Real Vikings - 9. King Canute’s North Sea Empire

Episode Date: May 4, 2026

A boy king, Ethelred the Unready, comes to the English throne. In bloody scenes, he will seek to purge his realm of Norsemen. In 1997, a Silicon Valley CEO takes inspiration from the Vikings for a revolutionary digital technology. Back in England, Sveyn Forkbeard plunges a dagger into the very heart of Old Wessex. His son will right historic wrongs. His name is Canute…A Noiser podcast production. Narrated by Iain Glen.Featuring Eleanor Barraclough, Stefan Brink, Lars Brownworth, Levi Roach, Pragya Vohra, Davide Zori.Written & produced by Jeff Dawson | Executive Producer: Joel Duddell | Research by Emmie Rose Price-Goodfellow | Fact check by Grant Jones | Sound Supervisor: Tom Pink | Sound design by George Tapp | Additional editing by Jacob Booth, Rob Plummer | Compositions by Oliver Baines, Dorry Macaulay, Tom Pink | Mix & mastering: Cian Ryan-Morgan | Recording Engineer: Tom Rouse at Jungle Studios.You can listen to the final episode of Real Vikings right now - without waiting and without ads - by joining Noiser Plus. You’ll also unlock shows across the Noiser podcast network. Click the subscription banner or head to noiser.com/subscriptions to find out more. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It's the year 1028. Somewhere on the south coast of England. It's a cold day. It's a stiff onshore breeze. Up on the coastal path, armed heavies keep a lookout. Down on the beach, pages hold horses while their masters, a group of Anglo-Norse nobleman, gather at the water's edge. They stand there in their finest cloaks and furs, looking rather awkward, range behind a man sitting in a large oak chair. He stares out to sea, raises his hand as if in command, and holds it there as the waves roar in, scuds of foam washing over his soft leather shoes. It's a fast tie, but the man is implacable. Within a couple of minutes, the water is up to his knees. His nervous entourage, getting soaked now themselves, plead with him to withdraw. The man nods and rises. He has made his point. On his head rests a gold crown.

He is not just king of England, but of Denmark and Norway too, ruler of a vast North Sea, North Atlantic Empire. Contrary to the later myth that will develop around him, he does not believe he has the power to control the elements. Rather, it is that not even he, an ordained Christian monarch, one of such expansive realms, can stem the time. No one is above God's law. Afterwards, it is said, back in Winchester,

he will hang his crown on the royal chapel's crucifix, never to be worn again. Alongside Alfred, he will be the only king of England known as the Great. And his act today, much misconstrued, will become a colourful vignette in the long history of the English monarchy. His name is Canute. I'm Ian Glenn, and from the Noiser Podcast Network, this is Real Vikings, part nine. Going into the 11th century, the medieval world is transforming.

At the dawn of the Viking era, Norsemen had exploded onto the scene as heathen raiders. As pillaging turned to trading, then to settling, Viking colonies have been established in England and France. the Dane Law and Normandy. In Ireland, there are Norse enclaves known as Long Ports. Out on the wild ocean, Scandinavian navigators have extended their reach through Iceland and Greenland, all the way to North America. To the east, meanwhile, Nordic entrepreneurs dominate the river networks that snake down through Russia to the Black Sea and Constantinople. One of the biggest motivators for settling lands anew had always been the world. that prospects abroad were rosier than those at home.

But the old world has been evolving too. Professor Davidae Zori. Part of the legacy of the Viking Age for the homelands of Scandinavia is the emergence of three states, three kingdoms, in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. In this series, we've used the terms Norway, Denmark, and Sweden for geographical convenience. rather than as defined nation-states.

Descriptions are complicated by the terminology of the age, particularly in the lands the Vikings invade. The word Norse, for example, sometimes reserved for things that are specifically Norwegian, is often deployed as a generic term. In Anglo-Saxon England, by contrast, it is Dane which is the catch-all label for anyone pitching up from across the North Sea.

In terms of the lands from whence they hail, Norway means simply the Northway, the great sea lane that winds up the islands and fields of Scandinavia's west coast. In Denmark, it is not the sea, but the gentle terrain which gives it its name. Dan means low ground. Mark, like the English marches, indeed like the Anglo-Saxon kingdom called Mercia, means a territory, particularly a borderland. Denmark is thus the flat land or flat borderland. The name Sweden, meanwhile, refers to its people, the sphere, who have tussled with the Yurtars or Gayat's for dominance of Southeast Scandinavia.

It is one Gaat, a monster-slaying one, who is the hero of the epic Old English poem that is a big hit of the day. Beowulf. But all three regions have been evolving into distinct, self-contained units. Professor Stefan Brink The beginning of the emergence of the kingdoms or states Denmark, Norway or Sweden takes place in the 700s and 800s, when kings over the Danes especially are mentioned in Frankish annals.

However, it is first around the year thousand that we see Denmark and Norway consolidated as larger territory of kingdoms. In the reign of King Godfrey, who rules from 804, the Danes strengthened their defensive earthworks, known as the Darnavir, to resist Frankish aggression from the south. With this land border secure, Godfrey begins unifying his territory, from the Jutland Peninsula across Tuscania in today's southern Sweden.

By the reign of Gorm the Old, in 936, it is being administered from the ancient capital of Yelling. Gorm will be buried in Yelling in one of two massive mounds built by his son, Harold Gormson. On the giant runestones erected there, both kings refer to their realm as Denmark. When Harold becomes king in 958, the Danish state becomes part of Christendom. It's 1997. We're in Santa Clara. California, deep in Silicon Valley.

Amid the tech start-ups, computer companies and software developers, it's an exciting place to be, the epicenter of the digital Big Bang, populated by hip young techies and gene-and-tshirt CEOs. At one company, Intel, known for its microprocessors, they've been developing a short-range wireless technology, something that originated with partners Erickson, the Swedish mobile phone company. It will do away with cables and link devices remotely, laptops, headphones, MP3 players, printers, televisions. It's especially important with the new generation of handheld devices that are being finessed, the so-called smartphones. Intel's owner, Jim Cardac, is a code word for this new kit. He came up with it over a few beers at a recent conference, a nod to its Nordic origins.

It was inspired by a novel that was lent to him, The Longships, by Franz T. Benenson. The book features King Harold Gormson and highlights his skills at bringing people together, uniting them as one. He's an inspirational figure, Cardac reckons, one worthy of naming their new technology after. Though not Gormson, that would be silly, rather Harold's nickname. Due to a dental quirk, a prominent decaying incisor, the king of Denmark was known to everyone as Harold Bluetooth. Look, Karak demonstrates.

They can deploy the runic version of his initials, HB, as the new text logo. There's a deafening silence, a few winces. Don't worry, he adds. Bluetooth, it's just a working title. We can always change it later. Harold Bluetooth, in my mind, is the king who does the most to form a state out of Denmark. The birth certificate in the sense of Denmark is sometimes named as the yelling runstone. The yelling runstone has the first depiction of Christ in that kind of crucified pose.

And it's got a text where Harold claims that he built these monuments in memory of his parents. and that he united all of Denmark and Norway and made the Danes Christian. Those are big claims. But archaeology has largely supported this claim. In a previous episode, we followed the settlement of Iceland. His population had swelled due to an exodus of people from Norway, driven out by the rule of Harold Fairhair.

Fairhair had united Norway, or much of it, on exceeding to the throne in 872. Although unlike the fairy tale version, his rule will turn out to be far from PG. His power doesn't last, and I don't think he fashions what any of us would consider a true state, and it disintegrates after his death, and there's meddling of the Danish king in the Norwegian politics,

so the Danish king often controls the Oslo Fjord. area of Norway in a way that limits the power that any Norwegian king can gather for himself. With at least 20 sons vying for the crown, there is an almighty scrap brewing over the running of the family business. The last man standing is someone we've referenced earlier in this series, the splendidly monocured Eric Bloodhacks, so called for his enthusiastic elimination of his brothers. He will hack his way to the Norwegian throne in 931. Eric's portfolio will, for a while, include kingships of both Norway and Northumbria, over in the north of England. And it is there, across the water, where there will be a further twist to a family drama.

It seems the youngest brother had escaped Eric's hatchet. Spirited out of harm's way, the boy named Harkin, has been brought up in England, adopted. by King Athelstan and baptized. Known as Harkin the Good, and who wouldn't be compared to Eric, he will soon be at war with his sibling. Harkin the Good will become Norway's first Christian King in 934, though ongoing blood feuds will lead to years of instability and Danish intervention. Eric Blood Axe will be forced out of York and will make a last stand in Cumbria in the year 954. Sweden will not find Jesus until the 12th century. It is also slower in achieving nationhood.

But with the accession of Eric the victorious in 970, its warring factions put aside their differences. But the situation is much more wobbly, and with the strife between two realms, the Jotter in the south and the sviar in the east-central. and this strives shifted back and forth for hundreds of years. So Sweden can best be described as a federation between the Jotar and the Svijar. And thus Denmark, Norway and Sweden grow from patchwork collectives of petty kingdoms into bona fide countries, Christian ones. The very type of

entities that their Viking warriors once plundered. And with their royal houses and dynastic claims, they are once again to have a huge impact on the lands with whom they interact. And most significantly, Anglo-Saxon England. When we were last in England, Alfred the Great Had in 878 made his peace with the Danish king Guthrum. This had seen the establishment of an autonomous Viking region, the Dane law, Guthrum had converted to Christianity, ruling East Anglia personally under a new name, Aftelstan. Not to be confused with the later King Aethelstan, the one who adopted Prince Harkin. To create the Dane Law, England is bisected on a diagonal south-east to northwest.

The boundary follows approximately the path of the old Roman road, Wattling Street, whose main leg runs from London to Chester, pretty much the route of today's A-5. But the Dane Law was never a homogenous entity. It's all rather fragmented. Professor Levi Roach. So we've got polities there, plural, but the precise nature of them is actually quite hard to establish.

What we do know, though, is that all of these are areas that have seen significant Scandinavian settlement. The biggest part, Northumbria, literally the land north of the Humber, had extended as an Anglo-Saxon kingdom from northern England up into the lowlands of modern Scotland. Under Danish control, its southern portion evolves into the kingdom of York, ruled jointly at times with the Norse King of Dublin.

The Danish East Midlands, meanwhile, is subdivided into what are known as the five boroughs, Leicester, Lincoln, Nottingham, Stamford and Derby. South of the border, by contrast, the Anglo-Saxon lands are beginning to coalesce, though not without internal turmoil. It will take until the rule of Alfred's grandson, the aforementioned King Athelstan, to solidify the realm. After decades of uneasy coexistence with the Nordic settlers, conflict will once more break out. Athelstan will beat the Danes at York in 927. Ten years later, at the Battle of Brennanburg, an undetermined location somewhere in northern England, he defeats a combined army led by the kings of Scotland, Strathclyde, and Norse

Dublin. The coins Athelstan Mints declare himself Rex Toteus Britannii, or king of the whole of Britain. But it is an ever-shifting landscape, one of conquest and reconquest. It is Athelstan's successor Edmund, who regains the five boroughs in 94. And it is not until the advent of King Edgar in 959, that the monarch is recognised definitively as the ruler and lord of the whole Isle of Albion. On Edgar's death in 1975, his two young sons are next in line as rulers of this new entity, the land of Angles, Englerland. England. England. When the Elder son dies in suspicious circumstances at Corfe Castle, almost certainly murdered, it is his 10-year-old brother who comes to the throne.

His given name Ethelred will forever be conjoint with a nickname, deriving from an ironic Anglo-Saxon sense of humour. Enter into the frame the Boy King of England, Ethelred the Unready. Dr Pragyavora It's highly likely that this is something that is so retrospective. being applied to Ethelred. His name itself means noble counsel, and the unready part comes from the Anglo-Saxon Unred, which means ill-council. So it seems to be some kind of play on his name. He will, at a stroke, undo the work of his forebears. The England-ethelred inherits is in a very

healthy state, it is a unitary entity well-governed and above all wealthy. Such things do not go unnoticed, not least by a Norwegian warlord, Olaf Trigvison. As the great-grandson of Harold Fairhair, violence is in Olaf's DNA. He's an unreconstructed pagan to boot, nicknamed Crowbone, for his ritualized shredding of bird carcasses. Aware of England's growing riches, this Viking throwback sails an army over to East Anglia to loot and pillage. It will culminate in the Battle of Malden, where, in the mud of the Essex marshlands, Olaf defeats an English army. Ethelred, now in his twenties, seems as ill-counciled as the legend suggests. Learning nothing from history, he bungs Olaf a huge amount of silver,

to go away, together with a rather hopeful suggestion that the hairy heather might undertake some Bible study? So after the Battle of Maldon, which is recorded in 991 in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, the invaders are paid £10,000 and asked to please leave, thank you very much, which they do, but that only highlights to these Viking raiders. just how wealthy the kingdom of England is. And so they come back and they keep coming back. 200 years on from Lindisfarne,

the re-emergence of a barbarian horde must have struck terror into the shires. There's an old English poem of the day called simply The Battle of Malden. It will, with its foreboding sense of good versus evil, be hugely influential on J.R.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. Ethelred generally gets a bit of a reputation as being a poor king or a bad king, and that's perhaps a little bit unfortunate rather than indicative of his capabilities as a ruler. He inherits his kingdom at a particularly difficult time.

In the time of his father and his brother, we've got this period of relative calm, And then as soon as Ethelred comes to the throne, the Viking raids begin again. Olaf Trigvson will return home and seize the Norwegian throne. He will overfro the sitting king, hearken, not harken the good, but harken the bad. But maybe Ethelred's plea registered after all. Ruling is Olaf the first, Trigvson will become a fervent, evangelical Christian. He is said to have personally baptized explorer Leif Erickson prior to his mission to Vinland. In 997, Olaf will found a Norwegian capital, Trondheim, halfway up the country, far removed from neighboring Denmark, which has become increasingly embroiled in Norwegian affairs.

Back in England, Etheralded, newly emboldened, decides to go on the offensive. He leads a raid against Normandy, which is becoming a safe haven again for Viking. raiders. A peace concludes with Ethel Red's marriage. In 1002, he ties the knot with a Norman princess named Emma, herself half Danish. But it is a false dawn. The raiding does not stop. It is the old Norse problem all over again, exactly as is happening over in Ireland. I mean, once we come to the end of direct Scandinavian rule in Northumbria in this mid-10th century period, the historical record really falls silent completely until it starts to record the raids at the end of the 10th century. So Vikings appear on the horizon once again in the 990s.

and in some historical texts, you will find people talking about the first Viking Age and the second Viking Age. There has to be an explanation for this phenomenon, the Kingsmen suggest. With advisors whispering in Ethelred's ear about an enemy within and a fifth column, he decides to take drastic action. He will purge his realm of anyone with Norse blood. There is a major complication here. The settled Norse and the Anglo-Saxons have, over the past century, been intermingling, particularly in the north of Ethelred's kingdom, where the female locals have been rather taken with the new arrivals.

Dr. Eleanor Baraklough There's some absolutely wonderful material written from the point of view of the Anglo-Saxons or the English later who come into contact with them. And they tell us things like they're really quite clean. They wash, maybe even every week. Heaven forbid. There's a wonderful latest source that says, essentially, the Anglo-Saxons are absolutely furious because the Scandinavian settlers used to bathe

and used to brush the hair and change their clothes and their socks. There were lots of women who were very attracted to these clean Scandinavians. It's an easy fit. The English and the Norse are culturally and ethnically similar, fellow Germanic travellers. Not so long before, Anglo-Saxons worship the same pagan gods. They speak languages that are, to some extent, mutually intelligible. Whether or not it's accurate that speakers of Old English and Old Norse

could somehow communicate with each other, they could somehow interact enough to be able to, create some sort of hybrid language. And we see a lot of that hybridity, even in the language that we speak today. So, for instance, if you ate an egg for breakfast this morning, you have the Vikings to thank for that word egg. If you died, I know that's grim, you have the Vikings to thank for the word that tells you that you have died. The Norse impact on the English language to this very day remains significant. Words like, Yule, window, foot, bug, not to mention excess of terms associated with raiding, keel, starboard,

berserk, ugly, skull, knife, slaughter, ransack, club. There's everyday nouns like lad, sky, fellow, husband, oath, which means literally elf, and countless more besides. Our days of the week, Tuesday through to Friday, are named after the old Norse gods, or their Anglo-Saxon variants, Tier, Odin, Thor, and Frigg. To cut a long story short, by the turn of the 11th century, the Norse Arabists have bred generations who were born in England, speak the lingo, are Christian, and would consider themselves English, just ones with Scandinavian heritage.

Nordic English, if you will, or Anglo-Norse. And we have a different and unique culture, Anglo-Scanadian culture, that we see manifested in the archaeology, as well as in the laws that they're following. Other elements of Scandinavian culture we see decorated in places like the Das Fourth Cross, where you have Scandinavian mythological scenes combined with Christian symbols. So the Vikings, the Scandinavians, which are called now, because they're no longer seaborne pirates, they're Scandinavians settling in England, are pretty quickly, it seems, adopting Christianity

and mingling some of their own artistic and ideological traditions. It seems like a multi-faith community. It is a state of affairs that does not seem to have been thought through by Ethelred. It's November the 13th, 1002. St. Bryce's Day. We're in Oxford. In the marketplace, a group of young men, Anglo-Dains, have been cornered by a bay in mob.

They huddle against the chill wind blowing in from the east and from the abuse, stones and rotten fruit that are being hurled at them. The aggression is reaching fever pitch, soldiers loiter enjoying the spectacle rather than intervening. Civilians and unarmed, the young men appear harmless enough. They protest their interests their interest.

innocence at whatever it is they seem to have been accused of. Something about being foreigners, not welcome. They are English-born, they repeat, Christian, and owe their allegiance to the king. It was ever thus. But their words fall on deaf ears. Under a hail of rocks they cower, with hands raised to protect their heads they dash for a nearby church, the church of St. Fritherswith and force their way in. Here, at least, they can seek sense. sanctuary. The soldiers nod knowingly. In a premeditated move, a wooden beam is lowered to lock them in. Soldiers climb ladders and smear the wooden roof with pitch. Once out of the way, and two gleeful cheers from the crowd, archers loose flaming arrows to set the building ablaze.

Within minutes, the church is a raging inferno. From inside, a frantic banging against the door is replaced by screams of terror and agony. And then, as the rafters collapse, silence. A shout goes up from the ranks. Some have escaped. Look, they must have got out round the back. There they are in the distance, staggering, spluttering towards the river. Cavalry are dispatched to cut them down every last man.

Their 37 bodies will be buried in a mass grave. They will lie there till a 2008 excavation at Sir John's College later built over the site. Analysis will confirm the skeletons to have been male, age 16 to 25, and containing Danish DNA. They died from serious defensive wounds and slashes to their backs. A similar grave, only with the young male victims dismembered this time, will be found on Ridgeway Hill near Weymouth. And there will be more acts like this repeated up and down the country. country. It is, according to Ethelred's decree, a most just extermination, come up and for all the Danes

who had sprung up in this island, sprouting like cockle amongst the wheat. And this is a biblical metaphor for sinful elements. In the Middle Ages, this was often interpreted as being like a reference to things like heresy and heretics. And it's a line that's frequently invoked in later years for burning heretics. So there is this strong, of pollution in our kingdom and of these being the polluting elements in a religious as well as a secular sense. There remains debate to this day about Ethelred's true intentions. Allegedly tipped off about a plot against him.

Some say the plan was merely to snuff out the ringleaders. Others that it was carte blanche to exterminate anyone of Nordic extraction living in England. The St. Bryce's Day massacre conjures up images that I think are in some ways helpful in other ways not. in terms of modern events and ethnic cleansing and the like. There's no signature of this. It would have been impossible to ascertain Dane versus English. So it's clearly not that actually. It's clearly something targeted.

It's not nice. It's a nasty move. But it seems to be a targeted move against recent arrivals and probably recent mercenaries. It doesn't seem to have been a widespread phenomenon. It doesn't seem to have sort of taken the whole of the English kingdom by storm. There seemed to have been pocketings. of violence directed against quote-unquote Danes.

And there is some suggestion that the people that were targeted were people who had come as part of these renewed raids rather than the settled populations that had been part of the English kingdom. Either way, it has the same repercussions. For among the casualties of the massacre just happens to be a noblewoman named Gnhilda, wife of the alderman of Devonshire, who just happens to be the sister of the latest king of Denmark. A man with an idiosyncratic grooming style. Sven Falkbeard. Sven Falkbeard is not one to mess about. A son of Harold Bluetooth, he had forced his own father into exile and

allegedly colluded in his grisly death. It is said he died with an arrow up his rectum. more the better for his son to grab the Danish crown. And along the way, amid some Danish-Norwegian ranker, find himself king of Norway too. In 1003, Sven Fortbeard lands on the southwest coast of England with a vast amada and burns down Exeter. He has plunged a dagger into the very heart of old Wessex. And so when Sven invades England,

The explanation is that this is revenge for his sister's murder as part of the St. Bryce's Day massacre. Whether this is a real story or not is almost impossible to tell. But what we do know is that after St. Bryce's Day massacre, the amount of tribute money demanded and paid increases exponentially. What it does lead to is a huge amount of unrest and instability in Ethelred's own kingdom. But sacks of Daingelt aren't going to buy peace this time. This thing is personal. Sven has a blade with Ethelred's name on it. Ethelred's son from a previous marriage, Edmund,

will do his best to help Dad man the defences. Quite valiantly, it turns out, an effort which will earn him the nickname, Edmund Ironside. Sven is unsuccessful in 1003, but he will try again in 1009 and in 1013. For Sven, like the Chinese military philosopher Sun Tzu, knows his enemy. He is fully aware that Ethelred's rule is now fragile. In particular, the Northern English, the Anglo-Sandinavians,

have been completely alienated by his attempt to wipe them out. When Sven sends a Danish fleet up the River Humber in the northeast, many of the locals welcome him as a liberator. fearing for the lives of his family, Ethelred dispatches Queen Emma and their three young children off to Normandy. There's still very much this sense of parts of England being perhaps more Scandinavian

and that's being layered on top of the fact that there were strong regional identities anyway. So there certainly is a very strong sense, above all in Yorkshire, of uncertainty about this southern dynasty who never historically ruled us and this willingness, therefore, to have Scandinavian worlds come over and rule them.

One could argue that in England or in Britain generally, a north-south divide persists to this day. At the very least, northern linguistic differences remain. In all of these areas, what we really start to see is that this merger, we see all Norse loanwords being borrowed into English, and then everyone speaking, a shared, distinctive regional dialect that does set them apart from the Southerners. The Norse influence on the English language, as already mentioned, deep, but you can see it too reflected northern English place names. The suffix Thorpe, as in Scunthorpe or Maplethorpe, is a term meaning a settlement. Thingwall, on the Mersey like Tingwall in Shetland, was once the seat of an assembly, a thing. The word also lends itself to the Isle

of Man Parliament, Tinwilt. The B-Y-B on the end of Derby, Grimsby, which is be, many others, it means simply town. In fact, a word we take for granted by-law translates literally from the Norse as the law of the town. From Beck meaning stream to nest meaning headland to fell meaning hill, it goes on and on. In England still, the great accent division, the long R versus the short A, path and bath southern versus path bath bath, versus path bath, northern, still pretty much delineates according to the old Dane Law boundary. Pursuing a peerless PR campaign, Sven leads his army south into the Mercy and Midlands where it turns out they're none too fond of Ethel Red either. The English king knows his number is up. He is soon sailing

across the channel to join his family. With a hop in a step, Sven Falkbeard is in London. He is declared on Christmas Day 1013, not just King of England, but the first Viking king of England. Not that the history books ever given much credit. Probably because after a mere five weeks and having never formally been crowned, he suddenly dies, possibly as a result of falling off his horse. From his base in Gainsborough, Lincolnshire, Sven had reportedly been on his way to his coronation in York. Back down south, it prompts the Council of Wessex elders, the Witter, to summon Ethelred back again. Returning in the spring of 1014, Ethelred and his allies restore England to Anglo-Saxon rule.

Though no sooner has Ethelred done so than he, too, takes a turn for the worse and delegates his son, Edmund Ironside, to rule in his stead. This does not sit well with a rival claimant, Sven's own son. someone who had fought alongside his father in the invasion and has substantial support in the English north. That man is Canute. Little is known about the early life of Canute. He was most likely born in Denmark around 990. Sources suggest his mother was Polish, probably Sviatoslava, daughter of King Mieshkov I, and a former wife of Sweden's Eric the victorious.

While his brother rules Denmark as Harold II, Prince Canute is invited over by the northern English Yarls, or Earls, as their preferred choice as King of England. Ethel Red, it seems, is not just unready, but unpopular. Intent on restoring his father's legacy, Canute assembles another invasion force and lands at sandwich on the Kent Coast in September 1015, with about 10,000 men. in 200 ships. We have, from the later chronicle, which is the Encomium, Emma Regina,

we've got a wonderful description of what these ships looked like, sailing into England, with many kinds of shields and gold shining on the prows and silver flashing. It's an absolutely incredible description of Knud's fleet coming into Wessex. Canuta has assembled a coalition of the willing.

It is a mix of Scandinavians, men from the Baltic regions, and includes a contingent of Polish troops loaned by his uncle, Duke Boleslav. As erudite and philosophical as Canute has been painted, he's no shrinking violet. On landing, his first task is to order what is described politely as the mutilation of the English hostages. Those Anglo-Saxon know,

noblemen who had been held for diplomatic leverage. In the manner of the day, it's a marker to lay down. This is war. Just as his father had done, Canute exploits his support in the north. He also persuades a number of English nobles to defect. By late 1015, Wessex has submitted. Canute begins a mopping up operation. But when Ethelred does eventually die, on April the 23rd, 106,

the question of royal succession is thrown wide open again. With Edmund Ironside in nominal charge, it only stiffens Knoot's resolve. England has two pretenders, a northern one and a southern one. In a war that has been raging for 14 months, Edmund Ironside has seen off several attacks on London, not yet the capital, but fast becoming England's most important city. One devastating assault launched by a Norwegian warlord will become the source of a nursery rhyme. London Bridge is falling down.

But in October 1016, at the Battle of Ascendon, believed to be near Saffron Waldham, Essex, Knut, just like his father, wallops the English army once and for all. Edmund flees west. It results in another territorial division of England, though this time on far less favourable terms for the English than have been agreed when setting up the old Dane law. All land north of the Thames goes to Canute, no ifs or buts.

Edmund Ironside gets everything south of the river plus London. In terms of territory, that's about 70-30 split in favour of the Norsemen, with a winner takes all twist. The two would-be kings come to an agreement. Should one of them die first, the other will in the other will in. inherit the other's kingdom in its entirety. It should come as no surprise that Edmund Ironside perishes in peculiar circumstances pretty soon after, quite possibly murdered while sitting on the toilet.

And so, Canute becomes the second Viking king of England, crowned in London by the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1017. For good measure he will see to it that all immediate dynastic rivals are bumped off, including Edmund's brother. With the cherry on top, he will take Ethelred's widow, Queen Emma, as his wife. He fetches her back from Normandy. If it seems a macho humiliation of the vanquished, it probably is. But it is also smart politics.

The English princes stranded in Normandy are now Canute's own step-sons and at his disposal. Plus Emma, if you remember, is actually half Danish, half-Norman. Canute is shoring up his rule, giving himself international legitimacy. And if she can bear him a son, Edmund Ironside has a couple of lads of his own, it should be pointed out. They are banished by Canute to Sweden. The plan is for them to meet unfortunate accidents on the quiet. But shipped on by the Swedes, the princes will travel to Kiev, then end up in Hungary. To the loyalists, the eldest will always be. be the legitimate heir to the throne of England. He will be known as Edward the exile.

Queen Emma, as it happens, is fully on board with the new arrangement. Canute has a certain swagger, way more rock and roll than wimpy Ethelred. For a red-blooded man of Viking stock, one wife will never be enough, however. His union with Emma is blessed by the church, and she does deliver him a baby boy, Arthur Canute. But Papa has another love interest up in the Midlands. Her name is Elf Gaffa Fu. Elf Gaffoo of Northampton, a second common-law wife. And she too will bear canoe to brace of sons.

Another Sven and another Harold. Throw in Emma's kids with Ethelred, hauled up across the channel, plus those Wessex heirs in Hungary, and there are going to be plenty of candidates when Canute shuffles off this mortal. coil. As a king, Canute tempers the bloodlust. The Archbishop of York makes him promise to rule even-handedly. As we saw at the start, Canute is often presented erroneously as an egotist, a man who believed he could actually turn back the tide. Canute in the tides is one of those kind of great set pieces. It's all the more a pity. It's a bit like Alfred burning the cakes,

in that it's only recorded a couple centuries later. So we don't really have any reason to believe It's true, but it's one of those anecdotes that is meant to sum up the essence of a ruler who's being seen as being a foundational figure. It's a statement of actually saying, no, I'm not, you know, don't put me on too much of a pedestal. I'm not God, only God controls the waves. So it's a kind of a correction to hyperbolic praise at his court that's also then meant to redound to his kind of Christian humility. Under Canute, the English economy remains strong. He also builds up the Navy and crucially Viking raiding stops. In 1018, when his brother Harold II dies, he inherits the Danish crown too, though there

will be complications back in the old country. In something of a role reversal, an Anglo-Danish expedition is launched to put down a Swedish-Norwegian threat. It results in victory for Knut in an epic naval showdown, the Battle of Helgiah. Knoot will then attack Norway, take Trondheim, depose Bolaf the second, and in 1028 declare himself king there too. He was thus the king of a huge North Atlantic Empire consisting of England, Denmark and all the colonies in North Atlantic.

And in a letter he also claims that he controlled parts of Sweden. It will become known as the North Sea Empire. Overlordship will, in fact, via dependencies and colonies, extend all the way briefly to North American Vineland. In 1031, three kings of Scotland will submit to Canute, Malcolm II, E. Mark, and another who will feature in English literature. a gentleman whose name we should perhaps not utter for fear of ill fortune. Macbeth, and then there are the Norse-gale fealties that remain after the Battle of Klondarf in Ireland.

Canute's domain is of such geographical scope that it will not be rivaled till the advent of Genghis Khan's Mongol Empire in the 13th century. It's March the 26th, 1027, Easter Sunday. were in Rome in the sumptuous old St. Peter's Basilica. A vast crowd has lined the streets. There to witness the coronation of the new Holy Roman Emperor, Conrad II. He's a descendant of Charlemagne, heir of the Caesars, arguably the most powerful man in Europe, if not the known world. The supreme ruler of what today constitutes Burgundy, Germany and northern Italy. And here today comes his anointing, the ceremony to be conducted by Pope John the 19th himself.

It's the culmination of a seven-day event enacted before the crowned heads of Europe. Only in friendly recognition of Conrad's power, another king has been permitted to stand at his side, a fellow emperor to all intents and purposes, Canute the Great. and whose own daughter has just been pledged to Conrad's son. Canute's rule is secure enough to have afforded him the long journey to Rome. Not only that, he is now, at the behest of Conrad, presented to the world, if not as an equal, then as near as damn it. It is the absolute zenith of Norse glory, the pinnacle of the Viking Age,

with Canute's most prosperous, populous kingdom, England, seemingly secure as the same. centerpiece of the Scandinavian universe. There is an alternative history in which parts of Scandinavia are held by England, or parts of England or England and the British Isles are held by Scandinavia, well, you know, into the early modern period and beyond. Of course, that actually is true, a place like, you know, Hebride and some of the aisles. Different story there. But there's no reason why that couldn't be the case with places like Yorkshire

or even places like Kent and things that are quite accessible, East Anglia. So Knut's King really does allow us to see a different kind of, of world and how it could be created. And the fact that he's able to rule these kingdoms, these realms in a unified manner, shows us that this is very much achievable. And Knut, or Canute the Great that the Englishmen call him, was generally remembered as a wise, a very successful king of England,

good reputation, although this view may in part be attributed to his good treatment. of the church, which is notably coming from pagan Scandinavia. Lars Brownworth. He's one of the greatest of the English kings, I think, if we can call him an English king. And he ruled this great North Sea empire, which no other Viking before him had managed to do. He is the epitome of Viking power and prestige. He's accepted as a brother-in-law by the Holy Roman Emperor.

It's quite a change from the beginning, you know, from these raiding. who are just kind of smash and grabbing their way through Europe. With so many balls to juggle, Canute must delegate. His mistress, Elfkifu, like Queen Emma, seems a shrewd political operator. At one point she is dispatched to implement Canute's rule in Norway. Quaintly known as Elf Gifu's time, this period will be marked by crippling taxes and growing resistance. There are austerity measures in England, too. It's not just the economy.

Canute's frequent absences from England do not endear him to his subjects either. He's this remote figure. His citizens respected him, but they never loved him. Despite all the churches he built and he took two pilgrimages to Jerusalem and Rome, they always thought he was a heathen. They never kind of accepted him into their hearts in a way. To maintain control, Kanoop groups the shires into region.

entities. They will each come under the purview of assigned earls, and one in particular, a mid-ranking English Thain, who has risen beyond his station to be appointed Earl of Wessex, his status sealed by marriage to a Danish noblewoman. As Knutzenforcer, his right-hand man, head of the most significant earldom, he will become the second most important person in the country. His name is Godwin. Ambitious and tough, he has embedded himself into the royal power structure, and he has big plans for his own Anglo-Danish boys, including one named Harold, Harold Godwinson.

Next time, in the final episode, a Varangian warrior Harold Hadrada becomes King of Norway. The title comes with a claim to the throne of England. In Normandy, Duke William, a descendant of Rolo, lays out his own case for seizing the disputed crowd. It will spell disaster for Harold Godwinson, the sitting ruler of the Anglo-Saxon realm. The year 1066 will usher in the ultimate Norse showdown, bringing down the curtain on the Viking Age. That's next time. in the final episode of Real Vikings.

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