Person:Canute the Great (1)

Knud Svendsen "the Great"
b.995 Denmark
Facts and Events
Name Knud Svendsen "the Great"
Alt Name Canute
Gender Male
Birth[1] 995 DenmarkHouse of Knýtlinga
Marriage Jul 1017 to Emma of Normandy
Death[1] 12 Nov 1035 Shaftesbury, Dorset, England
Reference Number[1] Q134128?

the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia

Cnut the Great (Old Norse: Knútr inn ríki; c. 985 or 995 – 12 November 1035), more commonly known as Canute, was a king of Denmark, England, Norway, and parts of Sweden, together often referred to as the Anglo-Scandinavian or North Sea Empire. After his death, the deaths of his heirs within a decade, and the Norman conquest of England in 1066, his legacy was largely lost to history. Historian Norman Cantor has made the statement that he was "the most effective king in Anglo-Saxon history", despite not being Anglo-Saxon.

Cnut's name is popularly invoked in the context of the legendary story of King Canute and the waves, associated with the futility of "turning back the tide" of an inexorable event.

Cnut's father was Sweyn Forkbeard, King of Denmark (which gave Cnut the patronym Sweynsson, Old Norse Sveinsson). The identity of his mother is uncertain, although medieval tradition makes her a daughter of Mieszko I.[1] As a Prince of Denmark, Cnut won the throne of England in 1016 in the wake of centuries of Viking activity in northwestern Europe. His accession to the Danish throne in 1018 brought the crowns of England and Denmark together. Cnut maintained his power by uniting Danes and Englishmen under cultural bonds of wealth and custom, rather than by sheer brutality. After a decade of conflict with opponents in Scandinavia, Cnut claimed the crown of Norway in Trondheim in 1028. The Swedish city Sigtuna was held by Cnut. He had coins struck there that called him king, but there is no narrative record of his occupation. The kingship of England lent the Danes an important link to the maritime zone between the islands of Great Britain and Ireland, where Cnut, like his father before him, had a strong interest and wielded much influence among the Gall-Ghaedhil. Cnut's possession of England's dioceses and the continental Diocese of Denmark – with a claim laid upon it by the Holy Roman Empire's Archdiocese of Hamburg-Bremen—was a source of great leverage within the Church, gaining notable concessions from Pope Benedict VIII and his successor John XIX, such as one on the price of the pallium of his bishops. Cnut also gained concessions on the tolls his people had to pay on the way to Rome from other magnates of medieval Christendom, at the coronation of the Holy Roman Emperor. After his 1026 victory against Norway and Sweden, and on his way to Rome for this coronation, Cnut, in a letter written for the benefit of his subjects, stated himself "King of all England and Denmark and the Norwegians and of some of the Swedes".

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  1. 1.0 1.1 1.2 Canute the Great, in Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia.
  2.   KNUD Svendsen, son of SVEND I "Tveskæg/Forkbeard" King of Denmark & his first wife [Gunhild] --- ([995]-Shaftesbury, Dorset 12 Nov 1035, bur Winchester Cathedral, Old Minster), in Cawley, Charles. Medieval Lands: A prosopography of medieval European noble and royal families.
  3.   Cnut 3 (Male), in The Prosopography of Anglo-Saxon England.