In Our Time - Cnut

Episode Date: May 4, 2023

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Danish prince who became a very effective King of England in 1016. Cnut inherited a kingdom in a sorry state. The north and east coast had been harried by Viking raiders, and his predecessor King Æthelred II had struggled to maintain order amongst the Anglo-Saxon nobility too. Cnut proved to be skilful ruler. Not only did he bring stability and order to the kingdom, he exported the Anglo-Saxon style of centralised government to Denmark. Under Cnut, England became the cosmopolitan centre of a multi-national North Atlantic Empire, and a major player in European politics. With Erin Goeres Associate Professor of Old Norse Language and Literature at University College LondonPragya Vohra Lecturer in Medieval History at the University of Yorkand Elizabeth Tyler Professor of Medieval Literature and Co-Director of the Centre for Medieval Studies at the University of York Producer Luke Mulhall

BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts. Thanks for downloading this episode of In Our Time. There's a reading list to go with it on our website, and you can get news about our programs if you follow us on Twitter at BBC In Our Time. I hope you enjoyed the program. Hello, in 1016, a Danish prince called Cunute became King of England. He inherited a kingdom in a sorry state. The North and East Coast had been harried by Viking raiders,

and its predecessor, King Ethelred II, had struggled to maintain order among the Anglo-Saxon nobility. Knewd proved to be a skillful ruler. Not only did he bring stability and order to the kingdom, he exported the Anglo-Saxon style of centralised government to Denmark. Under Knewit, England became the cosmopolitan centre of a multinational North Atlantic Empire

and a major player in European politics. With me to discuss King Knood are Arrindoros, Associate Professor of Old Norse Language and literature at University College London, Pragyavora, lecturer in medieval history at the University of York, and Elizabeth Tyler, Professor of Medieval Literature and Co-Director of the Centre for Medieval Studies at the University of York. Elizabeth Tyler, he was born in Denmark, in around 994, can you give us some idea of the map of Europe at that time? Western Europe is dominated by the German Empire at this point, which stretches really

north, south, east and west connecting everybody. So in the north it borders on Denmark, in the west on what becomes France, and it stretches as far south as Rome and south of Rome. In the east, it's interacting with the Slavic peoples. And then there's West Francia, which is what becomes France. And then we have England off to the side, which we'll talk about in a bit. And just this point to Scandinavian peoples are slowly moving, having more consolidated kingdoms, and the raids that are happening from Scandinavia are being led by figures who are...

they're not just warlords anymore. They're heading toward kings. The Scandinavians have been bothering around the east coast of England for a long time. New York at one stage is arguably the biggest city in Scandinavia and so on. So this wasn't new. It's not new, but it's renewed.

It's less raids and departure and more something heading towards the takeover of England. And it's very well organized, and the way this United Kingdom of England is structured means that taxes can be readily collected and paid to the Danes. So that's one of the attractions. The bureaucratic centralisation of England

makes it particularly attractive. Erin, what do we know about Knoot's family and his early life? Knut's father was the king of Denmark, Svein Forkbeard, the old nurse, Svein Tugchuskak. His mother, we don't know her name. She was a Polish princess, sister of King Boloslav of Poland. Knut was probably the youngest of two sons. He had an older brother, Haraldor, and at least two sisters, possibly a few more. And this was also the time where royal people, elite men had multiple relationships with multiple women. So there were probably half sisters and half brothers in the mix there. And this was very much an up-and-coming family. Elizabeth talked about the consolidation of power that was going on

in Scandinavia at this time. And Canute was from one of those consolidating families. His grandfather, Harold Bluetooth Gormson, famously was the one who erected the yelling stone, and as is inscribed on this monument made the Danes Christian. So this was a family that was very into exerting power and control over an expanding kingdom. And perhaps this goes to the point of why were they looking to England as well. How deep was the Christianity with him then? And how rare was it? With Knut, it was fairly deep. Knoot and his father and his grandfather were Christian. Harold Dert, the grandfather, was the one who converted. and it was very much part of his sort of personal brand that he made the Danes Christian.

Svein was as well. Knoot would have been raised Christian, but Christianity was not probably the religion of everybody in Denmark at this time. The Christianization of Scandinavia was very much a top-down kind of process. And so people in Knoot's retinue, for example, could have been Christian. They might have had slightly pagan leanings, or they might have been a sort of hybrid in between. And that probably went for many of the people in Denmark and indeed in quite a lot of Scandinavia at that time.

He came in 10-12 to England with his father, Spain forkbeard. I like these forkbeard, some blue tooths and that all over the place. Anyway, he came there to conquer England. What in your view was a lure? One of the perhaps most exciting reasons is that the sister of Svain Forkbeard, Gunnhurturz, was killed scandalously and in quite a kind of homicidal frenzy that erupted in England called the St. Bryce's Day Massacre.

This was in the 1002. Ethel Red, for various reasons, heard that the Danes in England were planning to kill him, and he ordered the killing of the Danes in England. We don't really know what he meant by this. We don't know exactly. who was killed or how many were killed. But later, medieval historians at least,

chronicled this event as a great massacre. Women were buried in the earth and dogs were set on them, ripping their breasts off. Children were dashed against posts. And among the slain was allegedly Svein's sister. So one of the reasons is offered as revenge. Was this kind of brutal warfare? Was that the name of the game at that time?

That is a 12th century chronicle. which I'm adding for a little bit of local colour. The fact that this chronicler is making such a big deal of it suggests that perhaps this is unusual and this is something to comment on. We have found bodies in Oxford, for example, of Danes who appear to have been decapitated or wounded or killed in ways that might have been part of the St. Bryce's Day massacre,

but it was very unusual, particularly for something like England. So it was a rebelling expedition? It probably wasn't, let's be honest. Those were the stories that were told afterwards. Sources closer to the time, like the text commissioned by Knut's widow, Queen Emma, talk about Svain coming over to keep in check some of those Viking warlords

who were making a very good living, plundering England and accruing wealth and status by plundering, by becoming allies, or sometimes not switching sides, with the king, King Ethelred. And so they argue, well, these other warlords are doing really well. We need to go in and make sure we have a piece of that action. Or, of course, if there's a bunch of Scandinavian warlords

getting all the wealth and status in England, they could come back to Denmark. And they would pose a real threat to Spain and to the other warlords in Scandinavia. Thank you. Prager. England, Missouri, we've heard a few remarks about Etherard II at the time, Who was he? And how stable was his rule? Ethelred the second, he's generally known as Ethelred the Unready,

which is a slightly unfortunate nickname given to him. Why is it unfortunate? Because in many respects, Ethelred was actually not a bad king. It just so happens that his moment in history is difficult in a way that perhaps other Anglo-Saxon kings who were his predecessors did not have to face the kind of threat. Because of these invasions. One of the threats and challenges is definitely the renewed Viking raids

around the 960s and then building into the 990s and the turn of the millennium. Ethelred belongs to the line of Wessex that starts with King Alfred. So it's a long established dynasty of rulers in England. He inherits a strong and prosperous kingdom. When Sven and Knut turn up, Ethelred is in a slightly difficult position with his own earls in England. He really does need to rise to the challenge that is posed by these Viking raids that are taking place and the ones that, especially the ones that are headed up by Sven and Knut.

And so one of the things Ethelred does is he tries to take the easy way out. He tries to pay off the Vikings. It becomes one of his policies, the policy of Danegeld. Pay off the Dengel. Yes, indeed. You shall never get rid of the Danes. Well, as it turns out, it was not the greatest idea in the world because the more he pressured his populace to raise taxes in order to pay the Danes Geld,

the more the Danes came back for more, but it also fomented unrest in England itself among his own nobles, his own nobility. And so Ethelred finds himself in this really difficult position where he's got his own people to appease, but he's also trying to sort out these Scandinavians coming over who are demanding greater amounts of wealth. It's a rock and a hard place situation for Ethelred, and he ends up not dealing with it very well.

One of the not dealing with it very well symptoms really is what Erin mentioned earlier, the Sin Bryson Day massacre, where you can almost picture Ethelred sort of just throwing his hands up in the air and going, just kill them all, just get rid of them. You know, that's sort of much later who will rid me of these turbulent priests sort of situation.

At one point, Ethelred also ends up not directly challenged by but in conflict with his own son, Edmund Ironside. So it's not a happy place. Ethelred's caught. We haven't had much of a twinkle so far, really, have we? Anyway, let's proceed.

Elizabeth, can it marry his first wife, a woman from Northampton, well-born, wealthy, before he became king, who was she, and why did you, Canute, think she was good for him? She was good for him. This follows on nicely from what Pragya was saying about the tension between Ethelred and his high elite nobility. So she, Elf Giefu of Northampton, is a member of one of these elite families. And she brings valuable support to Canute in the North and in the Midlands as he's trying to gain control. control. So it's precisely his ability to get in there. And he has two children with her, one named Svein, one named Harold, so named after his grandfather and his father. She doesn't

become his queen. That's Emma of Normandy, but she's not sidelined. She becomes regent with Harold, with Svein in Norway. Does she become his wife? Hmm. She is his, well, how do we define wife? Emma would say she was his... When you don't generally go to church and you marry nature. Yeah, no, marriage, marriage, no, marriage was that you need a whole other program on marriage in this period. So part of our difficult. I summarized it inaccurately and crudely, but did she become his wife in effect?

Yeah, yeah. No, she has the status of his wife and her children have the, are throne worthy, even even Emma later will tell salacious stories about her, that she was his concubine and that in fact her sons weren't even, not only weren't even Knut's sons, they weren't even her own sons. Erin, did this help him to come to the throne? Marrying Elfgufou? Well, not on its own, really, no.

So Svain was very briefly king, or at least in a position that was effectively king, but then he died. And the English sort of invited Ethelred back. Ethelred had fled to Normandy with his wife, Emma of Normandy and his children. So some of England supported Ethelred. Some of them pledged allegiance to Knut.

Svein's son, but when Ethel Red came back, Knoot effectively had to leave. He was sort of expelled, he ran back to Denmark. So it didn't work at that moment. He did, he did, and he took his ships, and he went back to Denmark. Unfortunately, or fortunately, there was already a king in Denmark, his brother, his older brother, Haroldor. Knoot asked very politely, I'm sure if Haroldor would perhaps share the kingdom of Denmark with him, and Harolder said no. So Knut rallied the troops, collected another big force, getting different leaders together, the support of mercenaries and different allies, and he launched what was effectively a second invasion.

So Svein invaded and became king. Knoot then had to invade again and really become king under his own sails, as it were. What about was that? He appeared off the South Coast in the autumn of 1015. He ravaged the land, he went in, he was harriet, through Dorset, Wiltshire, Somerset. He got allegiance from various important English nobleman, most importantly Eadritsch-Straona,

who's a sort of a serial traitor to all sides at this time. But he went in for Knut. Knut got allegiance in the north as well. And during this time, Ethelred's health was failing. Edmund was really leading... The son. The sun, Edmund, Ironstein, was really leading the resistance at this point.

Ethelred died in the spring in April 1016. He died or was murdered. Oh, well, that's the question about Edmund. I have another salacious 12th century story. That's a constant question through this. That's the constant question. Ethelred was an older man by this point.

He'd had a very stressful life, let's be honest. He died in the spring probably of natural causes. Edmund, this is an excellent question. There was a series of battles. Knut and Edmund, forces finally met in October, 18th of October, 1016. The Scandinavian forces had losses, but they basically won, but the situation was a bit complicated, so there was a treaty. There was a treaty between Edmund and Knut, each promised to become the other's heir.

So if one died, the other would inherit his bit of the country. They divided up the country, and then the question of was he murdered, well, a few weeks after this at the end of November, Edmund died. Very conveniently, was he murdered? We are not sure, but there are many wonderful rumours told about what might have happened to him. Not so much in contemporary sources,

but in fairly near contemporary sources, it was a very convenient death. When we get to something like the 12th century, if we go back to Henry of Huntingdon, he tells a wonderful story about how this serial traitor, Eadricks Streona, he's this kind of comedy villain of the 11th century.

So he is blamed for Edmund's death. So Eadryk's son goes to Oxford, which is where the peace treaty was made between Edmund and Knut, and he hides in the privy. So he hides under the toilet in the pit, where everything goes.

And Edmund gets up in the middle of the night, needing to do his business, in the privy. He goes, he sits on the privy, and Eadricks' son stabs him from underneath. Leaving the knife in his private parts, he runs off into the night. Eadres' Streona rise triumphantly to Knut and says, Knoot, I've killed Edmund. I am the most loyal and wonderful supporter. And Knoot says, as a reward for your great service, I will make you higher than all other English nobles.

So he chops off his head, pops it on a pike and puts it on the highest tower in London. And Canute became king of all England. I'm quite exhausted listening to me. Thank you very much. Elizabeth, what challenge did? What challenges? No, let's go a bit before that.

Prager, often in this conversation, it seems like they said it might have been. What sources are you really working for, you three? Oh, wow. Well, the sources for Knut's reign can easily be divided up into three parts, depending on where they come from. So we've got sources that are created in an English context. There are sources that are created in a continental context, which is everybody else other than the English and the Danes writing about Canute.

And then there are sources from a Scandinavian context. None of these sources is particularly comprehensive. England provides the meat of the sources. that we've got. Some of them are contemporary sources like the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Some are near contemporary, as Erin has mentioned, Anglo-Norman writings chronicles, Emma of Normandy after Canute's death commissions the wonderful Encomium-M-A, which records Canute's life in this beautiful, sort of rosy-pictured way. We've also got administrative sources, letters, charters, writs, everyday administrative documents, that nevertheless give us a picture into what's going on in Knoot's court,

where Knoot's favours lie, where his intentions lie, those sorts of things. So the sources are good enough to allow you to put together a plausible picture? Yes, they're giving us a plausible picture, but they don't give us the whole picture. Thank you very much. Can we talk about Knoot? You ran for 16 years, we're told. what I've got so far as a melee of battles

and horrible deaths so can you just give us an idea how he manoeuvred through those 16 years why don't we begin by looking at how he rules in England where first of all he gets rid of most of the

English nobility gets rid of meaning they're killed they are exiled well it's worthwhile yeah they are both killed and exiled there's lots of them Really the only one who survives is Earlhafen of Mercia, and then new Englishmen rise under him. And the most famous of those is Godwin, who is originally an obscure figure.

He marries a kinswoman of Knoot, and during Knoot's reign becomes the most powerful of Knoot's earls. And he's going to be one to watch. He matters all the way through to 1066. and he does bring in Danish men to rule in England, but by the 1030s, it's actually Knut's new Englishmen who are ruling, which flags up how one of the reasons he's so successful is that he rules England as an English king. And he also works alongside church statesmen like Wolfstern who write his law codes.

Which we're bringing that in now because he was a Christian, self-declared Christian. He's a third generation. The Christian church was powerful. He declared himself as a Christian. He went to Rome, Mice, and took spectacular gifts. And it's critical to how he rules England. He rules England alongside Archbishop Wolfstern,

who writes letters to England when he's not there. He also gives gifts to New Minster in Winchester and has beautiful illumination of himself and Emma doing that. He has monasteries built on the sites of key battles. So he knows, you could see both in a cynical way, He knows he has to do this, but he is deeply a Christian ruler. So you brought in Emma, it's about a time I brought Emma, and this is his second wife, and he didn't divorce his first wife.

He was a man of two wives. He was a man of two wives. Yes, we very much can. And Emma was a very choice in terms of wealth connections. Absolutely. Absolutely, I mean, she was the Queen of England. So if you want to be the King of England, you might as well marry the Queen. She's the only woman in English history to have married two.

kings of England because she was the much younger wife of Ethelred the Unready. She was herself Norman. She was born in Normandy and she had come over during this time of unrest, of Viking attacks, very much as part of an alliance between England and Normandy against the Scandinavian raiders. They like to sort of overwinter in Normandy and use it as a sort of jumping off place to attack England. Initially she had gone into exile back to Normandy when Svein and Knut well first arrived. She probably came back with Ethel Red. She was perhaps with him when he died or somewhere in the country. And she was a very, very good match for Knut.

She was a few years older than he was. She had also been a foreign noble person who had had to come in, learn about the English language, about the English course, about English political customs. She could help him. And she was really a true partner. You know, in this picture that Elizabeth mentioned, it's a double portrait.

They are both presented together. They are both presented on almost a kind of equal footing. She witnesses his charters. She is also involved in giving money to monasteries, to churches, commissioning literary texts. So they're very much joined in. in this performance of Christian rulership. Thank you very much.

Can I? Yes, please do. One of the other reasons, Knoot's choice of Emma is really key is because of who lies connected to Emma on the other side of the channel. One of the ways in which Knoot manages to secure his attack on England in the first place

is by making an alliance with Emma's brother in Normandy, almost getting assurance from him that he would not prevent Knoot attack. packing England or come to the aid of Ethelred. So Emma is this, she's almost a lynchpin in this northern world. And she connects these three very key, powerful parts of the northern world of England, Denmark and Normandy. While I'm with you, to what extent did Canute's rule follow the pattern set by the early Anglo-Saxon rulers?

As Elizabeth said, he rules England as an English king. The historian Norman Cantor calls him the most effective Anglo-Saxon king, which is very interesting if you think about it, because what it highlights is that Knut is following in the footsteps of his Anglo-Saxon predecessors. He's using the same administrative systems, he's using the same tactics when it comes to dealing with the church, with his nobility. His economics are pretty much the same. He's using the same coinage structures, the same economic and monetary structures that already exist in England. He's also issuing laws

exactly in the way that Anglo-Saxon kings used to. And in fact, in one of his letters, he sort of makes this really rather bold claim that he's an English king and he is ruling the English people as under the laws of King Edgar. So he's completely sort of wiped Ethelred off the chronology here and he's gone straight back to this time of prosperity under Edgar and what he's saying to the English people is this is what I'm going to bring you back to, to that moment of prosperity and of peace.

And he succeeds. And he succeeds very much so. In 1018 he inherited the Danish throne So he's got two kingdoms now. He's got Denmark and he's going. How does he manage to keep both going? He does that partly by effectively ruling in England as an English king, but drawing on people like Will Stan and Emma to stand in for him.

He does it also by being able in Denmark to rule as more of a warlord king. You know, there he's less on the top of the pile and more having to deal with other rulers who are not king, but are quite strong alongside him. And I think it's part of his astuteness that he knows and understands deeply how both systems work. So he can be in more than one place at a time

by understanding how rulership works in both places, by deploying family members. So eventually he sends his son Harthakhanut to Denmark as a regent. He sends his son Svain to, to Norway as a regent along with his mother, Elf Gifu. Talking about Norway,

he declared himself to be king of Norway, didn't he, in 1027? So that's three gone. How does he manage that? It's a silly question. She's not all that silly. If you've got three kingdoms,

how do you manage them? Well, he was also very good at navigating Norwegian political structures. Bribery is the short answer when it comes to Norway. Bribery, absolutely. There's nothing about that, then.

basically there's two powerful charismatic rulers in Scandinavia at this moment. There's Knut, who's got England and Denmark, but you've also got the king of Norway, Oliver Haraldson, and he's allied with the king of Sweden. And Olaver is a sort of missionary king. He's trying to extend Christianity throughout Norway, extend his kingdom, and that's a real threat to,

Knut. And so there's a few skirmishes, there's a battle off southern Sweden, the Battle of Holy River, but the military confrontation between these two sort of axes is inconclusive. So Knoot starts bribing the Norwegian nobleman, probably those who are already a bit upset with Olaver and his sort of grab on power, he starts bribing them to pledge allegiance to himself, to Knoot. He does go over to Norway with perhaps 50 ships and he sort of kicks Olaver out of Norway but even when Olaver stages a comeback

he comes back in 10.30 Knoot doesn't even have to be there so strong is the allegiance of these disaffected Norwegian nobles so much do they like the gifts that Kanoot has given them that they kill Olaver kind of all on their own

and Kanoot becomes king of Norway I think we see there something in Norway that we've also seen in England that he's very, very good at coming in and seeing where the internal divisions lie and capitalising on them. It's remarkable, isn't it? I mean, so he's got three kingdoms already.

Is there anything, any one thing that defines him is his success? He's a chameleon. He's a chameleon. He's transnational. He's a quintessential migrant who knows exactly how to work in the new place that he finds himself in, but never loses sight of where he comes from and how he can operate

in that sphere and very, very modern in a way that we think of as a 20th, 20th, 21st century phenomenon, but he's doing it in the 11th century. And he connects things up. So in 1018, he gets a huge amount of English tax money, geld, the last big geld, and he uses it to pay the Danes. So part of what he's able to do is capitalize on all of that control. And he's paying the Danes as well to stay away from England. It's not just thank you for helping me get England. It's now stay away. Don't tread on my toes.

And I think we also should bring in his southern border. So he has a southern border with the German Empire. And you've already mentioned that he attends Conrad II's coronation in Rome as German emperor. And he arranges either there or shortly after for his daughter to marry Conrad's son, Henry. And part of that secures his southern border against the greatest power in Europe. Have we any idea of the number of his forces? We've heard about ships. Do you want to take that on board? In each place that we've seen him, in Norway and Denmark and in England, he doesn't have to directly have those troops.

He makes alliances with disaffected noblemen. who have those kinds of men. In the period that we're talking about, sheer numbers don't really do very much. What matters is tactics. So, for example, at the Battle of the Holy River, there's almost a stalemate between the Danes and their allies on one side

and the Norwegians and the Swedes and the other. And Knut doesn't have to do very much other than blockade the channel that connects the North Sea with the Baltic. The Norwegians and the Swedes are stuck in the Baltic. not a problem for the Swedes, they just go home. But the Norwegians have a massive land journey over brutal, brutal mountainous conditions to go home, in winter. And it's a very clever tactic.

It doesn't directly destroy or affect the troops that he is faced with. He just makes their lives impossible. One thing I picked up on which I was reading for this is he never seems to be lacking in cash or wealth. You talked about bribery earlier on when he had the wherewithal all along, didn't he? How does that happen? Well, a lot of that wealth comes out of England. And precisely because England is a particularly well-organized and central kingdom, and he can extract taxes from England. So that's where a lot of his wealth comes from. I mean, the other thing to point out is that England has been, for a very long time, part of an international trading network. And so goods and and money have been flowing in and out of England for centuries by this point.

England is rich in a way that Scandinavia really isn't at this point in time. So England is the prize and England is almost the engine of Knut's economic administration across his Nazi empire. Can we just talk a little bit more about his visit to Rome for the coronation of Conrad II as Holy Roman Empire? What did he get out of that?

Well, what did he get out of that? Partly, it's about a performance of Christian kingship. So, you know, he's also there in Rome with the Pope. But part of it is, too, building this alliance with Conrad. If you think ahead, if his daughter, his daughter had a daughter with Henry III, and then unfortunately his daughter died. But if she had had a son, you know, what he was looking for was a union between his dynasty in England and Denmark.

Conrad's dynasty which would have made an extraordinarily powerful arc across Europe. Northern Empire. Northern Empire. And I think one of the things he's also getting in Rome and also by watching Conrad is an interest in what is an empire. How do you not only rule over multiple peoples but conceptualize how you rule over multiple people. And I think that's where some thinking about empire rather than kids.

is really useful. You don't have to say that he's an emperor in order to say that he's learned something from watching, essentially watching imperial theory at work. The other thing to mention here is that we have hints in the sources of Knut having a role to play in Conrad's election

as Holy Roman Emperor as well. More bribery. There's certainly some rivalry. Knut is initially not in favour of Conrad's, as the Holy Roman Emperor. And Conrad's deal with Knut really is to bring Knut on side. And one of the reasons Conrad really must bring Knut on side is because Conrad is in conflict with Bolislav in Poland.

And as Erin mentioned earlier, Knut is connected by blood to Boloslav. He's his uncle. And so what Conrad does not need is a Danish problem on the one side and a Polish one on the other. sort of make sure that in return for Knut's support for his becoming the Holy Roman Emperor, he then keeps Knut appeased. And part of that appeasement is settling the issue of the Schleswig-Holstein border.

But the other part of the appeasement is this really powerful marriage alliance. Does he have any failures? It seems to go from triumph to triumph. Here's a king. He's another king. There's a third king. He's a baton-a-fail. All the indications are that he is incredibly effective.

He thought about how he could brand himself as a king, as a particular kind of ruler. And a really important plank in communicating his royal identity was through his skulls, through his poets. The skulls. The skull. Indeed, yes. So this is the Old Norse, so the medieval precursor to the modern Scandinavian languages, the old Norse word for poet. And for centuries before Knoot, at least two centuries, a king or a ruler would have known they'd made it if the scalds, if the poets were coming to their court and praising them in this incredibly complicated poetry. It involves wordplay and complicated meter and alliteration, and it's a way of saying, this is the best king. And so when Knut was king in England, his court in England, for example, became the center of Old Norse poetry production in Scandinavia, in Europe.

Poets were flocking to produce, to compose this poetry at his court, all of it saying Knut is the top king, Knut is the greatest warrior, Canute rules his nobles just like Christ rules in heaven. These are very strong statements. And of course, these were all in Danish, in Old Norse. So again, we talk about him being a political chameleon. He is also a kind of cultural chameleon in that he could write letters to the English, but he could also commission poets to speak in Old Norse to the Old Norse contingent in his court.

This is very much a kind of multilingual, multi-ethnic environment. Did this 16 years change England much? In some ways, no, because the structures continue. And after a period of disruption, Edward the confessor comes to the throne, ruling in those same structures and in some ways ruling with an Anglo-Danish identity. And his sails are full of Anglo-Danish air as Edward comes to the throne. But I think if we go back to the failure issue, I think the failure is shown by what happens after he dies.

and you end up with virtual civil war and empower too many sons by too many different wives and it doesn't help that Emma has also had sons by two different wives two different husbands so yes so Emma has had sons as we know by Ethelred and Canute and Canute has had sons with Elfifu and with Emma and everybody wants the English throne and so you have five years of turmoil in which Every single one of those sons, except Edward the confessor, ends up dead.

And whether they die natural causes or they're killed is always up for debate. And vicious, vicious factionalism around that. We get a real insight into that from the life that Emma, in the midst of all of this, Emma commissions what is essentially a guester of Canute, so his deeds. And she represents him very much as a kind of the creation. of a new dynasty, he's a second Aeneas bringing together two people, the English and the Danes. And she even tries to portray Edward the Confessor, so Ethelred's son, as Knut's son. And I think that's really important for showing us actually what Canute did change, that actually

there is, while the structures are English, there is a sense in which England realizes, actually, that they've thrived under the Anglo-Danish kings. So that's how Edward comes to the throne, both as a restoration of the West Saxon dynasty, but not as a break with the Anglo-Danish dynasty. How big a step is it from that, from the fractiousness and the Battle of Hastings? They're very intimately connected.

One of the big changes is the raising of Godwin. Godwin is such a key player, not just in Knut's own reign. Godwin is an important earl in England, but he also travels to Denmark with Knoot. He helps out with the administration of Knoot's Danish kingdom as well. He's one of those people that is transnational as well. And in the turmoil after Knoot's death, where we've got all of these sons vying for power, Godwin is a bit of a kingmaker in terms of whom he supports against whom. And he does change sides. He's not entirely loyal to any one person. He's looking out for his own interests very much so. After Godwin, we then have his son, Harold Godwinson, who similarly tries to broker power in England and in Normandy at the same time and ends up himself as the King of England and then first defending against the Scandinavians at the Battle of Stamford Bridge and then defending against the Normans at the Battle of Hastings in 1066. I've always had a very soft spot for Godwin because I think the first book I owned

It might not be the very first book It had big print and pictures Tales of Robin Hood And Robin Hood's father was supposed to be Godwain's. Poor old Godwin And his sons end up in exile So many times

You can kind of see why they might be the exemplars Well thank you very much Thank you I enjoy that a lot I hope everybody else did So Oh yes there's a big question There's a big question There's a big question

Come on, man. What about Canute and the waves? Holding back the waves? Showing a good hold back the waves. What was happening? Well, did he even sit by the sea? Don't spoil everything. Well, he might have been on the Thames or he might not have done it at all. But as we've been saying, he was a Christian king, and he was very good at showing people how good a Christian king he was.

So if we accept that Knut stood by some water and that he commanded the water not to come towards him, he was in the earliest sources to talk about this, he was performing his own lack of power against the sea and therefore against God. And so the stories of... He was showing he didn't have power. He was showing he didn't have power, which, of course, he didn't.

But he was also acknowledging the fact that people knew he had power, but showing its limits. And its limits were with respect to God. Which if you think about it Is quite a claim This is me powerful Guess who's the only one who's more powerful than me God

The big guy up that So it's humility But it's humility Also with a bit of Showing off Quite a bit of showing off And it ties in The brand

I mean again it may or may not have happened But if we think of So much you've been talking about this morning Well, indeed. It's the 11th century after all. But it ties in with the Scaldic verse, which is also saying he is sort of next under God, he is like God on earth, and with going to Rome and being next to Conrad, next to the Pope. He uses every possible kind of cultural trope in his arsenal to show just how powerful he is after God. Well, thank you very much. Thanks to Elizabeth Tyler, Irene Geras, and Pragyavora.

and our senior engineer Duncan Hannan. Next week, the Battle of Crecy. Thanks for listening. And the In Our Time podcast gets some extra time now with a few minutes of bonus material from Melvin and his guests. So this is basically where I ask minimal questions and you give magnificent answers. We put it in the podcast.

That's what happens. What would you like to have talked about that we didn't talk about? We haven't talked about Knut's Danish administration at all. And really one of the things that I love about the way in which Canute operates is that he sees in England this exemplar of administrative structure, of political organization, of church structure. And that's what he wants for his kingdom in Denmark. That's what he wants for his dynasty in Denmark, carrying on from what his grandfather started out with the Christianization of Denmark. And so he uses his foothold in England to bring experts over into Denmark, people who can mint, people who can teach local lords how to work with law codes and administrative structures.

People, most importantly, really, clergymen from England who are taken over into Denmark to establish really important Christian centres like Roskilde, like Lund, what is now Lund. He shapes Denmark through these influences coming over from England. And in many ways, one of the advantages of using England to create this sort of new Denmark almost is that he removes particularly the Danish church from the influence of the the Archbishops of Hamburg and Bremen. And that's one of the reasons why Adam of Bremen, who is one of the contemporary chroniclers that we use,

he's very, very upset with Sven and Knut, both. He doesn't like them very much. But we've got this wonderful, centralized structure in so many different respects being created in Denmark out of what Knoot gets, what he learns from England. it truly ties together his northern empire in many ways.

And I think that's absolutely extraordinary that he can do that. I think it's really interesting that you flag up the way he's trying to kind of curtail the influence from the German Empire. And at the same time, in England, he's bringing it in because one of the things he does is he brings German imperial clerics into the court and then makes them bishops, which is a policy that continues under Edward, the confess. reign. So we've been talking earlier about how important bishops are to the running of a kingdom. So on the one hand, you see in Denmark, he's pushing the Germans back and bringing the English in, whereas in England, he's pushing the English back and bringing the Germans in. So he's always, you know, he's got these policies of learning from other places, of bringing foreigners in to systems that are already there, which he still makes those systems work, but he puts new

people in them. And he's constantly learning from other places. Yeah, it's truly pan-European. And possibly related. I mean, he's a very, very young man. I mean, he's a teenager when he comes over with Svein. He's perhaps even a teenager when he becomes king of England. So, I mean, he is very much in that stage of life where he is learning, he is studying, he is looking to people who are kind of older and wiser. And he really does learn from so, so many. And he really does learn from so, so many people. The other things, just since we were talking about deaths, one of the things that comes up in terms of Knit's legacy

and why it doesn't really last very much is the early deaths of pretty much his entire dynasty. All of his children die before they reach the age of about 25. Is that murder or unnatural? As far as, well, combination. Combination, possibly of the two. But if we think about some historians have suggested

that there might be a genetic component to these early deaths because his father himself only lasted till about 40 Knut was roughly about 45 possibly the longest lived of the whole lot of them but his children not a single one sees 25

so these are very short-lived people and so I suppose you can think about a genetic component to the way in which their lives are cut short. And so what we don't get is this long-lasting dynasty because everybody who belongs to that dynasty ends up dead.

And it does. But none of them have his... Nounce. Might they have learned if they'd live beyond their 20s? That's how can you live beyond his 20s? Yeah. And I mean, they had some... very powerful mothers there kind of using them as

horns. Absolutely. It's a time when the church is pressing for monogamy. Did it bother anybody that he had two wives? Bothered them, I suppose. Yeah, bothered them. I think that's a spot where you see Wolfstern is very, very discreet because Wolfstern is someone who really is pushing for this monogamy

and he's not even pushing, he's even hostile to serial monogamy but he's quiet around this issue and Canute. And I sometimes wonder there's a wonderful old English translation of a late antique romance called Apollonius of Tyre, which is all about constancy in marriage, and you will be able to put together all of these kingdoms and everything will turn out happily ever after. And that occurs in a manuscript alongside some of the... Canute's Law Codes. I wonder if something like Apollonius of Tire was a subtle way of making those points in that context. And, you know, that kind of text, Apollonius of Tire comes in alongside

things like Skaldic verse. So the literary culture of his court, I think, was really rich and complicated. And I think Wolfstern was very shrewd in how he addressed just those issues, because they're burning issues at this point. Could I just bring up on the Danish side? Emma was also Danish. Her mother was Danish, Gunnors. So she probably understood Danish speaking up, growing up, if not spoke it. And I think she's a nice reminder of just how connected all these players are.

And that does follow through to 1066. So she's Emma of Normandy. Normandy is the land of the Northmen, the Northmen, men from the North. And so when we have Knut from Denmark, Emma, who is half Danish and also from this kind of land which was settled by Norman raiders and settlers. And then we have the kind of Anglo-Danish environment in England. And then we've got the Norwegians sort of getting involved through kinship networks as well. Everyone's related. Some of that is deliberate, political kind of machinations, but everyone is related.

And so when we get to something like these invasions and then 1066, it's very much not a sense of a kind of foreign invading army coming in and taking over us. You know, this is very much a kind of quarrel within families throughout kind of the northern part of Europe. And I think those kind of close relationships between these different peoples is often lost when people think about this period. But actually these lands are all very, very closely connected through. language and culture and marriage. Well, thank you all very much. That was certainly plenty enough for our purposes.

I love a cup of water. From BBC Radio 4, this is Breaking Mississippi, the explosive inside story of one man's war against racial segregation in 1960s America. I knew the state of Mississippi would stop at nothing, including killing me. James Meredith's mission to become the first black student at the University of Mississippi triggers what's been described as the last battle of the American Civil War.

It's a fight that draws in the KKK and even President Kennedy himself. Can you maintain this order? Well, I don't know. That's what I'm worried about. And we must fight! I thought, wow, this could be it. This could be the beginning of World War III. Now aged 89, James Meredith tells his story. Public Radio journalist Jen White, and this is Breaking Mississippi. Available now on BBC Sounds.