosts of Goal Hanger's latest podcast, Journey Through Time.

[Sarah Churchill]

We're going to be looking at hidden social histories behind famous chapters from the.

[David O'Neill]

Past, asking what it was like to have lived through prohibition or to have been there on the ground during the Great Fire of London. We'll be uncovering all of that, and.

[Sarah Churchill]

We'Ll have characters and stories that have been totally forgotten but shouldn't have been.

[David O'Neill]

This week, we're looking at a terror attack that shocked New York, that cost American lives, caused millions of dollars of damage to buildings across Manhattan, that led to the establishment of new security agencies, and that helped push the United States towards war.

[Sarah Churchill]

But it's not 9 11. This is the Black Tom explosion of 1916, the story of a massive sabotage campaign as Germany made a desperate effort to keep America from helping the Allies during the First World War.

[David O'Neill]

And the cast of characters for this story involves playboy diplomats. There's a stranded sailor, an opera singer who's managing a brothel in New York, and there's a hapless spy who leaves secret documents on a train. So join us on Journey Through Time and hear a clip from the Black Tom story at the end of this episode.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

This episode is brought to you by the Swedish clothing brand Ascat.

[Tom Holland]

Asct was founded in 2015 to develop clothing that stands the test of time. And over the course of 10 years, they've built just one single permanent collection of 50 garments, where every piece is under constant and relentless refinement.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

And while, Tom, they have just one permanent collection, they do offer three lengths for every regular size. So, for example, being normal, I am a medium regular. But you, Tom, you're a large, long.

[Tom Holland]

I believe, like a Swedish berserker. Viking king, actually. Dominic.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Right.

[Tom Holland]

And I have to say, I really love their clothes. I have a black hoodie that Sadie has essentially nicked off me. So that's my wife. And I think that when she nicks clothes, that's always a good sign.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Well, I'm actually completely with you, Tom. I mean, my ascot cashmere sweater is a massive favorite of mine. And I love the Fact, Tom, did you know this? That they work almost exclusively with natural materials and European craftsmanship. And the cherry on the cake, their products are 100% traceable.

[Tom Holland]

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[Dominic Sandbrook]

Only a boy, you ship batterer. When you launched your boat, no king was younger than you. So those were lines, lovely lines written by a praise singer about the very young, very impressive, very frightening son of Sweyn Forkbeard. And this is a man familiar to anybody who enjoys anecdotes about waves. Because here's a young man called Knut. And Knut came with his father Sweyn to England in 1013. He's probably battle hardened even at that point. He'd probably been on previous raids. His father has been struck in a dream by St. Edmund with a pole and has died. And so Canute is now the leader of. Well, he's the leader of what? Is he the leader merely of a war band? Or does he want to be the claimant to a grand North Sea empire that includes England as well as Denmark and Norway? He's got a dilemma, hasn't he, Tom? Does he give up and basically go back to Denmark? Or even at this young age, does he go for it as his father was going to do?

[Tom Holland]

Well, I think he actually does both. So he does withdraw from England in the wake of his father's death, but as a sign that he will be back, remember that the English nobleman, particularly around Mercia, had given him hostages. So Canute takes these hostages and he maims them, cuts off their hands, blinds them and dumps them all on the beach at Sandwich. So, yeah, you know, that's, that's not fun. And he then goes back to Denmark and he, you know, he's a chip off the old block. He does what his father would have done, which is to use his rank and his power as King of Denmark to marshal another great invasion fleet. And he also sends agents to England to secure pledges of loyalty from all the various Danish communities there. Particularly in East Anglia, and particularly around the Humber, because that's where the settlement is the deepest. And he also recruits large numbers of mercenaries, and it's said in a biography of him by a guy who's very keen on him. There were so many kinds of shield, it was easy to believe that troops drawn from all the nations of the world were with him. And among them is Thorkell, who has now abandoned Aethelred for good. Yeah, so he's got these terrifying massive lads behind him. They're tall, you know, they. They think nothing of pelting archbishops with oxen bones. And they are sailing for England and.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

They arrive in the summer of 10:15. Aethelred is dying, but not quite dead. So the question in everybody's mind is this, is it going to be Edmund Ironside who succeeds his heir, or is Cnut going to finish what Svein Fortbeard started and basically assimilate England into the world of the Scandinavian Empire?

[Tom Holland]

And Canute and Edmund go kind of hammer and tongs. And by the time that Aethelred finally dies on 23rd April 1016, the country is effectively divided in two. So Cnut has Northumbria and East Anglia and Edmund has Wessex, and neither side can really defeat the other. And I think that the fact that Edmund has been able to secure Wessex indicates that Aethelred actually had been a failure as a king. You know, he could have fought as his son did, and he didn't. And now the country is divided. So there is one key territory which remains up for grabs, and that is Mercia.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah, the Midlands, basically.

[Tom Holland]

The Midlands. And this is under the rule of an alderman called Edric, and he is a very, very kind of slippery, treacherous opportunist, as is conveyed by his nickname, which is Strayona, or the Grabber.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

So he's very much little finger of this story, isn't he? Because he's always changing sides and betraying people and basically you never can be entirely sure. Well, he's only. He's on his own side and he is constantly swapping from Edmund to Knut and back again.

[Tom Holland]

Yes, he is. So actually, the description you get in the Anglo Saxon Chronicle, it does sound quite like kind of Littlefinger. A man of humble origins, but whose smooth tongue won him wealth and high standing. Endowed as he was with a subtle genius and incredible powers of eloquence, he surpassed all his peers in malice and treachery as well as in pride and cruelty.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

He's the captain Benteen of the story. Thomas.

[Tom Holland]

Yes. I mean, he's so treacherous that in a way he overdoes it. Right, so first of all he sides with Cnut and tries to have Edmund assassinated, then he goes over to Edmund, then he goes back to Cnut and then he comes back to Edmund. He's a weather vane. He is tracking the shift in fortunes between Canute and Edmund as they fight each other over England. And the climactic clash takes place in the autumn of 10:16, on 18 October at a site in Essex called Assendun. It's a very, very hard fought battle, but then treachery in the English lines. Edric Strayona, the grabber, has swapped sides yet again.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

In mid battle.

[Tom Holland]

In mid battle, Canute wins, praising us. Celebrate his great victory at Ashington. You worked well in the shield war. Warrior King Brown was the flesh of bodies served to the carrion birds.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Great lines.

[Tom Holland]

But Edmund, you know, his sides are not fashioned out of iron for nothing. No, he's not going to surrender. And in the end the two men agreed that they will divide England. Edmund keeps Wessex, but Canute gets Mercier and therefore effectively everything north of the River Thames. And we've promised toilet based misadventure. Edmund does not long outlive the agreement. So on 30-11-1016, he dies, possibly of wounds suffered in battle. But another account says that he was murdered while sitting on the toilet.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

It's sort of true, isn't it, that basically everybody who dies in this period, there's always an account that claims that it was while they were relieving themselves in some way.

[Tom Holland]

Not everyone, but it's certainly a running theme.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

It's a feature, isn't it?

[Tom Holland]

Yes.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

So we're in 1016, exactly half a century before the very famous conquest of 1066. But this is a conquest just as complete and just as remarkable in some ways as the Norman Conquest. This is a Danish conquest. The dynasty of Alfred the Great has been, it appears, definitively driven off the throne. And the Danes, I mean, they really are the masters of England now under Cnut.

[Tom Holland]

Yeah, they are. And Cnut is obviously very keen on killing as as many of the Kurda kingas the dynasty of Alfred the Great as he can. So Edmund's younger brother, he is murdered on Cnut's orders. This still leaves some of them on the scene. So we've mentioned the two sons of Aethelred and Emma who have fled to Normandy. So they are Edmund's half brothers, Edward and Alfred. So they are in Normandy and Canute can't get his hands on them. Edmund Anderside himself has left two sons. Canute sends them to Sweden in the expectation that they will be murdered. Yeah, that's his plan. So it's a bit like Claudius sending Hamlet to England to be murdered. Same kind of idea. The King of Sweden doesn't murder them, but sends them on to Kyiv and from there they end up in Hungary.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Right.

[Tom Holland]

And the eldest of them, a guy called Edward, will grow up to be known as Edward the Exile. So there are still Kurda kingas out there, but there are none now in England.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

You know, since we raised the comparison with the Norman conquest, here's the crucial question. What happens in England? So my sense is that actually Canute, the top jobs, obviously he gives to his own supporters, to Danes, so. So he keeps the heartland of Wessex. But Thorkel, the very tall guy who's swapped sides a few times but has now ended up on the winning side, he gets East Anglia. And another Dane, a guy called Eric, gets Northumbria. So they're parceling out the kingdom, rather as William will go on to do after 1066. And these guys aren't ealdormen like the Anglo Saxons, they're something new, aren't they? Jarls.

[Tom Holland]

Yeah. Which becomes Anglicized to earls.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Right.

[Tom Holland]

So there's the same route. You can see ealdorman and earl. I mean, it's the same kind of route. But to be an earl is to live in a country that has been conquered by the Danes.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Okay.

[Tom Holland]

There is one surviving elder mill or earl we want to call him, and that is Edric Strayona, the Grabber. But again, as with William, who does try to keep some English lords in situ, but they're always rebelling against him and so ultimately he just gets rid of them all. Edric is too slippery, too treacherous. He starts to scheme again and Knut's not having that. And so he has Edric murdered in London on Christmas Day 1017, and his head is put on a spike on the battlements of London and his body is thrown over the city battlements to serve as food for the dogs.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

That's exactly the kind of thing that you look for in a series like this, isn't it?

[Tom Holland]

Yes.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Now, what about. So that's about the jobs. What about the. The crucial things thing, which is about the money. The attraction of England is that it's so rich.

[Tom Holland]

Yeah.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

All of these men, these mercenaries who have flocked to Knut's banners, they have done so because they thought they were going to get the money. What happens to the wealth of England? Is it basically just parceled out and looted?

[Tom Holland]

Can I quote from Millennium?

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Dude, you're going to quote from yourself.

[Tom Holland]

I'm going to quote myself.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Oh, God.

[Tom Holland]

In Knut, yeah. The larcenous instincts that had long propelled generations of Northmen across the seas were set to attain their apotheosis, for he had his sword at the throat of an entire kingdom. So think of all that gold that Danes, over the course of Aethelred's reign, had been extorting.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

There's millions of coins.

[Tom Holland]

Well, Aethelred's ability to do that had depended upon the apparatus of English governance. This is what enables him to raise the money. And now that apparatus of English governance is Canute's to command, so he can do with it what he wants. And in the tax year of 1018, he sets the tax rate at a hundred percent. And it takes his agents months and months to extort this. But by the end of the year, essentially the entire income of the kingdom for that year has vanished into Knut's treasure chests. So Rachel Reeves can only dream of such rich pickings.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Regular listeners will be disappointed if I don't mention Dennis Healy at this point in his 83% top rate of tax in the. In the early 1970s.

[Tom Holland]

So Dennis Healy exceeded only by Canute.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

But. So here's the question. Top jobs given to Danes, the money parceled out and entire, you know, basically the entire income of England for a year taken and put into Danish coffers. Why is it, therefore, that nobody remembers the conquest of 1016, when it must have been psychologically pretty devastating, particularly for the English elite, many of whom must have lost not just their money, but their power, their status, their prestige, their self worth, all of those kinds of things.

[Tom Holland]

I think it's partly because the English are actually very familiar with the Danes. And you could talk of a kind of Anglo Danish world reaching back decades, maybe centuries, you know, these people that their languages. And now that the Danes have become Christian, their religion, there is scope there for them to merge.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

So culturally, it's not a shock.

[Tom Holland]

I mean, it is a shock, but it's not as, as big a shock as it will be to be conquered by people speaking French.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Oh, that would be a shock, yeah.

[Tom Holland]

But I think also Canute may have conquered England, but he displays something akin to a kind of cultural cringe. So in 1018, which is the year that he's, you know, extorting his 100% tax rate, he allows himself to be persuaded by the Archbishop of York, who's a very distinguished scholar, very holy man, into upholding the. The laws of the Coerdicingas. So the laws of Edgar and of Ethelred, essentially, you know, that he. He promises he will rule as though he belonged to the dynasty of. Of Kurdick and of Alfred the Great. And the reason that he's happy to do this is because he does not want to rule as a Viking warlord. He wants to rule England as a Christian king. He's grown up surrounded by English bishops in Denmark, Harald Bluetooth and Sweyn Forkbeard had not allowed bishops from Germany to serve there because the Germans are a far more present threat, the Saxon monarchy. So all the bishops in Denmark basically are English. And the Archbishop of York, Wolfstein, he can serve Canute as a kind of Gandalf or as a Merlin. Or a Merlin, yeah. He's at his side. And this sense of intimacy that Canute has with his new kingdom is evident in his very bed because although he is a Christian, he remains sufficiently a Northman that he thinks nothing of having two wives, both of them kind of English, in his bed. And the question of what exactly these two women, what exactly their status are, is highly contested. Okay, so are they both wives? Is one of them a concubine? So Pauline Stafford, who's kind of the great expert on the role of Queens in 11th century England, she says concubine wife is too stark a distinction to capture this shifting situation. And the reason for that will be evident when I describe who these two. Two women, these two wives, concubines, queens, whatever, who they are.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

So the first one, she's from Northampton, isn't she? And she. She's an elderman's daughter, and she has the brilliant name of Elf Gifu, which.

[Tom Holland]

Confusingly is the same name that Emma Athered's wife from Normandy had been given when she came to England, which is why we need to not call. Not call her that. Yeah. So. So Elf Gifu had married Knuth in the early days of Swain's invasion. And almost certainly this was a kind of dynastic marriage.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah.

[Tom Holland]

So as we will see, she is probably related to the Mercian family, and she's a kind of pledge of their. Of their alliance with the Danes. And Knut and El Gifu seem to have got on tremendously well. So Elgifu gets pregnant very, very quickly, gives birth to a boy who is named Svein after his adorable grandfather. And in 1015, Canute sends her back to Denmark with the baby. Canute returns to Denmark as Well, gets her pregnant again and she gives birth to another boy, Harold, who in due course, in the 12th century will come to be called Harefoot. So he's not called Harefoot in this period, but we'll call him that.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

We should call him that.

[Tom Holland]

Distinguishing.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

We've got too many heralds from the other heralds.

[Tom Holland]

Yeah. So Canute clearly respects Alf Gifu very highly, not just as a woman who can give him sons, but also as a political operator. And when he returns to England to fight Edmund Ironside, he leaves Alf Gifu to administer part of Denmark for him.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Right.

[Tom Holland]

And in 10:30. So that's kind of a decade and more on. There's an even more striking example of his faith in her, because by this point, his eldest son, Swain, is a teenager and Knut thinks, I'd quite like him to be King of Norway. So he sends Algifu, Svein and a big war band off to Norway to conquer it and install Svein as king. And it's true that it doesn't go brilliantly. Alf Gifu does conquer Norway, but she. She rules very, very harshly. The Norwegians Rebel, and in 1035, she and Swain are kicked out and Swain dies soon after of wounds sustained in battle. So Elf Gifu is back in Denmark, but she's still very much a kind of potent presence on the scene.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah.

[Tom Holland]

And still has cards to play, as. As we will see in due course.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Well, let's. So let's just park her onto one side, says Elf Gifu and her son.

[Tom Holland]

Who is Harfoot Harold Harefoot. Yeah.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Now, you said that there were two wives of Cnut, and this really is a twist.

[Tom Holland]

Yeah, it is great twist because he.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Has married the widow of his father's former adversary, Aethelred. He has married Emma of Normandy.

[Tom Holland]

He has. In 1017.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

So she must be a fair bit older than him. Right.

[Tom Holland]

She's still very nubile.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Okay, that's good to know.

[Tom Holland]

As we will see. And so you could say this is kind of classic Viking behavior, taking to bed the woman of your defeated enemy.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Right.

[Tom Holland]

But I'm sure that that's a kind of part of the dynamic. But essentially Canute is marrying her because she had been married to Aethelred and anointed as his queen. And so she is a living link to that tradition of West Saxon monarchy going back centuries and centuries. Emma's mother had actually been a Dane, so she's half Danish and probably speaks Danish.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah.

[Tom Holland]

But her value to Canute is essentially that she is even Though she's. She's half Danish, half Norman, she is an English queen. She's the embodiment of England. And by marrying her, he is in a sense marrying England. And so his marriage to her is. Is blessed by the Church. And this is the big point of difference between her and Alf Gifu. Alf Gifu's marriage had not been blessed by the Church. Doesn't need to be. This isn't an age where it's a given that the Church will bless every wedding. But the fact that Emma's has been enables her to say, I am Knut's legitimate wife.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Yeah.

[Tom Holland]

And any children that I give him, they are entitled to the throne of England.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

So. So this speaks to Canute's political sensitivity and sophistication, doesn't it? He's not just a Viking warlord. He has, you know, as you put it in your notes, he's waded through blood. He has ruled by the sword and by terror. He's won his crown. And yet once he's done that, he is sufficiently skillful to recognize that there are continuities he wants to preserve. He wants to work with the existing traditions, he clearly wants to. Conciliate is the wrong word. But ultimately he knows he will have to work with the English. England is his prize and he wants it to thrive under his overlordship. And I guess, you know, he's also Christian, which means he's got a lot in common with the people of England.

[Tom Holland]

The figure he reminds me of is Augustus. He's not a man of similar achievement, but the willingness to be unspeakably brutal where necessary. And then when it's no longer necessary to park that side and to kind of promote himself as a figure of peace, very, very formidable.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

That's just good politics, isn't it, Tom?

[Tom Holland]

Right, so this guy who as you said, had waded through blood, he allows Wolfstan, the Archbishop of York, to write laws in his name that proclaim the Christian virtues of humility and self restraint. So as Wolfstan writes, and Canute puts his name to this, for the mightier or of higher rank a man is, so the deeper must he atone for wrongdoing, doing both to God and to men. Canute has disinherited the oldest royal line in Christendom. But he becomes, I'm delighted to say, a regular visitor to the restored and rebuilt nunnery at Wilton. And he rides there with Emma and he dismounts respectfully outside the holy precincts. And he walks in and he prays among the tombs of the women of the house of Wessex. And he is a Viking, a northman from the frozen limits of the world. But in 1027, amazingly, he takes time off from ruling this great North Sea empire that he's forged in Norway, Denmark, England. I mean, it's a lot, but he's able to go on pilgrimage to Rome and there in the heart of the ancient city, to kneel before the tomb of St. Peter and in the words of his biographer, diligently to speak St. Peter's special favor before God. And he hasn't just gone there to pray. He's gone because that Easter of 1027, a new German emperor is being crowned in Rome. And Canute at that coronation has the place of honor at the Emperor's side. And it is an amazing achievement for the great grandson of a pagan warlord. So Gorm the old with his great mounds and all that stuff, to be received with the utmost honor and respect in Rome by both the Emperor and the Pope.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

So in that sense, there's a slight Charlemagne aspect to this. Isn't there somebody from ultimately a barbarian pagan lineage who has, who now is standing there in Rome, in the city of the Pope and the Caesars, you know, being, winning respect and recognition from his peers? Yeah, I mean Canute is a tremendously, you know, I know this is a violent age and he's behavior, but as a politician, as a, as a statesman, he's a very impressive figure.

[Tom Holland]

Well, it's often said that Alfred the Great is the only English king, king or at least king of England to be called the Great, but he isn't. Canute has also been given that soubriquet as Charlemagne had, Charles the Great. Yeah, and yeah, I mean, I think his feats of conquest and then of statecraft are very, very formidable. And just as England had recovered under Alfred who had beaten the Danes, so also it recovers under Cnut, who is himself a Dane. And I guess the obvious reason for that is that is firstly that Knut is not kind of imposing his 100 tax rate. You know, that was, that was a one off. But also the Danes are no longer raiding England because it's being ruled by the Danes. And so there is scope for the English economy and the English countryside and English infrastructure to recover. And it also seems that Canute's regime is, is secure because he has Harold Harefoot, his son by Alf Gifford, but he's also fathered a son on Emma who gets given the wonderful name of half a Canute. And so the fact that Canute is so Strong. He rules this great empire. He has two sons. It makes the prospect of any return to the English throne of the Kurde kingass, the line of Alfred the Great, seem utterly implausible. So you've got the sons of Edmund Ironside, including Edward the exile. They are off in distant Hungary. They are basically, you know, they're East European aristocrats. They don't even speak English.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Right.

[Tom Holland]

And then you have Ethelred's two sons by Emma. So that is Edward and Alfred. They are in Normandy, it's true, only across the Channel. But they have the stamp of absolute losers. And the person who really says, yeah, they're losers is their own mother, Emma.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Well, because it's in her interest, she's back in England.

[Tom Holland]

Of course it is. Of course it is. Because the son that she's backing is half Canute, the one she's had by Canute.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Right.

[Tom Holland]

I mean, he's the one who's kind of ready and lined up to sit on the English throne. So it's not surprising that Emma's focus now is all on England and all on Denmark. And she doesn't really have any interest in her two sons by Aethelred, who are in exile in Normandy, or indeed, actually in Normandy itself. She's binned all that. She's moved on from it.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Because Normandy itself at this point does not look a terribly formidable proposition because it's become bitterly divided. It's succumbed to the French disease.

[Tom Holland]

Yeah. So in 1026. So that's a year before Cnut goes on his pilgrimage to Rome. Rome, Emma's brother, Richard ii, Richard the Good, he's ruled for a very long time in Normandy. He dies and he has two sons. And these two sons fight over the inheritance and the elder brother wins. He rules for less than a year. One of these kind of dramatic deaths. Maybe he's poisoned again, we don't really know. And he's succeeded by his younger brother, who is called Robert. And Robert is pretty able. He restores Normandy to a kind of measure of health. But then, amazingly, and I mean, bizarrely, he goes on pilgrimage, not to Rome, but to Jerusalem, which is, yeah, very, very dangerous. I mean, it's a long way to go and very, very risky. And what makes this seem even more, I think, irresponsible is that although Duke Robert of Normandy does have an heir, this heir is, firstly, only seven years old, and secondly, he's not legitimate.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

Okay.

[Tom Holland]

And the name of this boy, Dominic. Yeah, ladies, gentlemen. Is William. And then in July 1035, Robert has got to Jerusalem, Fine. He's returning from Jerusalem. He is approaching Constantinople and he dies. And William is now the Duke of Normandy. But his inheritance is a terrible one. He's menaced by enemies all along the frontiers of Normandy. But even more, he is menaced by the great lords of his own dukedom. And England, by contrast, is an absolute model of stability.

[Dominic Sandbrook]

So, ladies and gentlemen, will England remain happy and united and forward looking under the reigns of Knut and his successors, will Normandy fall apart? And what will happen to this seven year old boy, William? What prospects for him? Well, you can of course find out right now if you're a member of the Rest Is History Club, because you can listen to our next episode, which is all about the rise of William of Normandy. But if you're not a member of the Rest Is History Club and you want to, you can sign [e-mail] and you know, Bob's your uncle. But Tom, for those people who don't want to do that, we will be back on Monday with the next thrilling chapter of this epic story.

[Tom Holland]

Bye bye, Bye bye.

[David O'Neill]

Here's that clip we mentioned earlier on.

[Sarah Churchill]

And gradually what you see in this period is mounting concern over what became called hyphenate Americans, this idea that foreign immigrant communities had divided allegiances. And so there are increasing demands for effectively loyalty tests.

[David O'Neill]

And Wilson gives a very famous speech in which he uses a famous phrase, and that's a phrase that you have spent a long time studying, Sarah, and that is to ask whether these Americans who have loyalties to other nations will, when it comes down to it, whether they will put America first.

[Sarah Churchill]

And that's the phrase, right? America first. It is a phrase that was first popularized in this context in 1915, a year before Black Tom, in a speech that Wilson gave addressing these mounting concerns about hyphenate Americans, about whether they were real Americans or not. And the way that Wilson put it was he said he demanded that immigrant communities stand up and state explicitly whether he said, is it America first or is it not? And at that point, America first became an incredibly popular phrase. It basically dominates American political discourse for the next decade. Then it kind of subsided. And then it has a resurgence around World War II when it was used to talk about whether America should enter the Second World War. And then it went into abeyance for a long time until it made a dramatic reappearance in the 21st century, which listeners will be familiar with. If you want to hear the full episode, listen to Journey Through Time wherever you get your podcasts.