King Cnut (Canute)
990 – 1035 · Generation V · King of England, Denmark and Norway (r. 1016–1035)
Cnut the Great (990–1035). King of England, Denmark and Norway (r. 1016–1035). Married Emma of Normandy in 1017. Historians call his three realms the North Sea Empire, and he worked to make conquest hold, drawing his Danish and English subjects together through common prosperity and custom. After ten years of fighting rivals in Scandinavia he took Norway’s crown at Trondheim in 1028, and in 1031 Malcolm II of Scotland submitted to him, though that hold proved slight and did not outlast him. Travelling to Rome for the coronation of the Holy Roman Emperor, he won his bishops relief on the cost of the pallium and his subjects relief from road-tolls on the way to Rome, writing home as king “of all England and Denmark and the Norwegians and of some of the Swedes.” The historian Norman Cantor called him the most effective king in Anglo-Saxon history; popular memory prefers the tale of the king and the tide.
Partners
- Married Emma of Normandy (985 – 1052) in 1017 — one child together
Children
- King Harthacnut (1018 – 1042)
Life
- 990 — Born
- 1017 — Married Emma of Normandy
- 1017 — Canute marries Emma of Normandy, the widow of Aethelred II. Canute divides England into four earldoms - Northumbria Wessex, Mercia and East Anglia.
- 1027 — Canute makes a pilgrimage to Rome to demonstrate his alliance with the Church, and attends the coronation of the Pope
- 1028 — In addition to his existing kingdoms Canute becomes King of Norway
- 1035 — Died
- 1035 — Canute dies at the age of 40, and his huge Northern European empire disintegrates.