Original subtitles

This is a story of conquest,

betrayal and courage.

The story of a son of a Viking sovereign

forged in the shadow of battle.

A man destined for nothing, yet fated to build an empire.

He was larger than life in his lifetime

and is somebody who had wide ranging achievements

that surprised even many of his contemporaries.

The story of a man who became ruler of three Kingdoms.

A Viking who became an emperor.

He's one of the great medieval success stories.

What he does, we have no word for, it's completely new.

This is the legend of Knut,

Emperor of the North Sea.

Following a bitter war against Edmund Ironside...

...and after Edmund's mysterious death...

...Knut was crowned King of England.

To consolidate his rule,

he entrusted key regions of his kingdom to his Scandinavian allies.

He then married Emma, the widow of Aethelred,

thereby setting aside her two sons' claim to the throne

and avoiding a war with the Duchy of Normandy,

where they had sought refuge.

Above all, Knut succeeded where Aethelred had failed.

And certainly, Viking raiding stops,

that we can be absolutely certain of. It just stops.

And that's the real power that they've got

to appeal to the English,

is that they can give the English peace.

Knut's reign is now unchallenged in England.

All have bowed to his rule.

All except one.

Olaf Haraldsson sets sail for the Atlantic.

The Viking chieftain knows these dark waters better than anyone.

He has sailed them dozens of times,

leading raids and plundering expeditions from England to France

and as far as the shores of Spain.

Olaf Haraldsson is another rather fascinating character

who features in the narrative.

He is a potential heir to the Norwegian royal family.

Perhaps a descendant of Harald Fairhair,

who was the first to unify the Norwegians.

At the time, he was clearly one of those famous adventurers

seeking to amass wealth and prestige abroad

before perhaps returning home.

But in the year 1014...

...whilst the war between the English and the Danes rages,

a new player on the stage is about to turn

everything upside down...

...and seal his fate.

For a period up until 1014 or 1015,

Norway was essentially a vassal state of the Danish empire

under Sven Forkbeard.

But the death of Sven Forbeard saw an opportunity

for Olaf Haraldsson,

who had been active in England and elsewhere in Europe,

to have an opportunity to gain power within Norway

and overthrow that Danish overlordship.

Region after region...

...village by village...

...Olaf rallied the local chieftains to his banner.

He promised unity, law, and the one true God.

His long years spent in the West had taught him that the Christian faith

is a strong instrument of power.

A weapon he would turn against the dynasty of Erik of Lade,

those vassals of Knut who still held Norway under their control.

Erik de Lade is no longer there.

His brother, however, is still the jarl who rules Norway.

But Olaf Haraldsson very quickly manages to gather allies,

overthrow Danish rule in Norway and become King of the Norwegians.

By taking Norway,

Olaf not only reduced Danish influence...

...he showed that Knut was not invincible.

Today, he rules over the northern lands.

Tomorrow, Denmark will tremble at his feet.

Knut is stunned.

His elder brother Harald is dead.

Crowned King of Denmark upon their father's death,

he passed away without leaving an heir.

Ultimately,

all the men in his family are almost all now dead.

He is, in the end, a quite isolated man.

And now, he must ensure the continuity of his rule over Denmark,

which is his father's kingdom, that of his ancestors,

he must preserve at all costs from a symbolic standpoint.

And that doesn't make things easier.

Immediately, Knut sends an envoy across the North Sea...

...to Roskilde in Denmark.

He bears a message of the utmost importance.

As the last heir to his dynasty, Knut lays claim to the crown.

But are the kingdom's nobles prepared to recognise as king

a man who left his homeland nearly three years ago?

There have been separate rulers in different parts of Denmark

and many of their heirs still exist.

So there's plenty of people in Denmark who are probably

chomping at the bit,

waiting for an opportunity to see chinks in the armour.

So in order to become king in Denmark,

Knut certainly has to show up in person

To make matters worse,

a Slavic people from the shores of the Baltic Sea,

the Wends,

are said to be taking advantage of the political instability

to ravage southern Denmark.

If Knut does not act quickly,

there may soon be nothing left of his father's legacy.

So, without delay, Knut raises a fleet.

The situation is becoming quite concerning;

we are ultimately left with Knut who is potentially on the verge

of losing his dominion over Scandinavia.

We often forget Knut is Danish, he's not English.

An enormous amount about the invasion of England

is to secure Denmark.

And that's very commonly overlooked

is that his ambitions are all over Scandinavia.

They're not so much in England.

So England is a means to an end.

For the first time in nearly three years,

Knut crosses the North Sea.

At his side stands a young English lord...

...Godwin, the future earl of Wessex.

Godwin is this meteoric figure.

As meteoric as Knut himself.

He's a son of somebody in the minor nobility.

And then suddenly, after Knut's conquest,

he makes his way up the ranks of the earls.

Once on shore, Godwin orders his troops to set up camp.

Ironically, it is now the Anglo-Saxons

who are setting foot on Danish soil.

Ultimately, at this stage, he is no longer conquering England

with an army of Scandinavians;

he is in Scandinavia with an army of Englishmen, now led by Godwin.

Now, Knut is an English king attempting to restore order

in a part of his empire that is slipping from his grasp,

just where he should have been most secure:

his ancestral lands, particularly Denmark.

In the sleeping camp...

...Godwin gathers his men...

...and leads them to the Wends' camp.

The Slavs, caught in their sleep, barely have time to react.

And little by little...

...the night falls silent once more.

Godwin sets off secretly at night

without informing the king, accompanied by the English,

to attack his enemies;

he wins a brilliant victory, forces his enemies to surrender,

kills many of them, takes a few prisoners,

and when the king rises the next day,

he realises that Godwin has vanished from the battlefield.

He suspects there has been a betrayal.

At dawn, Knut is furious.

His English troops are missing.

For him, there is no doubt about it: these traitors have deserted.

Determined to lead his men into battle alone,

he advances towards the enemy camp.

But instead of an army ready for battle,

he discovers a pile of corpses and blood.

Godwin has already been there.

And it was, in fact, from this period,

the second half of the 1020s,

that Godwin truly became the number one.

In a way that is now systematic and undisputed,

I can say that this is inevitably a testament

to the operation's authenticity

but as for Godwin having been there, I have no trouble believing it.

That he played an important role, why not;

that he was very powerful afterwards and highly respected is undeniable.

Knut enters the city in triumph.

The kingdom's nobles bow and acknowledge him as King of Denmark.

But Knut is no fool.

He knows that once he returns to England,

these very same men could turn against him

and steal the crown from him.

The problem for Knut is, is that he's going to have to always,

after the death of his brother Harold,

he's gonna have to keep going backwards and forwards

and backwards and forwards to England and Denmark.

And England and Denmark.

What he's really hunting for in each of his countries

that he comes to rule over,

he's hunting for that one person or agency

that can rule there for him.

To rule Denmark from England,

Knut put his son Harthaknut on the throne.

But how could this child,

born of his union with Emma of Normandy, possibly exercise power?

So Knut entrusted the regency to one of the most influential men

in the kingdom: Count Ulf.

Ulf is a powerful figure in his own right.

His family seem to have been powerful figures in their own right.

One gets the feeling Knut does not so much choose him

as is presented with him as a candidate

who's going to rule Denmark whether Knut wants him to or not.

And Knut was right to distrust him.

A strategic choice, but not without risk.

For Ulf is powerful and formidably ambitious.

So to maintain control,

Knut must ensure his loyalty, whatever the cost.

Knut married his sister to Ulf

and this seems to be part of this kind of continuation of a policy

of creating a web of connections

for Knut's kingship across the North Sea.

And it is striking that Knut marries him into the royal line

and gives him connection to his dynasty.

The marriage with Ulf is an attempt

to sort of domesticate Ulf through that marriage

and to make sure that he won't move against Knut.

Knut sets off for England,

leaving the shores of Denmark behind him.

But already, his ambitions are no longer limited to his two kingdoms.

Once Knut succeeds to Denmark,

it is the logical next step is then recreating that dominance

that his father traditionally enjoyed

over at least parts of Norway.

And the main opponent to that is Olaf Haraldsson.

Knut wants to unite Scandinavia under a single crown.

First Norway.

Then Sweden.

But what he doesn't know is that, lurking in the shadows,

his enemies might well strike before he does.

Eight years have passed since Knut established himself

as ruler of Denmark.

Now, his empire stretches from England...

...to the shores of Scandinavia, united by the North Sea.

Once seen as a mere Viking chieftain,

he is now recognised as one of Europe's greatest rulers.

A clear sign of this is that he is invited to the coronation

of Conrad II,

the most prestigious event of the century,

where the King of Germany

would become Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire.

It is a unique opportunity for him.

This is a major act of state.

He is someone wanting to position himself,

often in somewhat imperial manners himself, on the political stage.

And the biggest political player in Europe is Conrad II,

the ruler of Germany,

about to be crowned and consecrated emperor by the Pope.

This is the kind of society event of his entire reign

and it's not going to be repeated.

So he either has to be there in that moment or not.

But whilst Knut devotes himself entirely

to the preparations...

...he does not imagine that this journey could cost him

one of his kingdoms.

Olaf Haraldsson is sure that sooner or later,

the Dane will come to challenge him on his own soil.

So he summons his neighbour,

Anund Jacob, King of Sweden.

The two rulers hate each other.

But on that day, Olaf wants to seal a pact:

to join forces to challenge Knut and break his hold on the North Sea.

For people, and particularly rulers in the rest of Scandinavia,

Knut's growing power in Denmark is a cause for concern

because it raises the spectre of Danish domination.

And so as Knut takes over Denmark and consolidates authority there,

there is then a very real prospect of, well, where will he move next,

and the logical places are Sweden and above all Norway.

For Olaf, the best defence is to attack.

Together, they could conquer Denmark

and crush Knut's ambitions in Scandinavia.

But time is running out, as Conrad's coronation approaches,

and with it, a unique opportunity to strike.

Norway and Sweden and the Danish rebels,

they're assuming Knut is going to be completely focused

on his trip to Rome

and he's going to be sidetracked into that.

And they will have something like a year,

to key themselves in

before Knut can come back from Rome and then strike back.

Convinced they have free rein,

Anund and Olaf unleash their forces on Danish territory.

Never before had Knut's empire been so close to collapse.

Faced with this combined attack, Ulf hesitates.

Should he try to repel the invasion and remain loyal to Knut...

...or, on the contrary, take advantage of the chaos

to seize the crown?

Immediately, he gathers his key supporters around him.

So we have some sort of faction forming around Ulf

as it were

who is Knut's sort of immediate right hand in Denmark

who are attempting to throw off Knut's power.

Simultaneously and in concert with this,

we have the Norwegians under Olaf Haraldsson

who launch a full on invasion.

And at the same time, the Swedes launch an invasion

as well from Sweden.

And so all these forces either rise up in Denmark

or hit Denmark and occupy it at the same time.

And this is a disaster for Knut.

This is again one of these key moments in Knut's life.

Knut is furious.

The attack by the Norwegians and Swedes could not have come

at a worse time.

Waiting until Conrad's coronation to act would be risky...

...for the territories that have fallen into enemy hands

would be difficult to recapture.

So, after a decade of peace,

Knut the Viking goes to war again.

This is where Knut shows his tactical brilliance.

What he does instead,

he hastily pulls together as large a fleet as he can

from England and he sets sail,

picking up whatever Danish forces he can along the way.

And he sails around the top of Jutland.

Knut sets sail eastwards, towards Sweden.

His fleet reaches the mouth of the sacred river Helgea.

This is where Olaf and Anund have retreated

in the face of his surprise attack.

English sources say that it was a great battle,

but that the Swedes and Norwegians held the field.

Skaldic praise poetry, however,

paints this as a massive victory for Knut,

and it's hard to know what to make of this distinction.

So whatever happened there, it was also contentious enough,

a bit like the earlier conflicts with Edmund Ironside.

Clearly it wasn't the type of battle in which victory alone

led to achieving all the political aims you were hoping to achieve.

Knut retreats, but does not concede defeat.

He knows that his fleet remains one of the most powerful in Europe.

So he sets sail for the Oresund Strait,

the only route to the North Sea.

There, he deploys his ships and blocks the strait,

creating a virtually impassable barrier.

Olaf and Anund are trapped in the Baltic Sea.

Knut's managed to blockade the Norwegian Swedish alliance

and then travel to Rome for the coronation ceremony

of the new Holy Roman Emperor.

This was a way of Knut 's exercising

a degree of caution in his military strategies.

It's ensuring that force is going to be weakened

because of its inabilities to move further

into Danish territory or indeed get away.

So it bought him time.

And you could think of that, if this indeed had happened,

this is Knut at his supreme confidence.

The procession passes through Flanders, France...

...and then Italy.

Wherever he travels, Knut carefully cultivates his image.

He performs numerous acts of piety,

and distributes lavish gifts to the monasteries.

He explains it well,

and this is the reason he gives for setting out:

he went to Rome, essentially on a pilgrimage,

to visit all the churches shown to him,

and to make numerous donations along the way.

In doing so, he projects the image of the perfect prince,

almost a model king in an age when a Viking's son

wouldn't necessarily have been the obvious choice for such a role.

What remains of his Viking past?

He whose people, for decades, burned, plundered and ravaged

so many Christian sanctuaries across England

and throughout Europe.

The trip to Rome must have been of huge importance to Knut

as a figure who had been responsible for shedding so much blood

in Christian society at this time.

And he begins by talking about how he's in times of difficulty,

he's not always been a just ruler.

So part of that pilgrimage to Rome is about precisely that,

making amends for the sins committed in the process

of becoming the ruler of England and Denmark.

After several weeks of travel,

Knut finally enters the heart of the ancient city of Rome.

Although it has lost some of its former splendour,

its forums, temples and Colosseum still make it a city without equal.

Seeing Rome must have been a unique experience for Knut,

because he would not have seen any kind of city

on that scale before,

a city that had once housed perhaps as many as a million people.

A city teeming with relics and churches.

So I think for in all sorts of ways, spiritually, politically,

in all sorts of ways,

it would have been a truly unique experience

and would certainly have made a mark.

He wouldn't have seen anything like it before in his life.

At the top of a hill stands the holiest of holy places:

St Peter's Basilica.

It is here, before the greatest rulers of Europe,

that Conrad is about to receive the crown

from the hands of Pope John XIX.

At his side, a place of honour awaits Knut...

...a striking sign of the standing he has earned amongst the powerful.

Before his eyes, the coronation unfolds as a spectacle

of wealth and majesty,

where the glittering imperial crown embodies supreme authority.

One of the things in Conrad's coronation

that must have impressed itself upon Knut

is the sense of ritual and pageantry.

And so Knut would have been privy to a very unique

and spectacular display of monarchy and specifically imperial monarchy.

So there's a lot there that Knut might have wished to learn from.

And certainly his understanding of empire would have had to

have flowed out of his experiences of the one real existing empire

in the west, the empire of Conrad.

For Knut, it is a revelation.

England suddenly appears to him as the foundation stone

of a far greater edifice.

Going to Rome is probably the one event

that changed Knut's world outlook more than anything else.

This is when we start to see just the edges of imperial ambition.

We start to see again the Scaldic verse starts to shift

in ways that sort of nudges towards some sort of idea

that he's a king of kings, that he's above other kings in some way.

From that moment on, Knut had but one obsession:

to build an empire.

The Empire of the North.

For months, the fleets of Olaf and Anund have been trapped

in the Baltic, unable to break the blockade imposed by Knut.

Defeat now seems inevitable,

and the end of the fair weather

is the final blow to the troops' morale.

They came for a summer voyage.

They came with clothing and things,

for a summer voyage, which they came prepared.

They came to do a lightning strike in,

steal things, and go away and be paid off,

or to sit there and eat the food in Denmark and sit in Danish halls.

That's what they came prepared to do.

And suddenly these two forces find themselves locked

into that body of water with no way out.

And winter's coming.

As the cold sets in and supplies run low,

the stranglehold of the blockade tightens.

The Norwegians have no choice; if they want to survive,

they must abandon their ships.

Some of the sagas tell us you could still see the rotting boats,

on certain parts of the coastline,

from hundreds of boats left there by the Norwegian Army,

because eventually the Norwegian Army decide

they've got to walk home through the woods.

And so begins a long and terrible march...

...with death as it's only horizon.

Within a few weeks, the cold, hunger and wolves put an end

to Olaf's dreams and his great army.

Run!

You have to get long into Swedish history

before you find anybody else who attempted any form of journey

that was so stupid at winter time.

And when you get into those sort of numbers,

you're finding tiny percentages.

10% of the men, something like that,

will have come stumbling out of the forest on the other side.

Horribly frost burned,

and maybe half of those would have had crippling injuries.

The few survivors return home without glory,

and, above all, without booty.

Defeat leaves them humiliated and filled with bitter resentment.

Olaf must have promised vast amounts

to the Norwegian nobility.

That they were going down to Denmark,

they were going to steal everything,

they were going to eat Danish food, live there, key themselves in,

and most of them would come home happy men, rich and fat,

and live very good lives.

What instead happened is he took lots of people down there,

and he stumbles out the forest a year and a half later

with a very tiny number of frostbitten people

and the nobility who stayed behind say, right, where's the money?

Where's the payment? Where's the gold? Where's the food?

Where's the sheep? Where's the cows? Where's the goods?

And he has to say, I haven't got any.

We made a terrible tactical error.

That's not going to go down well at all. Surely.

On his return from Rome, Knut sets sail for Denmark.

Officially, to celebrate his victory...

...but in reality, to purge his kingdom.

Ulf's role during the campaign is unclear.

And Knut no longer trusts him.

The two men are at loggerheads.

Ulf tries to negotiate with his brother-in-law,

to talk things through with him.

Knut seems, though this is somewhat of a cliche in the sagas,

to maintain a deathly silence in his presence.

The atmosphere isn't exactly rosy.

Ulf thinks a quick game of Hnefatafl would be a good way

to lighten the mood. The two sit down and play together.

It turns out Ulf wins. So that creates a bit of tension.

Knut watches his brother-in-law closely.

Every one of his gestures betrays his duplicity.

Then Knut breaks the silence and raises his voice.

And Ulf realises his life now hangs by a thread.

He begins to vaguely try to explain himself

and, annoyed by the situation, Knut asks one of his followers,

then another, to simply kill Ulf outright.

But what can Ulf have expected?

I mean he couldn't be trusted again, he's Eadrit Strayner,

but in Denmark.

What did he really think was going to happen?

He has to die. It's unfortunate, but it's politics.

Ulf flees...

...and takes refuge in Roskilde Cathedral,

hoping to find protection there.

But nothing can stop Knut's fury.

On his orders, his men enter the sacred place...

...and, under the helpless gaze of the prelate...

...Ulf is coldly executed.

Ulf meets his end from a well-aimed blow of an axe

in Roskilde Church which later became a cathedral,

whilst he was praying.

Perhaps he was aware that his life hung by a thread,

but clearly the cathedral was of little help in this matter.

Knut sets sail for England.

In just a few months,

he has achieved what once seemed impossible.

He has risen to the ranks of Europe's greatest rulers.

He has defeated the Norwegian and Swedish armies.

And rid himself of the traitors who threatened his kingdom.

A victory he intends to share in a letter addressed

to all his subjects.

He styles himself King of England, King of Denmark, King of Norway

and part of Sweden.

He hadn't gone to Norway at this point.

But he feels, probably quite rightly,

in the Scandinavian sense,

he is the king of Norway and part the of Sweden,

because he's bested them on the battlefield.

From Knut's perspective, this representation of Knut

as king of the Norwegians

is something that Knut could see for himself as legitimate.

But of course, for many in Norway, this was not legitimate.

But to subdue Norway, a simple letter will not suffice.

For in the northern lands,

Olaf Haraldsson continues to defy him.

Knut desires more than anything to conquer Norway,

the kingdom that has eluded him time and time again.

But Godwin tempers his enthusiasm.

A new campaign would be long and, above all,

with no guarantee of success.

Norway's geography presents particular challenges for Knut.

It's high mountains, its fjords, its isolated communities,

has tended naturally to lead to a fragmented political system,

where it's quite possible in the Norwegian landscape

to set up a position of authority in one region

and be largely impervious to external influence.

If he cannot prevail by force,

then he will do so by cunning.

He knows that the crushing defeat at the River Helgea

still haunts people's memories...

...and that the imposition of Christianity is still resented.

A single spark would be enough to set the country ablaze.

This is something we see quite often with the conversion

of medieval peoples and kingdoms,

is that there's an initial move towards the new faith,

often quite a strong move,

and then eventually a counter reaction as people wish to leave it.

Some of those who converted choose to apostatize.

Others who never converted seek to reassert themselves.

The Danish fleet sails into the Nidaros Fjord,

when Norway capital lay.

Knut's ship glitters with gold in the sunlight.

Knut turned up not only with a ship covered in gold,

but he turned up with a ship full of gold.

He has the resources of England behind him,

so he can throw money at the problem as well as resource.

And this does mean that when it comes to a showdown

with Olaf, he both has troops he can potentially send there,

but he can also seek to buy people.

Knut distributes his wealth without counting the cost.

To some, he offers gold.

To others, honours.

In return, he has one demand:

that the nobles swear absolute loyalty to him.

Scandinavian kingship is an elective kingship.

Kings hold power because the nobility,

or significant factions of the nobility, say they can.

Scandinavian kings have to demonstrate constantly success.

It's about the fact that you have to demonstrate

that the gods are still with you.

You have luck every single time,

because the moment you don't have luck,

your power base drains away from you and you're left on your own.

And that's what happened to Olaf.

Olaf refuses to believe in defeat.

How could God have abandoned him,

the man who evangelised the northern lands?

So he gathers his last remaining followers...

...and leads his troops towards Nidaros.

But his former subjects, now loyal to Knut,

refuse him passage.

So with all the strength of his faith,

he throws himself into battle for one last fight.

That of a man rejected by his own people.

Olaf Haraldsson meets a group of courtiers,

many of whom are associated with Knut, but they are Norwegians,

and he meets them at a place called Stiklestad, and he dies.

He's killed by his own people.

And that is the end of Olaf Haraldsson

and his claims to Norway.

And from then on, the Danes rule perfectly happily.

After two decades of war and conquest,

Knut now reigns over a vast territory.

From England to Denmark and as far as the borders of Norway...

...everywhere he restores order and establishes his dynasty.

Knut is no longer just a king, he is an emperor.

The Emperor of the North Sea.

You can certainly say that Knut has achieved more than his fathers,

or perhaps rather has realised what their ambitions were.

He's centralised power in Denmark

further than any of his forebears would.

He's taken control of England.

That's really under his thumb and it's not going anywhere.

He's taken control of Norway.

He's made sure that the Danes never have to fear incursions

from the Norwegians. On top of that, he's met the Emperor.

So did he go further than his father and grandfather?

Miles, I mean miles past them

If that isn't a meteoric life of achievement,

I don't know what it is.

At the twilight of a reign that lasted 20 years...

...Knut had his throne erected on the shores of the dark waters

of the North Sea.

With his eyes fixed

on the relentless flow of the rising tide...

...he raised his voice...

...and commanded the ocean to recede.

People see it as a sign of hubris

that Knut's there thinking he can stop the waves,

thinking he can stop the inevitable.

And of course,

one might expect as much.

But the rising tide pays no heed to the royal command

and gradually washes over the king's feet.

Unmoved, Knut stares out at the sea that defies him.

He senses behind him the crowd of anxious and incredulous courtiers.

Then, very slowly, he rises.

His steely gaze sweeps over the silent assembly.

And what he says is at the end, as its feet are wet:

"Do you see my power as a temporal king,

a lord of the world? It's nothing before the lord of the heavens".

He's not God and he's not a saint.

He's saying, I can control lots of things in this world,

but I can't control that.

The story is designed to show him as a perfect Christian king

who is humble before God, as it were.

Gently, Knut removes his crown...

...then places it beside the Christ figure, as a sign of humility.

Here we are shown a king who is aware of the limits of his power,

who, despite his true power, has never succumbed to hubris.

He's always remained, if I may say so,

with his feet in the water, but also with his feet on the ground,

incapable of thinking himself to be more than he was.

And while it's a later fictionalised account,

I suspect it probably gets at the heart of his spirituality,

which may have been a rough one,

but seems to have been also a very genuine one.

And that Knut, I think, deep down, did always think

that it was God who'd given him his powers.

And so in that sense,

it probably is evoking something of his ethos of kingship.

Knut died peacefully on Wednesday 12th November 1035,

in Shaftesbury, Dorset.

He dies presumably from this weakness men in his family have,

some aneurysm, some stroke like thing.

He dies. He's gonna be about 40.

I think everybody who studies Knut needs,

on somewhere around their 40th birthday,

to look back, as we all do, as I did and say, what have I done?

Because it's nothing in comparison to him.

His remains were transferred

to Winchester Old Minster,

where he now rests alongside the greatest West Saxon rulers.

He leaves behind a legacy whose influence endured in England

for centuries.

Knut's legacy was to change the political system

within the English kingdom

and that idea that England could be conquered and ruled

by a foreign invader and legitimately controlled as such

must have been important, in the minds of contemporaries.

And it's interesting that Norman writers of this period

were aware Knut's legacy.

And perhaps in some sense,

that echo of Knut's conquest may have echoed through

into what William the Conqueror achieved in 1066

and after.

In 1034, his eldest son Svein had died prematurely,

soon followed by his two other heirs.

The crown then passed to Edward the Confessor,

son of Aethelred and Emma of Normandy.

In less than a decade, the empire built by Knut collapsed.

For, in reality, it rested solely on his authority.

Yet Knut the Viking remains etched in history,

in the pantheon of England's greatest kings.

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