Canute the great biography book
Cnut
'A reputation as a ruthless ruler was sealed that would last beyond his lifetime. In that respect, at least, Cnut had succeeded...'
Cnut, or Canute, is one of the great 'what ifs' of English history. The Dane who became King of England after a long period of Viking attacks and settlement, his reign could have permanently shifted eleventh-century England's rule to Scandinavia. Stretching his authority across the North Sea to become king of Denmark and Norway, and with close links to Ireland and an overlordship of Scotland, this formidable figure created a Viking Empire at least as plausible as the Anglo-Norman Empire that would emerge in 1066.
Ryan Lavelle's illuminating book cuts through myths and misconceptions to explore this fascinating and powerful man in detail. Cnut is most popularly known now for the story of the king who tried to command the waves, relegated to a bit part in the medieval story, but as this biography shows, he was a conqueror, political player, law maker and empire builder on the grandest scale, one whose reign tells us much about the contingent nature of history.
Cnut the Great
“Yale’s invaluable English Monarchs series receives an impressive addition with this life of Cnut, the Danish warlord who conquered England in the first half of the 11th century. Bolton, a Stockholm-based scholar, restores Cnut’s image by drawing on a full range of Scandinavian and Anglo-Saxon sources.”
—Tony Barber, Financial Times
“How did Cnut win this power and how did he use it? Timothy Bolton is a formidable scholar who endeavours to answer these questions.”—Lawrence James, The Times, 11th February 2017
“It is evident that Timothy Bolton masters the English written sources of the period to perfection. We get a finely tuned history of the means and ways in which Cnut wielded power through the machinery of government, carried out by the personnel in the English church. It is also apparent that Bolton has a fine ear for the complexities of utilising the few, limited and late written sources from Scandinavia… it is an invaluable introduction for cultural historians and archaeologists to what a proper political historian fostered in the English tradition can wring out of source material.”—Karen Schousbe, Medieval Histories
Timothy Bolton’s book is a timely reminder that seas connect as much as they separate, and that even a thousand years ago it was common to hear different languages on English streets... It is pleasing to see an early medieval king given the same attention as his successors.”—Lesley Abrams, TLS
“Bolton has made an exhaustive study of the available sources, both texts and artefacts. His narrative has the virtues of a well-told story.”—Dr. Nicholas Orme, Church Times
“This is a very readable and serviceable overview of the reign of Cnut, and a useful recapitulation, at a rea
Cnut the Great
This book is not about Cnut. It's about carefully picking source materials, from the Encomium Emmae Reginae, written for Cnut's second wife:
[A]s a rule of thumb it is perhaps sound practice when one wants to understand a man's first wife to take all comments from the second wife (or produced for her) with a pinch of salt.
...right down to local histories, writs, charters, lawcodes, letters, hagiography, and scaldic verse. Bolton presents us with running arguments in respect of the source material.
That's cool, I guess. We get to watch the sausage of historiography get made, with interpretations turning on name, after name, after name, here's some lovely coin dies... ...back to another name, or set of names.
The list ends with seven Scandinavian names ('Aizor, Turchil, Swen, Theustul, Euston, Tovi, Turgil'). 'Aizor' is probably Azor Thoredsson, who held estates in Wiltshire and whose father consistently attested Cnut's charters...
...and my eyes have rolled to the back of my head.
It's too many characters doing too little for only 200 odd pages. I don't want to be too harsh on Bolton, who's made a genuine attempt to show us what makes history and is perfectly serviceable as a writer. But his conclusion that Cnut was surprisingly modern is undetectable from the narrative.
Will probably have vegetarian tonight.
King Cnut and the Viking Conquest of England 1016
The Viking Conquest of England in 1016 – a far tougher and more brutal campaign than the Norman Conquest exactly half a century later – saw two great warriors, the Danish prince Cnut and his equally ruthless English opponent King Edmund Ironside, fight an epic campaign. Cnut sailed in two hundred longboats, landing first in September 1015 on the Wessex coast with 10,000 soldiers. The two forces fought each other to the point of exhaustion for the next fourteen months. It was a war of terrifying violence that scarred much of England, from the Humber to Cornwall. It saw an epic siege of the great walls of London and bruising set-piece battles at Penselwood, Otford, and the conclusive Danish victory at Assandun on 18 October 1016.
Edmund’s death soon afterwards finally resolved a brutal, bloody conf lict and ended with Cnut becoming the undisputed king of England. This book tells the extraordinary story of Cnut the Great’s life. Cnut was far removed from the archetypal pagan Viking, being a staunch protector of the Christian Church and a man who would also become Emperor of the North as king of Denmark and Norway. His wife, Emma of Normandy, was a remarkable woman who would outlive the two kings of England that she married. Their son Harthacnut would be the second and last Danish king of England, but the greatness of his dynasty did not long survive his death. This saga also features the incompetent Æthelred the Unready, the ferocious Sweyn Forkbeard and the treacherous Eadric Streona, recreating one of the great stories of Dark Age England.