Cnut: England's Viking King 1016-35

by M.K. Lawson

King Cnut ruled England from 1017 to 1035 and left behind him a legacy of peace, law and order. However, the beginnings of his kingship were less auspicious. He was a cruel and vicious warrior, who invaded England with his father Swegen Forkbeard, perhaps at a tender age. After Swegen's death in 1014 Cnut went home to Denmark to gather his forces. He returned the following year and conquered much of England in his bid for the Crown, but even on the death of Aethelred II the English refused to proclaim him king. However, his victory over the alternative candidate, Aethelred's son King Edmund Ironside, at the battle of Ashingdon, forced a division of the country between the two. Shortly afterwards, Edmund died and Cnut became undisputed ruler.

Genres: History, Anglo Saxon, Medieval, Biography, Nonfiction, British Literature, Historical

255 pages, Paperback

First published February 15, 1993

About the author

Michael Kenneth Lawson serves as history master at St. Paul's School in London. His focus is on medieval history, and his work on that subject includes Cnut: The Danes in England in the Early Eleventh Century and The Battle of Hastings, 1066.

Reviews

[Jan-Maat]

One thing that does emerge clearly from this book is that Cnut would have objected strongly to being described as a Viking king, he was no grab and go viking, instead a typical seize and stay conglomerating early medieval monarch who worked very hard on his Royal credentials - building relationships with the Church and fellow European monarchs - to the point of claiming fictive kinship with Edmund Ironside the son of AEthrelrad Unrad, he rolled around the countryside investigating mysterious homicides - until he recognised a pattern - they had all been carried out by Danes, fought several battles against Cnut, after his defeat they drew up a peace treaty that split England in two (north and south of the Thames) with Edmund acknowledging Cnut as a brother, where upon Edmund died possibly of sickness or of wounds, no suspicion of foul play apparently as the basis of his English rulership.

The basic problem with Cnut's reign (regnant 1016-1035 AD) is the evidence (or lack of it) available - consideration of this takes up one chapter. There are three variants of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (all reproduced in the book) these may have been written late and the dates may have slipped in places, plus the entries for the late period of Aethelred II, when he was eventually faced by a Danish invasion led by cnut's father, are apparently self consciously literary and written for effect rather than as a bald narrative of events, plus there are also scraps from Thietmar of Merseburg & History of the Archbishops of Hamburg-Bremen among others as well as later, post Norman conquest English works The History Of The English People, 1000 1154 and John of Worcester, the Domesday book (inevitably - for such possible evidence as there is of lands given to Cnut's followers) - a few charters - but as per from memory to written record - many anglo-saxon charters are forgeries, although Lawson does try to make some positive use of some definite forgeries on the grounds that the monk producing the forgery would have done his best to make it convincing and so may, in the choice of witness, give a useful indication of local power structures at least as imaginatively reconstructed at a somewhat later date how valid or useful an approach this is you can decide for yourself, there are also some law codes, however many laws are simply repetitions of earlier ones or borrowed from mainland Europe - particularly the canons of local church councils. Injunctions against men having multiple sexual partners suggest that Cnut wasn't particularly closely involved in the production of these law codes since he is known to have had both a wife - Queen Emma - sister of the Duke of Normandy (& widow of the above mention king of England - Aethlred the Unready) and a long term relationship with AElfgifu of Northampton who may have been instrumental in winning Cnut the Kingdom through her family network in Northumbria. Archaeological evidence is not considered, save for Lawson pointing out that he is no expert in numismatics and so doesn't feel up to evaluating the evidence from coins. Queen Emma was a canny woman and had a history produced to explain her actions and justify herself to posterity - this does the remarkable job of sweeping her first marriage under the carpet and not mentioning the children she had by Aethlred. This is actually not a bad haul of evidence for the time, we're relatively well informed about Cnut, or at least his English activities, he was also King of the Danes, ruler over Norway (most of the time) and obscurely in the sense that not much is known about it over part of Sweden too.

Lawson starts out in his introduction by considering even before the Danish take over how far Anglo-Saxon culture was part of the Scandinavian sphere - this is the era of Beowulf after all, the longest poem in Old English -which has a Swedish hero and is set in Denmark & Sweden, and in both Scandinavia and England there were similar patterns of organisation in both regions of hundreds (an administrative division) and assemblies, it is impossible to determine if this came about due to conscious imitation or to parallel developments, likewise Scandinavian settlement was so long entrenched in certain English regions by the time of Cnut that Norse personal names were not unusual and therefore may not indicate a recent migrant.

Lawson's book reminded me of how much I got from unification and conquest, Lawson by contrast is diffident, he lacks the ideas or doesn't share the insight to pull together the divergent threads and have the reader think 'wow', instead ideas are pushed around a plate as they cool down. The idea that Cnut was influenced by mainland notions of sacral kingship is interesting, but under developed, for all that he walked the last five miles barefoot to St Cuthbert's shrine (always a wise move to appear humbly before a vindictive saint) or likewise the reinterpretation of the famous stories of Cnut commanding the tide to turn back as demonstration of the power of God compared with the powerlessness of an earthly ruler, the flip side of this theatre of sacral monarchy is that it worked to enhance regal authority. The king was not just any man but a man, the man who could be compared with God.

Lawson is tantalising about family relationships but inconclusive, pointing out the dense webs of family connections that seemingly controlled appointments to certain bishoprics, also how Northamptonshire woman in the person of AElfgifu was what won Cnut the kingdom, that she was later sent to Norway was regent for their son Harold raises the possibility that her family connections were on both sides of the North Sea, or more simply that she was both judged sufficiently competent and acceptable as a political heavyweight to fulfil that role ( or more negatively non-threatening to the Norwegian nexus of powerful families). Equally the role of Emma is allusive, did marriage to her function as a claim to the kingdom or just to create a relationship with the Duchy of Normandy?

One of the great problems for Lawson is explaining the collapse of the kingdom under AEthelred, in part he puts this over as a taxpayer's revolt, pointing out that the costs of fighting far outweighed the attempts to buy off the Danes and the reluctance of local notables to tax themselves. Despite which, local levies seem to have fought fairly well while national armies under performed in that they preferred not to fight bu to cut deals with the Danes instead. This remains obscure and inexplicable in Lawson's account.

Lawson takes as read the argument that Anglo-Saxon England was administratively more complex and capable than its neighbours, but without going into the controversy, this is typical of the book, it highlights difficult areas but doesn't explore them or ignores conflicting views when the author wants and is lacking in terms of the analysis. However Lawson provides a nice summary in one short volume of Cnut as an English King. Lawson points out that ultimately Cnut was unlucky, had he lived as long as William the conqueror and one of his sons as long as Henry I then things would have been quite different - the key to political success in the middle ages was a long life - being able to out live rivals, you could eventually get your way simply through repetition. As it was his regime fell apart fairly rapidly and under Edward the Confessor drifted out of the Scandinavian world and closer to Normandy.

[Katherine Simmons · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good academic essay on one of the early medievil kings, but dry (ironic given the best known story of Cnut) and a tad dusty.
If you have an interest in this era then it will be worth a lot to you as the information and bibliography are top notch.

[Sonya · Rating 3 out of 5]

A scholarly work and obviously not intended for a mass audience. He discusses Cnut as much as the sources allow but also includes topics such as coins (in great detail), laws, and information on his followers. He admits that there is scanty, reliable information on Cnut and does seem to do his best to give the reader a sense of the man and the times. His main sources are a couple of letters, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles, and a source that his wife, Emma had done after Cnut's death. His main argument is that Cnut was one of the greatest pre-Conquest monarchs. I agree with him somewhat but I still think Alfred and his son may top the list before him. A recommended book for a scholar of Anglo-Saxon history.

[Best British Biographies · Rating 2 out of 5]

When Michael Kenneth Lawson’s book originally was published in 1993, it was the first new biography of Cnut since L. M. Larson’s Canute the Great came out in 1912. Because of this, Lawson was able to benefit from the considerable amount of scholarly work on Anglo-Saxon England in the intervening decades on the era, which not only allowed for a more informed interpretation of Cnut’s life but a more Anglo-centric account of his reign as well.

For the rest of my review, click on the link:

https://www.bestbritishbios.com/2020/...

[Victoria · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book. I picked it up after having read another book touching on the pre Conquest kings and thought it would be interesting to find out a bit more about Cnut.

The book is not without issues however. There is relatively little information available on Cnut. The author does his best with the material he has at his disposal but naturally his results in an amount of conjecture and supposition. This is perhaps true of all historical books however so I don't penalise him too harshly for this.

The writing style is at times rather dry - the book reading more as a Journal article. This didn't bother me as training in Law I have read many a Journal article and am used to how they read and at times how dry they can be. It may put off more casual readers however.

Overall the author does reasonably well with the source material available to him and I did learn more about the life of Cnut and the situation in England at the time.

[Rebecca · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is quite a dense academic read for those with just a general interest in Cnut. I enjoyed reading about the build up and history of Cnut before he became King of England and a few other chapters on interesting aspects but the last few chapters were tough going due to the amount of names from records and names of records mentioned. A bit overwhelming.

[Aleksander · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is not for the casual reader, and I didn't finish it. First, the main culprit in my case is ChatGPT, whom I had asked for a book to give an overview of the Danish conquest of England. This book is *definitely* not that. It gives no overview, and instead goes into extreme detail about the sources we have for the conquest. So I simply had the wrong book.

But to go a little further, I can't really envisage any situation where I would want to read this book. Even if I had a good understanding of the conquest before reading, and needed no refreshment even about tiny details, I would have found this book utterly confusing. The title suggests it's a biography of Cnut. That's.... kind of true, but it's a very peculiar kind of biography. I think a better title might be "Speculations about the sources we have on a thousand details concerning Cnut and his relationship with England".

It doesn't chronologically narrate events to then explain them; it just mentions events that happened, often seemingly at random, but casually as if we obviously know all the details about the events already, and then lists the various sources we have for the event, connecting them with phrases like "but if we are to believe Adam of Bremen..." or "and perhaps John of Worcester wasn't entirely wrong when he wrote...".

I'm sure the author's speculations of which sources to believe are well-founded, but despite the long and verbiose sentences on each source, I often can't tell what the basis for his beliefs are. Why should we not believe Adam? Why was I supposed to believe John of Worcester was entirely wrong before I read this sentence? Maybe I'm supposed to be intimately familiar not just with all the details of what happened, *and* with the sources for them, but *also* with a host of academic controversies about the sources, before I get started with this book.

But even if I had all that background knowledge, I would still find the structure of this book perplexing. The chapters and subchapters are soooort of chronological, but the "narrative" really jumps back and forth all the time. And there is *no reason* not to give a short overview of the timeline before going into detail of individual events in a largely random order.

This is made all the more clear when the author describes events outside England, such as the various mentions of events in Norway. Even when he goes into detail about those, he *first* gives a short summary of what happened; what viking came from where to defeat whom and to become king of Norway when. Yes, that kind of extremely basic set-up is almost completely absent from the main narrative.

On the topic of Norway: the author seems to have a strong dislike of the Norse sagas as sources of history. He writes:
"Few historians today place much trust in the sagas (...) as sources for the eleventh century..." I'm pretty sure that's just... wrong? Of course many historians of the eleventh century often use the sagas as sources. Except for Lawson; he does actually not cite them. Instead, he cites the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Adam of Bremen and John of Worcester, and a few others. I'm sure this is reasonable for the subject matter, but... I don't know, he just seems categorically dismissive without giving much reasoning. Even though the entire book is about where we can trust the various sources he does use, and where we can't.

Reading between the lines, using Wikipedia and ChatGPT, and leveraging the little I did know about the conquest beforehand, I managed to squeeze some new connections and insights from the half of the book that I did read. But it wasn't easy, and I don't think it would have been easy no matter how prepared I had been.

[Peter Fox · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a book that I thought I'd enjoy more than I did. I found the readability to be on the patchy side. It's got some interesting sections, but there were just as many where I found the writing to be dull. In fact there were bits where my mind kept wandering to such burning issues as what were the 1st round categories on Bullseye. There are some elegant writers out there, but unfortunately Lawson isn't one of them.

Partly this is due to what he has to work with, ie, the lack of sources for Cnut's reign. This means that Lawson has had to look further afield to find his material and so a lot of late and not especially reliable sources are utilised. Lawson isn't quite as critical of them as I'd like, especially the Skaldic verses. He's quite keen on a poorly attested claim that Edmund Ironside was allied to the Welsh, who fought on his side. This hasn't been mentioned in the books I've read on Æthelræd and probably for good reason. Another example is a late Danish source that suggests that Harold Bluetooth established his authority over the English, with Lawson suggesting that this is possibly reflected in the presence of Aescferth, a Northumbrian hostage at Maldon, but given the silence of other sources this early Danish domination doesn't seem at all likely.

There are other things that I wasn't that convinced of, such as Wessex-North differences reflecting a split upon the boundaries of ancient kingdoms – I see this as being better explained through faction and geographical facts (ie, the core of the English realm was in the south). His comment about raiders facing only local forces and the English being incompetent in not meeting them with a unified force overlooks how difficult it is to concentrate a large enough force quickly enough to meet them, until at least during the later stages of Æthelræd's reign.

This book doesn't stay in England, but takes in Denmark and the Baltic, too, which should be good. However, these parts were pretty confusing with a lot of names being mentioned in quick succession. Similarly, whilst the church section is pretty good, mostly because the sources are firmer, when it gets to events only covered by late sources, it then becomes a chore to read. The section on Danes who gained land quickly became a sea of names and places and got repetitive.

I wanted to enjoy reading this, but found it hard work and never really felt enthusiastic about picking it up. For a book with 200 pages on a king that I knew relatively little about, I came away with very little new firm knowledge.

[Shake n' Vac]

An interesting, and yes scholarly account, of Cnut, although I would not place it out of the grasp of the general reader. The problem is of course is that so little is known about the subject, which is freely admitted in the book, which results in the fact that I can only ever read on the period for general interest; the good thing in this book is that Lawson does not go on a fictional tour to make up for it. I would recommend it, although you will get more out of it if you have at least some general background of those involved and the period.

[Royce Ratterman · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not enough direct information is available for King Cnut, but this work provides multiple 'supporting' works, as well as other historic records/references. Read for personal historical research.
I found this work of some interest and its contents helpful - star rating relates to the book's contribution to my needs.
Overall, this work is an OK resource for the researcher and enthusiast.

[Tim Phillips · Rating 3 out of 5]

Really well researched, but very much focused on sources, academically spot on so it's difficult to actually fault it, but not the Dan Jones type rock 'n roll narrative history that I prefer. And to be honest easier to read.

[Claire Biggs · Rating 3 out of 5]

While there isn't much evidence for Cnut it was interesting to find out about his life, you have to make sure you concentrate on reading as there are a lot of people with the same names and it jumps a bit all over the place

[Ron Nurmi · Rating 4 out of 5]

A historian tells about the reign of King Cnut of England and his life. It discusses the problem of writing history when there is little direct evidence available and sometimes the information is wrong or misleading. This is for readers who enjoy history.

[Kathryn Bullen · Rating 2 out of 5]

Very obviously well researched, but quite a challenging read. Canute is a character we now often only remember from the myth/story of attempting to the turn back the tide, and the book promised an insight into this interesting era in history. So much detail is given, but somehow it disappoints as the style is stodgy. I feel it could have been more engaging, whilst still retaining the detail.

[Phil Grant · Rating 1 out of 5]

Poorly organized and strictly written in the most bland and unappealing academic style. Not in anyway a page turner which is unfortunate since it is informative and detailed.