MEDIEVAL WARFARE Volume 2.1 January 2012

1-962021

Theme: Creating a Viking empire - The Wars of Cnut the Great, king of Denmark, England and Norway.

The Vikings surreptitiously appear on the Anglo-Saxon scene in 789, with a murder recorded in the Chronicle of Florence of Worcester. Beaduheard, a reeve (a type of sheriff) of Wessex, confronted a raiding party, although 'entirely ignorant' of their identity. While seeking to drive them into a nearby town, his imperious manner cost him his life. The Chronicle remarks that 'these were the first Danes who ever came to England' (Chronicle of Florence of Worcester, entry for 789). William of Malmsbury's Chronicle states that the local population retaliated and scattered the Danes, who dropped their booty while fleeing. The same raiding party of three ships may have been responsible for another atrocity at Lindisfarne in June, 793, when the monastery of St. Cuthbert was sacked and 'heathen men' created 'lamentable havoc in the church of God (.) by rapine and slaughter' (The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, entry for 793). These violent attacks heralded the Viking Age.

Cnut was elected King of England in 1016 and inherited the Danish throne in 1018. As he consolidated his hold over these nations, he cast his eye towards Norway. For significant periods over the preceding century, the rulers of that nation were at least nominal vassals of the Danish Kings Harold Bluetooth and Sweyn Forkbeard, grandfather and father of Cnut. In the year 1000, Sweyn and his Swedish ally King Olof reconquered and divided Norway. Sweyn retained the southern coastal region known as the Viken, to be administered directly by Denmark. He granted the greater part of the nation to his Norwegian son-in-law, Earl Eirikr Hakonarson (or Eric of Norway), who ruled as a Danish vassal. Other parts of Norway became Swedish fiefs governed by Eirikr's brother Earl Sveinn Hakonarson.