Cnut: The North Sea King

""Cnut: The North Sea King" by Ryan Lavelle is a short and engaging biography of the most ambitious and successful Scandinavian leader of the Viking Age. Lavelle captures both the brutality and pragmatism that allowed Cnut to govern England effectively for almost two decades, despite being an outsider and a foreign conqueror. In 1066 and All That (1930), a parody book of English history,"

"Across six chapters, he begins with Cnut's conquest of England in 1016, then covers the brutality of his early regime and succession to the Danish throne in 1018. Chapter Four shifts to his conquest of Norway in 1028 and his relations with Normandy and Germany, while Chapter Five explains Cnut's approach to the church. Finally, the book concludes with Cnut's death in 1035 and the fall of his empire shortly after."

"While Lavelle considers it unlikely that Cnut was involved in Edmund's death, his early rule was violent and bloody. Arriving from his Danish homeland in 1015, still in his late teens, Cnut's initial attempt at conquest in England was only partly successful. His long campaign against the English warrior king, Edmund Ironside (r. 1016), ended in a stalemate and a treaty to divide England, until Edmund died a few months later, and the whole kingdom fell to Cnut."

Cnut arrived from Denmark in 1015 as a teenager and waged a protracted campaign against Edmund Ironside that ended in a division of England and, after Edmund's death in 1016, Cnut's rule over the kingdom. Early governance combined violence with pragmatic consolidation, and Cnut succeeded to the Danish throne in 1018. He conquered Norway in 1028 and managed relations with Normandy and Germany while cultivating a cooperative relationship with the church. His reign stabilized Anglo-Scandinavian rule for almost two decades. Cnut died in 1035 and his North Sea empire quickly unraveled after his death.

Read at World History Encyclopedia