Part 9: Canute and Ælfgifu

The Fate of Ironside

Edmund Ironside faced great Canute alone. Edmund proved an able general. Four times did Danes lay force to England’s shores; four times did Edmund’s lesser-numbered men turn them away. But then, as Fates bewove, at Assadun, Canute broke through and routed Edmund’s men.

This is how Canute did best old Ironside. Bards of England’s side tell grim dissemblement of Cnute’s foul raiders on that day in Assandun.[1] Bishop Eadnoth Younger, he of Dorchester, were up and slain by men of Danish March, whilst he perpetrated, ere, the act of saying mass, for Edmund and his hearty men! Eadnoth’s hand was first boned for a ring, and then his body cut to pieces whilst he lived and breathed. So Edmund and his doughty fighting-men were forced to battle then without the blessing of the Lord to hold them fast, for never did the blessing they receive! The Danes called Anglish Bishops heathen men, whilst Englishmen swore up that oath, the same, upon the brows of Danish clergy’s skein.

And who of men so great’s the folly say? It seems that God had Him the better office on the Continental wære, for Denmark’s flourish overwhelmed the Anglish players there.

Deposèd from the throne was England’s king! Edmund fled the field and took up residence in his ancestral home of paltry Wessex, and Canute took all the greater part this, the Anglestead.

And so Canute the Great, the Prince of Denmark’s shores, so won the throne of England through diplomacy of steel and blood and guile and bone. By sword-craft wrought he swift enconquerment of Albion; gay little shirt-tail cousin[2] realm of comely Albion. ‘Twas brutal culmination of his fore-kin’s centuries of pillage ‘gainst these Anglish shores.

Edmund fled to Wessex, to his family possessions in that petty kingdom there. Due to Edmund’s skill upon the fields of valor won, the Danes left Edmund there to live instead of sacking Cerdacingas lands. Edmund died, no less, within a score of weeks, from cold and damp. And only then did great Canute seize Wessex, and so knit all England there beneath him.

In 1018, Canute the Great ascended to the Danish throne at last. He was their gerent and their king. The crowns of Danish March and Albion were then united on his brow. Canute, he khabuthon[3] of Danes; commander of the mercantile forces; font of sovereignty at fore; and fulcrum to shift fate of Firmament at this, the turning point, in Dane and English lore.

Canute then ruled above the Danes and Anglo-Saxons too. And also for a time did Cnute rule Norway, making up a North Sea Empire true.

Statecraft of Canute the Great

And how did this great king keep all these holdings dear to him? Through statecraft; for he was as wise in peace as was at war. Canute accepted Christianity some time earlier within that last decade to better mark his people home in Denmark and abroad in English skein. The churches that his army sacked, he had rebuilt through Danish silver paid to Saxon hands. And also he established holy days to honor Edmund and his father, Æthelred, upon the anniversaries their deaths to show his sympathy for these near defeated men.

Canute united Dane and English under his strong governance. He then proceedeth strengthening their sibling bonds; ministering to the Angle’s land with vigor and good counsel. When the nobles of the island fawned upon him and paid homage, Great Canute rebuked them in their folly, for he had no vanity.

He bade them, “Marry, treat me as your liege. But pray, no badinage do pay to me. Your needling, mewling parody dost sour me’s the milk of your good counsel, which doth nourish of a newly king.”

Dominion lent the Danish licensenture the maritimes of Ireland-and-England-in-between. Danish granditure[4] and commerce brought to all the islands of Britannia; to the Gaelic Norse upon the Emerald Isle. Further, Diocesian capture of the Bishoprics between then Ireland and Bremen Town in Germany led to Danish domination over Rome in broad expanse. The Danish clergymen negotiated with the Pope for favorable tribute rates and goodly prices on necessities of ministry. And Great Canute controlled the roads to Rome within his purview, and did by toll of pilgrims overfill his coffers full.

His power and his wisdom managerial he used to knit the British Isles to the Jute’s peninsula. And did he raid against the Norse in Norway and in Sweden then.

The peoples of Northumberland, Five Boroughs, Middlefolk and Anglia descended eld from Angles, Saxons, and some Scandinavians. Three centuries of raiding from the Vikings on these coasts to the Northeast enblended the enpeoplement to pleasant, warm degree. These peoples honored all their ancestors as such, and thus had in them love for great Canute as one of them, their own.  The peoples of Wessex, Kent and Mercia had nary Scandinavian within their lineage, and were they more suspicious of a foreign king; especially the Cerdic[5] men of Wessex. Canute’s wise deference to English history, as well as peace he brought throughout the land (in contrast with the prior reign) won over all these men in short eventuality to honor him as well they would an Anglo-Saxon king.

Great Canute was welcoming to English knights into the ranks of houseguards, the elite of Danish and Norwegian warriors, if only in small numbers. Learnt they of each other’s ways and so achieved good discipline and comity between them. Thus, the upper crust of Denmark and of Anglestead were further knit through feudal and through martial obligation. Through to this latter day, the knights of England keep the way and armor of the houseguard of the Danes. Should ever there a battle come to England’s shores again, these knights attend, and shew the Danish ways.

Canute ensured the safety of the English from the raids of Viking men, for he controlled the greater part of them. Also did he split the country four ways, into Earldoms: Wessex, Merciaside, Northumberland, and then East Anglia.

Swein, his issue primate from his early wife Ælfgifu, he appointed up to serve as ruler over Norway in 1026. An afterthought. Put he plain Ælfgifu there in charge as well for she had shown the wit of men she paced ere in the East, and granted to her powers of a King; a Steward of the land she was to be. Swein, the son, he aged twelve, was regent. Ælfgifu, the head of state. In ’28, their conquest over Norway was complete (although dependent on the Jarls of Lade as well you may remember say’d.)

In sidewise, let us mark that Sweyn’s harsh rule upon this Norway and the Ladesmen in particular was marked by harsh taxation, as the skalds of that grim time do say:

Ælfgifu's time

long will the young man remember,

when they at home ate ox's food,

and like the goats, ate rind.[6]

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[1] An English town. It is unknown exactly where it lay; likely in Essex, Northeast of London.

[2] Shirt-tail cousin: relative by custom, not blood.

[3] Primitive Germanic for “top of the body” or “top of a slope;” also “chieftain.” In Old Norse, the word is hofuð.

[4] Hegemony.

[5] The ruling family of Wessex was the Cerdicingas clan.

[6] A verse by her Icelandic contemporary, Sigvatr Þórðarso.