Cnut the Great
11th-century King of Denmark, Norway, and England · Denmark · Historical Figures · Lived 994 to 1035 · aged 41
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Something wrong?He commanded three kingdoms at once - England, Denmark, Norway - and held them by force, diplomacy, and the careful binding of wealth to loyalty. The North Sea became his empire's inner lake.
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, Merie sungen the muneches binnen Ely / Tha Cnut Ching rew there by: / Roweth, cnihtes, noer the lant, / And here we thes muneches saeng.
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A Danish prince, Cnut took England's throne in 1016 after centuries of Viking raiding had primed the ground. Two years later he claimed Denmark, yoking the two crowns and spending the next decade crushing rivals across Scandinavia until Norway fell to him in 1028. Malcolm II of Scotland bent the knee in 1031, though that submission proved shallow. He leveraged England's dioceses and his claim on Denmark's to win concessions from the Church - reduced tolls for his people traveling to Rome, a better price on the pallium - and after beating Norway and Sweden in 1026, he returned from the Holy Roman Emperor's coronation calling himself king of England, Denmark, the Norwegians, and some of the Swedes. Medieval historian Norman Cantor named him the most effective king in Anglo-Saxon history. He died in 1035, and the empire dissolved with him.
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