Anglo-Danish Empire - A Companion to the Reign of King Cnut the Great

["Eldbj\u00f8rg Haug Chapter 17 Cnut\u2019s Gift of a Swithun-relic to \u201cDacia\u201d: A Gift to Denmark or Norway? Whereas the previous chapter has dealt with King Cnut\u2019s ecclesiastical policy gen- erally, this chapter will study his relationship with the cult of St. Swithun in Scan- dinavia and particularly Norway.1 My point of departure is a statement from the Vita S. Swithuni episcopi et confessoris (Life of St. Swithun the bishop and confes- sor) in the Latin legendary in the manuscript known as British Library, Lansdowne 436, according to which it is \u201cimmo in Dacia quo pars reliquiarium eius a rege Cnutone est translata\u201d (indeed in Denmark whither some of his relics were trans- lated by King Cnut).2 Michael Lapidge considered the statement to be \u201ca crucial piece of evidence for the cult of St. Swithun in Denmark.\u201d3 However, there are no other written sources to corroborate or falsify the information in this Vita. The aim of this chapter is therefore to see if we can trust this record of Cnut bringing a relic of St. Swithun to Denmark. In general, there is reason to be critical of a narrative whose focus is on miracles connected to the cult of a saint. Stories of this kind lie beyond empirical method and source criticism. On the other hand, the statement itself may be corroborated if we take into consideration all relevant sources for the cult of St. Swithun in medieval Denmark and its tributary lands. 1 Acknowledgments: I have over the years received important information and discussed several topics of relevance to this chapter with colleagues and friends, some of whom have passed away. I extend my thanks, in alphabetical order, to Haki Antonsson, Roberta Baranowski, Timothy Bolton, Jan Brendalsmo, Margaret Cormack, \u00d8ystein Ekroll, Alison Finlay, Astrid Forland, Clas Gejrot, Ildar Garipzanov, Erin Goeres, Trine Haaland, Eyvind Fjeld Halvorsen, Anne-Marit Hamre, Lars Ivar Hansen, Hallvard Haug, Alf Tore Hommedal, Steinar Imsen, Torstein J\u00f8rgensen, Espen Karl- sen, Halvor Kjellberg, Lars L\u00f8berg, Anne-Hilde Nagel, Jinty Nelson, Richard North, Paula Utigard Sandvik, Daniel Sheerin, and Steinunn J. Kristj\u00e1nsd\u00f3ttir. 2 BL, MS. Lansdowne 436, fols. 91v\u201395r (including Vita, chap. 6) is published in Lapidge, The Cult of St. Swithun, 701\u20133; see pp. 58, 613, 680\u201383. 3 Lapidge, The Cult of St. Swithun, 58, 701, 791. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1515\/9781501513336-018","380 Eldbj\u00f8rg Haug Cnut and St. Swithun in England Cnut\u2019s background as a Viking conqueror supports his image as a mighty monarch and successful politician.4 He had an important relationship with the English church. His role as legislator, his interaction with Winchester, and his generosity to the church are particularly interesting. Archbishop Wulfstan of York issued ex- tensive legal codes during the reigns of both \u00c6thelred and Cnut, in which both kings appear in a favorable light. It has been argued that Cnut\u2019s legislation was mostly a confirmation of older laws, but continuity was important in a society that was exhausted by war and faced a new dynasty.5 Cnut was cautious in his ap- proach to the clergy and to the people of Wessex, for whom Winchester was the political centre. His visit to the tomb of Edmund Ironside in Glastonbury Abbey at the beginning of his reign seems to have been a gesture of reconciliation.6 The same, at least where his archbishop of Canterbury was concerned, can be said of his part in the translation of the relics of St. \u00c6lfheah from London to Canterbury; Cnut seems to have been in his father\u2019s retinue when this archbishop was killed in the presence of several of the men who later became close to Cnut.7 Timothy Bol- ton has observed that Cnut\u2019s interaction with the church of Wessex after 1020 \u201cis marked by his benevolence.\u201d8 Cnut\u2019s interest in saints and their relics lies at the heart of this chapter. He gave a precious reliquary to the Old Minster\u2019s relic of St. Birinus.9 Evesham got the relics of St. Wigstan.10 Abingdon received a gold and silver reliquary for the remains of St. Vincent, valued at sixty pounds of silver.11 The relics of St. \u00c6lfheah were translated to the Old Minster and Christ Church in Canterbury, which also received relics of St. Bartholomew and perhaps the relics of St. Wendreda.12 Westminster received a fin- ger of St. \u00c6lfheah, an arm of St. Ciriacus, a relic of St. Edward, king and martyr, and some bones of St. George.13 St. Mildred\u2019s relics were translated from Thanet to St. 4 See for example the conclusion in Lawson, Cnut: England\u2019s Viking King, 193\u2013202. 5 Lawson, Cnut: England\u2019s Viking King, 59\u201365; Bolton, Empire of Cnut the Great, 83\u201386. 6 Bolton, Empire of Cnut the Great, 95. 7 ASC (DEF), s.a. 1023; Lawson, Cnut: England\u2019s Viking King, 33; \u201cTranslatio Sancti \u00c6lfegi,\u201d ed. Rumble and Morris, 285, 294\u2013315. 8 Bolton, Empire of Cnut the Great, 95. 9 Annales Monasterii de Wintonia, ed. Luard, 16. 10 Lawson, Cnut: The Danes in England, 243. 11 Chronicon Monasterii de Abingdon, ed. Stevenson, I, 433; II, 291. 12 ASC (D), trans. Swanton (s.a. 1023); \u201cTranslatio Sancti \u00c6lfegi,\u201d ed. Rumble and Morris, 287; Bolton, Empire of Cnut, 78\u201379 and n. 9, 80. 13 Bolton, Empire of Cnut, 87\u201388.","Chapter 17 Cnut\u2019s Gift of a Swithun-relic to \u201cDacia\u201d 381 Augustine\u2019s in Canterbury.14 Cnut also gave his consent to the relics of St. Felix being transferred from the royal manor of Soham to Ramsey Abbey.15 Let us take a closer look at the statement, in folios 91v\u201395r of BL, Lans- downe 436, that a relic of St. Swithun was translated to Denmark. In full, chap- ter 6 of the Vita reads: Tanta deinde illuc miraculorum copia in omni genere ualitudinum exhibita est, quantam nulla memoria hominis ante illud tempus alibi factam attingere potest. Nec solum ibi ob sancti sui merita diuina fiebant miracula, immo in Dacia quo pars reliquiarum eius a rege Cnutone est translata, et in Schirburnia ubi ymago eius extitit erecta \u2013 ubicumque etiam eius suffragia pie fuerunt innotata, optata sequebantur remedia. De quibus \u2013 quamuis multa in libro translacionis et miraculorum eius contineantur \u2013 breuitatis causa pauca hic subnectantur.16 [So great the supply of miracles was shown for all sorts of illnesses that no man\u2019s memory can treat of the like being accomplished anywhere else before this time. Not only did miracles take place there, where their saint had done his divine service, but also indeed in Denmark where some of his relics were translated by King Cnut, and in Sherborne, where a statue of him was raised \u2013 and in all places also, where supplications to him have piously been indi- cated, the hoped-for remedies have followed. Of which \u2013 however many of his translation and miracles be kept in the book \u2013 for brevity\u2019s sake only a few are subjoined here.]17 The narrative about Swithun in Lansdowne 436 is one of ten accounts in as many preserved manuscripts to include a Vita s. Swithuni. This anonymous vita enjoyed the widest circulation of any saints\u2019 vitae up to the invention of printing. All ten manuscripts of St. Swithun\u2019s Vita are copied from unidentified exemplars now lost. There are only broad and occasional affiliations between the surviving manuscripts, a divergence which, according to Lapidge, suggests that many more have existed. A stemma to St. Swithun\u2019s Vita is for this reason impossible.18 BL, Lansdowne 436 is a collection of some 27 lives of Anglo-Saxon saints that have not survived in any earlier form.19 This is a beautifully illuminated manuscript from the mid-fourteenth century, probably a transcript of the original 14 \u201cTranslatio Sancti \u00c6lfegi,\u201d ed. Rumble and Morris, 287. 15 \u201cTranslatio Sancti \u00c6lfegi,\u201d ed. Rumble and Morris; Cnut: England\u2019s Viking King, 32\u201333, 65, 111\u201347; Bolton, The Empire of Cnut, 79\u201380 and n. 9, 82\u201383, 87\u201388, 90, 95\u201398. 16 Lapidge, The Cult of St. Swithun, 701\u20133. 17 I extend my thanks to Espen Karlsen for helping me in the translation from Latin of this passage. 18 Lapidge, The Cult of St. Swithun, 623, 626. 19 The author did not have the opportunity to study BL MS. Lansdowne 436, and the descrip- tion of the manuscript is based on Ellis, Douce, and Petty, Catalogue of the Lansdowne Manu- scripts, 121; Grosjean, \u201cVita S. Roberti,\u201d 335\u201343; Lapidge, The Cult of St. Swithun, 622\u201327 and 699\u2013701.","382 Eldbj\u00f8rg Haug collection. Lapidge and Michael Winterbottom used this manuscript in their edition of Wulfstan\u2019s Life of \u00c6thelwold of Winchester. Rosalind Love used it in her edition of the Vita S. Birini, whose author was the same as the anonymous author of Vita S. Swithuni and Miracula S. Swithuni; St. Birinus was also connected to Winchester.20 A characteristic feature of the text is that the compiler frequently took consid- erable liberties with the texts he copied. The saints\u2019 vitae are abbreviated and re- dacted in various ways, and most of the texts in the collection are best described as redactions rather than copies of the vitae they represent. Lansdowne 436 may represent the work of one single redactor.21 It is worth noting that the manuscript was written in or for the Benedictine nunnery of Romsey in Hampshire, which be- longed to the diocese of Winchester. Presumably the compiler was either a nun in Romsey, or a monk writing for this house. At any rate, a pertinent hypothesis is that he or she had access to manuscripts from Winchester which are now lost. A full investigation of the manuscript might provide more clues as to what and how old those now lost sources, including the original Vita s. Swithuni, may have been, but nothing more seems to have been done since 2003.22 The first three chapters of Swithun\u2019s Vita in Lansdowne 436 are taken almost verbatim from the Gesta pontificum Anglorum (Deeds of the bishops of England), which was written by William of Malmesbury in ca. 1125. Most of the remainder, chapters 4\u20135 and 7\u201314, is an abbreviated version of the Miracula S. Swithuni, which was compiled in the very last years of the eleventh century. Since the Lansdowne 436 Vita s. Swithuni cannot be older than William of Malmesbury\u2019s Gesta, it is clear that the original Vita was written after 1125. The compiler men- tions that he or she had access to a book on saints\u2019 translations and St. Swithun\u2019s miracles. This fits with the Miracula S. Swithuni and the possibility should not be excluded that the compiler may have had other sources now unknown to us. Concerning the saint, we know very little of Swithun, except that he was consecrated as bishop of Winchester on October 30, 852 and died on July 2, 863. His cult started on July 15, 971, which was the day his relics were trans- lated by Bishop \u00c6thelwold of Winchester (963\u2013984) into the Old Minster from the prominent stone sarcophagus lying outside the building\u2019s west door.23 It is significant that the translation took place during \u00c6thelwold\u2019s reform of the 20 Wulfstan: Life of St. \u00c6thelwold, ed. Lapidge and Winterbottom, clxxxi; Three Anglo-Latin Saints\u2019 Lives, ed. Love, liv\u2013lx, lxxxii; Lapidge, The Cult of St. Swithun, 611\u201312 and 624. 21 Wulfstan: Life of St. \u00c6thelwold, ed. Lapidge and Winterbottom, clxxxi; Three Anglo-Latin Saints\u2019 Lives, ed. Love, liv\u2013lx, lxxxii; Lapidge, The Cult of St. Swithun, 623. 22 Wulfstan: Life of St. \u00c6thelwold, ed. Lapidge and Winterbottom, clxxxi; Three Anglo-Latin Saints\u2019 Lives, ed. Love, liv\u2013lx, lxxxii; Lapidge, The Cult of St. Swithun, 611\u201312 and 624. 23 For the historical Swithun and the translation, see Lapidge, The Cult of St. Swithun, 3\u201324.","Chapter 17 Cnut\u2019s Gift of a Swithun-relic to \u201cDacia\u201d 383 English church in ca. 975. Swithun was the central saint in Winchester during Cnut\u2019s reign in 1016\u20131035, and so the king must have considered the cult to be important, even if nothing is known of any veneration of St. Swithun by King Cnut. It has been suggested that he was buried not far from this saint\u2019s tomb in the Old Minster.24 The statement on Cnut\u2019s translation of Swithun to \u201cDacia\u201d in Lansdowne 435 can be neither corroborated nor disproved. Let us then turn to the receiving end of the gift and start with \u201cDacia,\u201d or Denmark, to see if we can find any traces of the relic there. A Cult of St. Swithun in Denmark? Some traces survive of a Danish cult of St. Swithun during the Middle Ages. Un- like the situation in England, no Danish annals or chronicles mention the saint.25 Out of the liturgical material, John Toy has registered two calendars in Danish archives that mention the saint, but neither is of Danish origin. One of them is Thott 143 2\u00b0, the \u201cFolkunga-Psalter,\u201d a treasure of the Royal Library in Copenha- gen, which consists of the calendar in which St. Swithun\u2019s mass is cited, a cycle of full-page illuminations from the life of Christ, and the Book of Psalms. The Psalter is one of more than 4,000 manuscripts bequeathed by Otto Thott (1703\u20131785) to the Royal Library in Copenhagen. It was produced in England during the lat- ter part of the twelfth century. Two added notes indicate that it was used by Dowager Queen Mechtilde of Holstein (ca. 1220\u20131288) in her second marriage (to the Swedish earl Birger Magnusson, ca. 1210\u20131266), and that it followed her when she returned to Denmark as a widow.26 The other calendar with St. Swi- thun, AM 733 4\u00b0 Kal, presently in the Arnamagnaean Institute in Copenhagen, was made for Apostelkirken (the Church of the Apostles), in Bergen, which was the main royal chapel in Norway as opposed to Mariakirken (St. Mary\u2019s Church), which was the royal chapel in Oslo.27 It was formerly part of the large codex AM 322 fol. which was used in Norway up to 1604. In 1714 it was registered in the cata- logue of Christian Worm\u2019s collection of books. He offered the codex to the Icelandic 24 Crook, \u201c\u2018A Worthy Antiquity,\u2019\u201d 173\u2013176. 25 Roskildekr\u00f8niken, ed. Gelting, 42\u201343, 48\u201349, 50\u201351. 26 English Saints in Liturgies, ed. Toy, 4; http:\/\/www2.kb.dk\/elib\/mss\/treasures\/midal\/thott_ 143.htm. 27 For another view, see English Saints in Liturgies, ed. Toy, 167, who holds that it was used in Mariakirken (St. Mary\u2019s Church) in Oslo.","384 Eldbj\u00f8rg Haug antiquarian \u00c1rni Magn\u00fasson who broke it into two parts and gave the calendar its present signature.28 None of these calendars was used in Denmark in the Middle Ages. However, Swithun\u2019s deposition on July 2, his translation on July 15 and, most astonishingly, his ordination as bishop on October 30, are recorded in the Ribe martyrology.29 The manuscript which contains this text, KB, Gl. Kgl. Saml. 849 fol., was written in the winter 1284\u20131285 and was a copy of the second edition of Usuard\u2019s martyrol- ogy. Although it cannot have been imported during the reign of Cnut, the fact that St. Swithun\u2019s mass days are written into the martyrology in the manuscript could point to the Danes\u2019 having a cult of this saint. The Ribe martyrology was also used as a necrology to ensure that annual masses were sung for those listed on their proper day of death. This is the reason why there are some additions to Usuard\u2019s martyrology of saints, and probably also why St. Swithun\u2019s three days of masses and commemoration were written into the manuscript. Although Swithun is mentioned among the confessors in as many as three lita- nies in Denmark, two of them were never used in the Danish church,30 while there is only one preserved manuscripts of Danish use in the archives. The Reformation cleared the churches of altars and relics. Some of them are remembered in medie- val inventories or in the names of medieval churches, but no such sources on Swi- thun are known from Denmark.31 The Reformation made the liturgical books obsolete and it was mainly the good-looking ones that were preserved. Nonethe- less, the pages of the less interesting books were widely used by bookbinders in the post-Reformation era, in which respect the accounts of royal income are partic- ularly worthy of study.32 So far, chapter 6 of BL Lansdowne 436, folios 91v\u201395r, cannot be corroborated by the known evidence from Denmark, but the Danish fragments have hardly been investigated and we should not exclude the possibility that some of them may yet reveal traces of a cult of St. Swithun. At the same time, there is another interpretation of \u201cimmo in Dacia quo pars reliquiarium eius a rege Cnutone est translata,\u201d the crucial sentence in 28 AM 733 4\u00b0 Kal. is a part of the manuscript AM 322 fol., but was given a separate signature by \u00c1rni Magn\u00fasson. Gustav Storm described it as \u201cd) Calendarium Romanum\u201d of AM 322 fol., in Norges Gamle Love, IV, 506\u20139. The text is printed in the footnote across 507\u20139. 29 See Andersen, \u201cMissale- og martyrologietraditioner,\u201d 79\u201389; English Saints in Liturgies, ed. Toy, 168. 30 KB, NKS 133 4\u00b0 Lit, and Thott 143 2\u00b0. Manuale Norvegicum, ed. F\u00e6hn, 162, 171; English Saints in Liturgies, ed. Toy, 4, 168. Was KB, Thott 143 2o originally used in Norway?. 31 An example from Denmark is Odense Cathedral, which owned a relic of St. Alban. 32 Pettersen, \u201cFrom Parchment Books to Fragments,\u201d 48\u201349. For an interesting example of how the parchments were used, see Gottsk\u00e1lk Jensson, Kjeldsen, and Stegmann, \u201cA Fragment of Norwegian Royal Charters,\u201d 3, 6, and figs. 1 and 2.","Chapter 17 Cnut\u2019s Gift of a Swithun-relic to \u201cDacia\u201d 385 Lansdowne 436. The Latin name of Denmark was Dania, whereas Dacia was the name of a province that the Roman emperor Trajan established in Transylvania, now in present-day Romania. In AD 271, the original Dacia was discontinued by Emperor Aurelian, who divided it into the provinces \u201cDacia ripensis\u201d and \u201cDacia mediterranea.\u201d The capital of the latter is now Sofia. These changes gave room for misunderstanding concerning Dacia\u2019s geographical borders, as may be seen in Orosius\u2019s Historia adversus paganos, Isidore of Seville\u2019s Etymologiae, and Jorda- nes\u2019s De origine actibusque Getarum, in which Dacia is identified with \u201cGothia.\u201d33 All three works were well known in England, with the Anglo-Saxon rewriting of Orosius being perhaps the most popular, through its extensive description of the Germanic world. By the Middle Ages the term \u201cDacia\u201d had come to mean \u201cDenmark\u201d in conti- nental ecclesiastical circles, even while the Danish historian Saxo Grammaticus, fully aware of the greatness of the legendary Denmark, still used \u201cDania.\u201d34 The Annales Ryenses from ca. 1300 is the first Danish chronicle to write \u201cDacia\u201d as a synonym for \u201cDania\u201d in its description of Denmark as \u201cDani . . . regnum, quod nunc Dania uel Dacia dicitur\u201d (the kingdom of Dan . . . which is now called Dania or Dacia).35 In 1228 the general chapter of the Dominican Friars in Paris established \u201cDacia\u201d as one of four new provinces.36 This \u201cDacia\u201d covered not just Denmark but all Scandinavian church provinces, because most convents when it was established were held to be Danish.37 The Scandinavian Franciscan Friars also used the term \u201cDacia\u201d for their Scandinavian province.38 Later, the pope called the region of the Scandinavian minor papal penitentiaries \u201cDacia\u201d in spite of the fact that this region also covered Sweden and Norway.39 The reason was probably linguistic, that the Old Norse, Old Swedish, and Old Danish languages were all known as d\u01ebnsk tunga (the Danish tongue). These examples, however, show that the church often used \u201cDacia\u201d in a wider sense, both geographically and politically, reflecting more than just the similarities between the Scandinavian languages. The political borders of Scandinavia in the early Middle Ages were not fixed. The historical Denmark comprised the landscapes of Sk\u00e5ne, Halland, and 33 Gall\u00e9n, \u201cDacia\u201d; Halvorsen, Dominikus, 224\u201325 and 290 (nn. 508\u201310). 34 Halvorsen, Dominikus, 226. 35 Danmarks middelalderlige annaler, ed. Kroman, 150 (line 7). 36 Monumenta ordinis fratrum, ed. Reichert and Fr\u00fchwirth, III, 3, 18; Handlingar r\u00f6rande Dacia, ed. Karlsson, 5; Gall\u00e9n, La Province de Dacie, 12\u201315. 37 Halvorsen, Dominikus, 179. 38 Gall\u00e9n, \u201cFranciskanorden,\u201d columns 563\u201367. 39 Vatican Archives: Introitus et exitus. Camera Apostolica Nr. 2, fols. 7v\u20138v, and Regis- trum avinionense 198, fol. 485v. See G\u00f6ller, Die p\u00e4pstliche P\u00f6nitentiarie, 140\u201341; Brilioth, Den p\u00e5fliga beskattningen af Sverige, 113; Gall\u00e9n, \u201cDe skandinaviska penitentiarierna,\u201d 58\u201369; Haug, \u201cPenitentiaries, Scandinavian.\u201d","386 Eldbj\u00f8rg Haug Blekinge, which have been part of Sweden since 1645, and Southern Jutland, which became a German possession after the Dano-Prussian war in 1864. Until the thirteenth century Danish kings controlled or attempted to control Viken, the south-eastern part of Norway, which was easy to reach by sea from Denmark. After ca. 1000, King Sveinn Forkbeard, Cnut\u2019s father, controlled all Norway through the earls of Hla\u00f0ir, and Cnut did the same from 1028 until his death in 1035 through his English wife \u00c6lfgifu and their son Sveinn. For a European cleric, the term \u201cDacia,\u201d meaning Denmark, could cover all of Cnut\u2019s lands in Scandinavia and more. So, my interpretation of \u201cDacia\u201d in Lansdowne 436 is that this name refers to Cnut the Great\u2019s Scandinavian \u201cthalassocracy,\u201d his vast sea-connected empire which, from 1028 to 1035, also covered Norway. The Relic in Stavanger There are good reasons to look to Norway to study the cult of Swithun outside Eng- land. Our question is whether the Norwegian cult of this saint may be connected to Cnut. To answer this, let us first take a brief overview of his cult in Norway. Sta- vanger Cathedral possessed the only known relic of the saint in Scandinavia. More- over, outside England this was the only church to have Swithun as its patron saint. St. Swithun is mentioned many times in Norwegian diplomas, but mainly as a syno- nym for this cathedral. The cathedral\u2019s Day of Dedication was July 2, the Day of Swi- thun\u2019s Deposition, which was the main mass and was celebrated with an octave. This was also a day of popular celebration, often combined with a market day.40 Swithun\u2019s Day of Translation on July 15 was also celebrated. Elsewhere, after the \u201cDivisio apostolorum\u201d and the Annunciation of Virgin Mary were introduced in the late Middle Ages, the cult of Swithun was reduced to commemorations in litanies, the only exceptions being Winchester, \u00c9vreux, and Stavanger. Winchester Cathe- dral, which held the main relics of the saint, was, of course, the main site of the cult, but \u00c9vreux is also significant, because it possessed St. Swithun\u2019s head from the fifteenth century onwards.41 40 Andr\u00e9n, Otto, Gjerl\u00f8w, Magnus M\u00e1r L\u00e1russon, and Maliniemi, \u201cKyrkm\u00e4ssa,\u201d columns 677\u201379. 41 Lapidge, The Cult of St. Swithun, 60; John Crook, \u201cRediscovery of St. Swithun\u2019s Head at Ev- reux,\u201d 61\u201362.","Chapter 17 Cnut\u2019s Gift of a Swithun-relic to \u201cDacia\u201d 387 The Swithun office shows that the saint was venerated in Norway up to the Refor- mation in 1537.42 The most recent evidence of the relic itself is an inventory of Sta- vanger Cathedral\u2019s holy relics which, since it was dated in 1517 \u201cwidh sancte Swytwns tidh\u201d (around the time of St. Swithun),43 was written in that year between July 2 and 22 perhaps in one of the five days (July 9\u201314) between the two feasts. The document tells us that Bishop Hoskold (1513\u20131537) asked specially for the relic of St. Swithun and examined his shrine. In the inventory, the first relic listed is an \u201carmlegh\u201d (upper arm) of St. Swithun.44 To examine the relic, the bishop must have opened the reli- quary. Most likely, it was carried in a procession on July 2.45 The commemoration of Swithun on October 30, was well known in Norway. The evidence is the record of a sale of property in the cartulary of Munkeliv, a Benedictine monastery in Bergen, \u201cer gort var Suitunar messo aftan om haustit a xiiij are rikis vars vyrdhuligs herra Magnusar Noregs Swia oc Gota konungs\u201d (which was written on the mass of Swithun in the autumn of the fourteenth year of our honoured lord Magn\u00fas, king of Norway, the Swedes and the Goths [i.e., 1332]). This is published with records from the cartulary in volume XII of Diplo- matarium Norvegicum. The editors, C. R. Unger and H. J. Huitfeldt-Kaas, were puzzled by the autumnal dating, as the main Swithun masses occurred at mid- summer. As they were not aware of the feast on October 30, they dated the docu- ment to July 14(?), 1333.46 With knowledge of the third feast, the dating is intelligible: it must refer to October 30. Moreover, this dating shows that St. Swi- thun\u2019s third feast was commemorated not only in Stavanger, but also in Bergen, and presumably in the whole church province. Nobody would date the document of a property transaction to the day of a saint who was hardly known. October 30 fell two days before All Saints\u2019 Day, if another reference was needed.47 The Norwegian historian Lilly Gjerl\u00f8w presumed that the cult in Norway was not older than the list of saints in the Gulathing law, which dates from the middle of the twelfth century. This is the oldest source to mention a Swithun cult in Norway, 42 Breviarium Nidrosiense, ed. Valkendorf, 894\u201398 (calendar: fol. v recto; litany: fol. h.vr, offi- cii: fol. pp. Iijr and fol. ccc. ijv\u2013iiijv); Hohler, \u201cRemarks on the Cathedral of Stavanger,\u201d 23\u201325. See Ordo Nidrosiensis Ecclesiae, ed. Gjerl\u00f8w, 361\u201362, 367. 43 DN, IV, no. 1074 (2 July 1517): https:\/\/www.dokpro.uio.no\/perl\/middelalder\/diplom_vise_ tekst.prl?b=4545&s=n&str=. 44 DN, IV no. 1074 (2 July 1517). Although Hohler, in \u201cRemarks on the Cathedral of Sta- vanger,\u201d 24, maintained that the relic was only part of an arm bone, it was the upper arm: see Heggstad, H\u00f8dneb\u00f8, and Simensen, Norr\u00f8n ordbok, 33, s.v. \u201carmleggr.\u201d 45 A parallel is the translations in Winchester cathedral during the episcopate of Henry of Blois (1129\u20131171). See Lapidge, The Cult of St. Swithun, 37\u201338. 46 DN XII, ed. Unger and Huitfeldt-Kaas, 62 (no. 81; July 14?, 1333). 47 Halvor Kjellberg (pers. comm.).","388 Eldbj\u00f8rg Haug which, it is assumed, would have started when the first permanent see in Stavanger was established in ca. 1125.48 Gjerl\u00f8w based her date for the establishment of the episcopal see on comments by Orderic Vitalis (1075\u20131142) concerning King Sigur\u00f0r J\u00f3rsalafari (\u201cthe Crusader\u201d) Magn\u00fasson (ca. 1090\u20131130), \u201cQui defunctis fratribus superstes diu regnavit, et episcopatus ac c\u00e6nobia monachorum, qu\u00e6 antecessores ejus non noverant in regno Nordico constituit\u201d (who survived his two brothers to reign for many years [after 1123], and who established bishoprics and monasteries, which had been unknown to his ancestors, in the kingdom of Norway).49 What do we know about how and when the Swithun relic was acquired? In 2003, when Lapidge summed it up, the prevailing view was that the see of Sta- vanger was established in the 1120s by a Bishop Reinald (or Reginald), who was an English Benedictine.50 From a rhymed office, which links the communities of Win- chester and Stavanger and may be from the twelfth century, it can be inferred that Bishop Reinald came from Winchester and that he brought the relic of St. Swithun with him from there to Stavanger.51 Lapidge took note of a Winchester canon named \u201cReinnaldus\u201d who appears in a list of monks in Hyde Abbey during the time of Abbot Osbert (1124\u20131135). Reinnaldus, who was described as a \u201cconuer- sus,\u201d meaning a newcomer, may be identical with the later bishop of Stavanger.52 In 1964 the English historian Christopher Hohler objected to this inference that Bishop Reinald, formerly a monk of Winchester, brought the relic of St. Swithun to Stavanger: \u201cWinchester cathedral priory was a distinguished and well-conducted house at relevant dates [i.e., ca. 1125], and no monk from there would have been al- lowed simply to wander off to Norway.\u201d53 Hohler found it inconceivable that Reinald had received an arm-bone from St. Swithun\u2019s relics, because there are no parallels with any other high-profile prelates from the beginning of the twelfth century ever having received anything similar for their churches.54 Furthermore, if Reinald had originated from Winchester, he would have been venerated as a martyr and saint, 48 Norges Gamle Love, ed. Keyser and Munch, I, 10\u201311 (\u00a7\u00a717\u201318). Gjerl\u00f8w, \u201cKalendarium II,\u201d column 99. 49 Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis: Vol. 5, ed. Chibnall, 220\u201321 (Book X). 50 Reinald was the first bishop of Stavanger, according to all lists of the province\u2019s bishops: see Kolsrud, Den norske Kirkes Erkebiskoper og Biskoper, 186\u201388, 231. Reinald appears un- named in Saga Magn\u00fas Blinda ok Haralds Gilla (chap. 8), for which see note 53 below. For the English translation, see: Snorri Sturluson: Heimskringla, trans. Finlay and Faulkes, III, 176. Lapidge, The Cult of St. Swithun, 56. 51 Lapidge, The Cult of St. Swithun, 56, 128\u201334. 52 Lapidge, The Cult of St. Swithun, 56\u201357. The first Norwegian studies on this are in Br\u00f8gger, Stavangers historie i middelalderen, 27, and Daae, \u201cOm Stavanger stift i middelalderen,\u201d 293. 53 Hohler, \u201cRemarks on the Cathedral of Stavanger,\u201d 24. 54 Hohler, \u201cRemarks on the Cathedral of Stavanger,\u201d 48\u201352, at 50 (Norwegian summary).","Chapter 17 Cnut\u2019s Gift of a Swithun-relic to \u201cDacia\u201d 389 because later he had the misfortune to be hanged by King Haraldr gilli.55 There were no recorded openings of the saint\u2019s shrine in Winchester between 1093 and 1150. Hohler therefore suggested that the Romanesque basilica was consecrated between 1125 and 1150 and received its relic of St. Swithun when the Norwegian church prov- ince was founded in 1152\u201353, with the bishop of Stavanger as the first archbishop. Lapidge took issue with Hohler\u2019s rejection of the prevailing view. During the episcopate of Henry of Blois (1129\u20131171), the relics of Swithun were displayed within Winchester Cathedral, a decision which probably gave more than one op- portunity for the shrine to be opened and a relic acquired.56 Lapidge, however, was not aware that Hohler, a long time before (on which more below), had recon- sidered his view.57 Moreover, there is a chronological problem with Lapidge\u2019s rea- soning, for if Bishop Reinald became bishop of Stavanger during the Winchester episcopate of Henry of Blois, the earliest he could have come there would have been 1129, one year before the death of King Sigur\u00f0r. This is rather late if we are to believe the chronology of the king\u2019s last years, for according to the lost *Hryggjar- stykki, which was a source for both Heimskringla and Morkinskinna for this period, Bishop Reinald had been in Stavanger for some time by the time the king divorced the queen and remarried in 1128.58 One might imagine that Reinald visited Win- chester and acquired the relic before he was hanged in Stavanger in 1135, but this seems highly improbable. The Archaeological Evidence of Stavanger Cathedral The history of Stavanger Cathedral, based on archaeological excavations and art history, indicates an explanation other than the prevailing view of the origin of St. Swithun\u2019s cult in Norway. The church as seen today dates from the last years of the thirteenth century. After a devastating fire in 1272, Bishop Arne of Sta- vanger (1277\u20131303) decided to pull down its west tower and replace it with a porch with a monumental entrance, and to replace the old choir with a larger 55 There is more on this in Morkinskinna II, ed. \u00c1rmann Jakobsson and \u00de\u00f3r\u00f0ur Ingi Gu\u00f0j\u00f3ns- son, 161\u201366, at 162 and n. 2 (chap. 90), and Saga Magn\u00fass blinda ok Haralds gilla, in Heim- skringla III, ed. Bjarni A\u00f0albjarnarson, 279\u2013302, at 287\u201388 (chap. 8). 56 Lapidge, The Cult of St. Swithun, 37\u201338 and 56, n. 199. 57 Hohler, \u201cRemarks on the Cathedral of Stavanger,\u201d 25. 58 Morkinskinna II, ed. \u00c1rmann Jakobsson and \u00de\u00f3r\u00f0ur Ingi Gu\u00f0j\u00f3nsson, 150\u201351, at 151 (chap. 87); Heimskringla III, ed. Bjarni A\u00f0albjarnarson, 287\u201388 (chap. 8).","390 Eldbj\u00f8rg Haug one. Since then, the cathedral has been restored many times, most radically as a Gothic cathedral in 1869, when the Romanesque chancel arch was pulled down. The architect Gerhard Fischer, who founded medieval archaeology as a dis- cipline in Norway, began a thorough investigation of the building in the 1930s. Under the vestibule he found the foundation of the tower, which is mentioned in B\u01ebglungas\u01ebgur as a refuge for the sheriff of Stavanger, when he had to flee his king\u2019s enemies in 1205. Moreover, this is the first time the relic of St. Swi- thun is explicitly mentioned: when the sheriff had to surrender and was prom- ised mercy on condition that he would never fight against the enemy king again, he took an oath on the shrine of St. Swithun.59 Fischer\u2019s discovery of the tower\u2019s foundation sustained this narrative. The cathedral was then and still is missing a transept between the choir and the nave, and Fischer pointed to this absence as its most unusual feature. Fischer\u2019s main impression was that its walls were stylistically Anglo-Norman, and that the work had started before 1100.60 Originally, the cathedral was a Ro- manesque basilica. Fischer presented his results in 1964, the same year Hohler published the aforesaid treatise on Stavanger Cathedral that he had written for an English-speaking audience.61 He and Fischer had discussed several points concerning the basilica, but neither of them read the other\u2019s manuscript before publishing his own study.62 In general they agreed, but Hohler compared de- tails in the capitals of the pillars with three Anglo-Norman churches. He estab- lished that the best and apparently the only parallels to Stavanger Cathedral are the cathedrals of Norwich and Ely, together with Castle Acre Priory. The building of Castle Acre started in 1089, Norwich in 1086, and Ely in 1081: The first Stavanger mason presumably learned his craft on a building designed in the 1080\u2019s at the latest. The second mason would seem to have learned his at a date not ear- lier than the building of the nave of Norwich . . . c. 1115. . . . the first and second Sta- vanger masons were clearly for a time working side by side.63 Hohler explicitly maintained that Stavanger Cathedral\u2019s architecture had noth- ing to do with Winchester. The similarities between the pillars of the different churches led him to conclude that Stavanger was consecrated as the last church of this kind, well into the twelfth century. 59 Soga om birkebeinar og baglar, ed. Mager\u00f8y, 37. 60 Fischer, Domkirken i Stavanger, 20\u201343. 61 Hohler, \u201cThe Cathedral of St. Swithun at Stavanger.\u201d 62 For acknowledgments, see Hohler, \u201cThe Cathedral of St. Swithun at Stavanger,\u201d 92, n. 1. 63 Hohler, \u201cThe Cathedral of St. Swithun at Stavanger,\u201d 115.","Chapter 17 Cnut\u2019s Gift of a Swithun-relic to \u201cDacia\u201d 391 Church-building masons, however, always started by building the choir with the main altar, which always turns to the east. This was the oldest part of the Stavanger basilica.64 When the choir was finished, and the altar consecrated, the church could be used for mass. Thus, in Stavanger the building of the basilica did not start with the Romanesque pillars at the west end of the church. After reading Fischer\u2019s monograph, Hohler reconsidered his results in a new article and dated its basilica to ca. 1105.65 The Norwegian art historian Marit Nyb\u00f8 has supported these results. In her doctoral thesis she demonstrated that the cathedral of St. Alban at Selja, situated at the northernmost part of the west coast of Norway, was built as a basilica; it is usually dated to ca. 1100. Christ Church in Bergen, which was destroyed in 1531, was also a basilica, and the three churches used masons from the same work- shop.66 From what we know of the monumental buildings of the last decades of the eleventh century, she suggested that King \u00d3l\u00e1fr kyrri (the Quiet) Haraldsson (r. 1067\u20131093), was not only famous for initiating the construction of Christ Church in Bergen, but also started building the basilicas in Stavanger and Selja. In this way it is reasonable to suppose that the basilica of Stavanger was built in around 1100, to be used by the bishop of Selja when he visited what became the diocese of Stavanger, the southernmost part of his bishopric.67 When the choir was finished, the cathedral was probably consecrated in the reign of Magn\u00fas berf\u0153ttr (\u201cBarelegs,\u201d 1093\u20131103), whereby it might seem clear that Cnut had nothing to do with its dedication to St. Swithun. In spite of this, there is more archaeological evidence which may date the dedication to before the time the basilica was consecrated. An excavation under the late-thirteenth-century Gothic choir has uncovered holes from pillars of a wooden structure. Over the holes was a layer of charcoal from a fire, probably from the structure. The charcoal is dated to ca. 700\u2013ca. 1100. Moreover, the exca- vation uncovered Christian graves (i.e., oriented west\u2013east, without worldly goods) above the charcoal. The two oldest remains have been dated to 680\u2013890 and are counted among the oldest Christian graves in Norway.68 The most recent 64 Fischer, Domkirken i Stavanger, 30. 65 Hohler, \u201cRemarks on the Cathedral of Stavanger,\u201d 37. 66 See Nyb\u00f8, Albanuskirken p\u00e5 Selja. 67 From the chronology, Bjarnvar\u00f0r, Swegen and Magne are the only bishops who celebrated mass in the Romanesque basilica before Bishop Reinald. See Kolsrud, Den norske Kirkes Erke- biskoper og Biskoper, 219. 68 Perry Magnor Rolfsen, Arkeologisk unders\u00f8kelse 1967\u201368; Denham, \u201cCommingled Human Remains From Stavanger Cathedral,\u201d 132; H\u00f8gest\u00f8l and Sandvik, \u201cSkjeletta fr\u00e5 Stavanger dom- kyrkje,\u201d 170, 172, 174\u201375.","392 Eldbj\u00f8rg Haug remains date to the end of the twelfth century. In other words, this excavation uncovered a Christian churchyard which was in use for a century or more before, as well as after, the building of the Romanesque basilica of Stavanger.69 Next to the basilica was a memorial cross raised to commemorate the mighty \u201clanded man\u201d or baron Erlingr Skj\u00e1lgsson (ca. 960\/975\u20131027), on whom I shall say more below. It is reasonable to suppose that Erlingr was buried in the churchyard and that his memorial cross was linked with an altar. Old and recent diggings in Stavanger indicate that the locality was far more than an ordinary farm in the Viking Period and early Middle Ages. It has been tentatively suggested that Stavanger was a regional nodal point for ships in naval defense, with a \u00feing assembly held in the churchyard, and that it was most probably also a seasonal port of call and a marketplace.70 Although there is no archaeological evidence of a church in the Christian graveyard before the raising of the Romanesque basilica, it seems likely that Stavanger had a church during the late lifetime of Erlingr Skj\u00e1lgsson. A final indication of its translation to Stavanger at an early stage is St. Swi- thun\u2019s relic itself. The earliest recorded dispersal of a Swithun relic in Winches- ter was in 1006, when Bishop \u00c6lfheah of Winchester became archbishop and left for Canterbury Cathedral, for he took Swithun\u2019s skull with him there. Lap- idge finds it hard to believe that he had the permission of the monks of the Old Minster to do so, and thus \u201chis act must count as one of the great furta sacra of the English Middle Ages.\u201d71 In my view this theft, holy or not, sets the terminus post quem for the transfer of this relic from Winchester to Stavanger. Nonetheless, Archbishop \u00c6lfheah\u2019s furtum sacrum may have opened a Pando- ra\u2019s box: there are many bones in a human skeleton and at least fourteen English churches claimed to have a relic of St. Swithun by the fifteenth century. The relic in Stavanger was an \u201carmleg\u201d (upper arm),72 a large bone which would be very different in size from a small bone from a toe, finger, hand, or foot; any of these could more easily go missing when the reliquary in Winchester was opened. It is hard to believe that Reinald or any other bishop could remove a relic as big as an upper arm in around 1125: such an act would have required a man of real political power. Hohler admitted that a bishop \u201cmight have been sent as a matter of high policy, Malchus bishop of Waterford was in fact trained at Winchester. But he is not known to have been given a relic of St. Swithun.\u201d73 Could St. Swithun of 69 H\u00f8gest\u00f8l and Sandvik, \u201cSkjelett fr\u00e5 Stavanger domkyrkje,\u201d 172. 70 Brendalsmo and Paasche, \u201cStavanger \u2013 f\u00f8r det ble en by.\u201d 71 Lapidge, The Cult of St. Swithun, 38, 40. 72 DN, IV, no. 1074 (2 July 1517). 73 Hohler, \u201cRemarks on the Cathedral of Stavanger,\u201d 24.","Chapter 17 Cnut\u2019s Gift of a Swithun-relic to \u201cDacia\u201d 393 Stavanger, in this case, be connected with the Anglo-Saxon mission to Norway after 1006? Let us consider the liturgical evidence. The Swithun Masses In 1519 Archbishop Erik Valkendorf of Nidaros issued Missale Nidrosiense, the Nidaros ordo, to be used in all churches in the Norwegian province. It was the first printed book in Norway, and the archbishop\u2019s aim was to replace all old handwritten liturgical books with a modern liturgy.74 Although Missale Nidro- siense does not contain any office of St. Swithun, the office of the Translation of St. Swithun, July 15, was retained in the Breviarium Nidrosiense, which was also printed in 1519.75 In the late Middle Ages, Swithun\u2019s Day of Deposition was su- perseded by the Visitation of Our Lady, but in Stavanger, it was retained until the Norwegian reformation in 1537 and used for the deposition as well as the translation throughout the Middle Ages.76 Hohler was the first to take note of the printed liturgy having the characteris- tic collect \u201cDeus qui iubar.\u201d The prayer was in use before the Norman Conquest and must have been written after ca. 1000 when a different office was used in Winchester.77 The collect is otherwise known only from Winchester Cathedral. With the \u201cDecreta Lanfranca,\u201d Archbishop Lanfranc\u2019s liturgical reform ca. 1085, the Swithun liturgy of Winchester left out \u201cDeus qui iubar.\u201d On the other hand, Archbishop \u00d8ystein Erlendsson retained this old hymn when he reformed the lit- urgy of the Norwegian province in the 1170s, and it remained in use in Stavanger and in the Norwegian church generally throughout the Middle Ages.78 The possi- bility may not be excluded that the Swithun-office was written in 1006, when the saint\u2019s skull was translated to Canterbury, or shortly thereafter. The printed breviary of Nidaros was not the only liturgical evidence for the cult of Swithun in the Norwegian church province. Once more Iceland has given proof for what was lost in Norway, in that Swithun\u2019s office has been found in a Reykjav\u00edk fragment of the \u201cPater Noster Psalter\u201d from the late thirteenth century, one which is \u201cprobably the oldest extant Icelandic antiphoner written according 74 Missale pro usu toti[us] regni Noruegie, ed. Valkendorf, Engelbrektsson, and Sigurdsson. 75 Breviarium Nidrosiense, ed. Valkendorf, 894\u201398; aee also Ordo Nidrosiensis, ed. Gjerl\u00f8w, 361\u201362, 367. 76 Ordo Nidrosiensis, ed. Gjerl\u00f8w, 361 and n. 2. 77 Hohler, \u201cRemarks on the Cathedral of Stavanger,\u201d 23\u201325; see also Toni Schmid, \u201cOm Sankt Swithunm\u00e4ssan i Sverige,\u201d 25\u201334; \u201cProblemata,\u201d 184\u201386. 78 Ordo Nidrosiensis, ed. Gjerl\u00f8w, 29\u201330, 87\u201390.","394 Eldbj\u00f8rg Haug to the use of the Nidaros Ordinary.\u201d79 Swithun\u2019s Day of Deposition is recorded in a calendar from ca. 1200.80 One fragment of \u201cMissale Scardense,\u201d which was written ca. 1470, gives the collect \u201cDeus qui electi confessoris tui et episcopi sui- thuni\u201d for July 2.81 Moreover, a notice in the annals of Sk\u00e1lholt (ca. 1300) has added the saint\u2019s death for the year 863, which is interesting when compared to the silence on Swithun in the Danish annals.82 From the veneration of St. Swithun in Stavanger and Iceland, the liturgical evidence of Norwegian provenance in Denmark,83 and also from the appropri- ateness of October 30, Swithun\u2019s Day of Consecration, for dating a document in Bergen, we can conclude that the saint was venerated all over the Nidaros arch- bishopric. It is improbable that the relic was obtained in Stavanger when the basilica was consecrated around 1100. It seems more likely that it ended up in Norway before Lanfranc reformed the liturgy. Who Brought the Relic of St. Swithun to Stavanger? This conclusion makes it reasonable to suppose that the cult of Swithun in Stavanger and Norway started with Cnut\u2019s translation of the relic, according to the claim in Lansdowne 436. It may have arrived in Stavanger via Denmark, but Occam\u2019s razor tells us to seek simpler explanations. Hohler ruled out the possibility of a relatively unknown bishop bringing the relic to Norway ca. 1125, but the situation was different for the missionaries from Wessex who went to Norway from 1006 to 1066. The first of these was Gotebald, who died in 1021 at the latest. Gotebald was called to work in Denmark by King Sveinn, Cnut\u2019s father, but he was also active in Sweden and particularly in Norway.84 On the other hand, it seems unlikely that Go- tebald brought the relic of an Anglo-Saxon saint to Stavanger: Lund or Roskilde were better suited for such a gift. King \u00d3l\u00e1fr Haraldsson (r. 1015\u20131030), the later saint, brought four English bishops to Norway on his arrival in 1015: Sigurd, Gr\u00edm- kell, Rudolf, and Bernhard. The last of these was immediately sent to Iceland, for which reason he may be excluded. In 1030 Rudolf also went to Iceland, to B\u0153r in 79 Liturgica Islandica, ed. Gjerl\u00f8w, 112. 80 Liturgica Islandica, ed. Gjerl\u00f8w, 58, 70\u201371; see also 98\u2013100 and 191\u2013208, at 207; Gottsk\u00e1lk Jensson, \u201cLatin Hagiography in Medieval Iceland,\u201d 902\u201329. 81 Ordo Nidrosiensis, ed. Gjerl\u00f8w, 361, n. 2. Liturgica Islandica, ed. Gjerl\u00f8w, 60. 82 Islandske Annaler indtil 1578, ed. Storm, 174. 83 A calendar from St. Mary\u2019s Church in Oslo (AM, MS. 733 4\u00b0 Kal) and one litany (KB NKS 133 4\u00b0 Lit, Thott 143 2\u00b0); see note 30 above. 84 Kolsrud, Den norske Kirkes Erkebiskoper og Biskoper, 191.","Chapter 17 Cnut\u2019s Gift of a Swithun-relic to \u201cDacia\u201d 395 Borgarfj\u01ebr\u00f0r, where he lived for nineteen years probably as a missionary bishop.85 He then returned to England and became the abbot of Abingdon.86 It has been sug- gested that Rudolf was a relative of the English royal family.87 Gr\u00edmkell is the best known of King \u00d3l\u00e1fr\u2019s bishops. In 1024 he was the brain behind the assembly in Moster in which the king issued ecclesiastical laws for all Norway. Bishop Fridtjov Birkeli identified him with the \u201cGrimcytel\u201d who became bishop of Selsey in 1038 and was a relative of Archbishop \u00c6thelnoth of Canter- bury (1020\u20131038); they both belonged to the local aristocracy of Devon, al- though, as the Norse form of his name would indicate, Bishop Gr\u00edmkell had kin in Norway as well. Birkeli presumed that he was a Benedictine in Canterbury be- fore he went to Norway.88 He seems to have been lower in rank than Rudolf when they were in England.89 Neither man should be considered as \u201crelatively unknown,\u201d but only Rudolf, a bishop, could have had access to the relic of Swi- thun in Winchester. Still, there are no sources which connect him to the relic. The only bishop with both a known connection to King Cnut and a history of service in Norway was a certain Sigurd or Sigfrid. He is recorded as Cnut\u2019s bishop in the autumn of 1015.90 In 1028, when Cnut arrived in Norway, Sigurd was in his reti- nue and became bishop of the personal guard of the king\u2019s sister\u2019s son, Earl H\u00e1kon Eir\u00edksson, who was to rule Norway on behalf of his uncle.91 However, H\u00e1kon died soon after, and Bishop Sigurd continued in the same position under young King Swe- gen (or Sveinn) Cnutsson and his mother, \u00c6lfgifu. Shortly after King \u00d3l\u00e1fr fell at the battle of Stiklasta\u00f0ir (Stiklestad in Verdal in Tr\u00f8ndelag) on July 29, 1030, Bishop Sig- urd fled to England.92 It may have been he, earlier in his career, who had the oppor- tunity to commit a furtum sacrum from Winchester before going to Norway. When considering the kings of Norway who could have purloined a relic of St. Swithun in this way, we may rule out King Magn\u00fas inn g\u00f3\u00f0i, who was king of Denmark from 1042 but never went to England, as far as is known. We may also exclude his uncle and co-ruler from 1044, Haraldr har\u00f0r\u00e1\u00f0i Sigur\u00f0arson. Al- though Haraldr tried to conquer England in 1066, he fell in battle at Stamford 85 There is no evidence that he founded a monastery: see Haki Antonsson, and Gu\u00f0r\u00fan Sveinbjarnard\u00f3ttir, Review of Leitin a\u00f0 Klaustrunum, by Steinunn J. Kristj\u00e1nsd\u00f3ttir, 204\u20135. 86 Kolsrud, Den norske Kirkes Erkebiskoper og Biskoper, 192. 87 Birkeli, Tolv vintrer, 159\u201361. 88 Birkeli, \u201cThe Earliest Missionary Activities,\u201d NMS 15 (1971): 27\u201337; Tolv vintrer, 159\u201361. On Archbishop \u00c6thelnoth\u2019s relations with Cnut, see also Bolton, Empire of Cnut, 80\u201382. 89 Birkeli, Tolv vintrer, 159\u201361. 90 Kolsrud, Den norske Kirkes Erkebiskoper og Biskoper, 193. 91 Kolsrud, Den norske Kirkes Erkebiskoper og Biskoper, 193. Lawson, Cnut: England\u2019s Viking King, 98. 92 Kolsrud, Den norske Kirkes Erkebiskoper og Biskoper, 193.","396 Eldbj\u00f8rg Haug Bridge and never ruled in Winchester. Norway\u2019s best-known missionary king, \u00d3l\u00e1fr II inn helgi Haraldsson, presents a more complex picture. He participated in the Viking attacks on England in 1009\u20131012. When Sveinn Forkbeard died in 1014, the English recalled King \u00c6thelred, and \u00d3l\u00e1fr served him.93 The old Danish king had dominated Norway as the overlord of the Norwegians, in alliance with the earls of Hla\u00f0ir and other Norwegian magnates; insofar as the large estate at Hla\u00f0ir (Lade) was the sea-port of Nidaros, the earls controlled the first urban set- tlement of Trondheim. When \u00d3l\u00e1fr Haraldsson sailed to Norway in 1014 or 1015, won the battle of Nesjar in 1015 and became king of Norway, it was with the blessing of King \u00c6thelred that he did so. The question is whether \u00d3l\u00e1fr brought a relic of St. Swithun with him to Stavanger from England. It is hard to imagine. The magnate Erlingr Skj\u00e1lgsson (d. 1027) was married to the daughter of King \u00d3l\u00e1fr Tryggvason (r. 995\u20131000). From his estate at S\u00f3li (where Stavanger\u2019s Sola airport is today), Erlingr con- trolled the west coast of Norway on behalf of the king and was himself called king of the hryggjar. The coastal regions up to Tr\u00f8ndelag had been Christian- ized since the second half of the tenth century. Erlingr was a former supporter of Sveinn Forkbeard, but after Nesjar he accepted \u00d3l\u00e1fr Haraldsson as his king. \u00d3l\u00e1fr, however, tried to reduce Erlingr\u2019s authority and power and the two men became hostile to each other. Erlingr once more joined forces with Cnut, but was killed in battle against \u00d3l\u00e1fr on Christmas Eve 1027.94 The memorial cross next to Stavanger Cathedral, which has been mentioned above, is significant in this context. It was raised by a priest who carved runes in memory of his lord by the name of Erlingr, \u201ces einn vas \u00far arni v\u00e9ltr\u201d (who alone was driven from his hearth by deception).95 The runes are now blurred and partly erased, but Aslak Liest\u00f8l identified the priest as Erlingr Skj\u00e1lgsson\u2019s chaplain Alfgeirr. He found the meaning of the wider runic inscription to be \u201cSkjalgr\u2019s nimble son who was without deceit, remained for a long time alone on the deck in the stern of his empty ship.\u201d96 Liest\u00f8l associated the inscription with the famous half stanza in the skaldic poem of Sigvatr \u00de\u00f3r\u00f0arson in memory of Erlingr Skj\u00e1lgsson: \u201ceinn st\u00f3\u00f0 sonr \u00e1 s\u00ednu \/ snarr Skjalgs, vinum fjarri, \/ \u00ed lyptingu 93 Lawson, Cnut: England\u2019s Viking King, 93\u201394; Williams, \u201cThorkell and the Bubble Reputa- tion,\u201d 145. 94 Sawyer, \u201cCnut\u2019s Scandinavian Empire,\u201d 17\u201318. Bolton, Cnut the Great, 155. 95 Liest\u00f8l, \u201c252 Stavanger III,\u201d 253, 257. 96 Liest\u00f8l, \u201c252 Stavanger III,\u201d 253, 257. The memorial stone is now in Stavanger museum. The inscriptions are interpreted by Oluf Rygh, Carl Johan Sverdrup Marstrander, and Aslak Liest\u00f8l.","Chapter 17 Cnut\u2019s Gift of a Swithun-relic to \u201cDacia\u201d 397 lengi \/ l\u00e6trau\u00f0r skipi au\u00f0u\u201d (Alone stood Skjalgr\u2019s bold son, far from friends, guileless, long on the after-deck of his empty ship).97 Conclusion: Cnut\u2019s Gift to Stavanger Taking into consideration that new sources might cast more light over Cnut\u2019s gift, I will not rule out the possibility that a church in Denmark received the relic of St. Swithun, but Stavanger seems more likely. Erlingr Skj\u00e1lgsson was allied with Cnut the Great and remained loyal to him. His death by treachery is significant. The memorial cross points to resentment, which for a shrewd politi- cian provided a situation in which a relic to the church of the deceased would honor his memory and benefit the donor. The archaeological evidence points to an early, wooden church at the same place as Stavanger Cathedral, in which the only known relic of St. Swithun in Scandinavia was placed. The liturgical evidence shows a cult of St. Swithun in Norway which was older than 1066. \u201cDacia\u201d in BL Lansdowne 436 refers to Cnut the Great\u2019s Scandinavian thalas- socracy, not only Denmark. The evidence presented in this chapter tends to show that the relic of St. Swithun was translated by Cnut, and that political considerations were behind the act. Cnut had access to the shrine of St. Swi- thun. My conclusion is that he had both the power and the authority to remove a large relic of the saint, perhaps with the help of Bishop Sigurd, and to present it to the church in Stavanger as a gesture of respect to Erlingr Skj\u00e1lgsson, the great chieftain who had lost his life to a common enemy. 97 \u201cSigvatr, Flokkr about Erlingr Skj\u00e1lgsson,\u201d ed. Jesch, 633. See also Jesch, Ships and Men in the Late Viking Age, 264.","","Laura Amalasunta Gazzoli Chapter 18 Cnut, his Dynasty, and the Elbe-Slavs The Danes enter written medieval history in earnest in the ninth century, long before the appearance of Cnut\u2019s ancestors at Jelling in Jutland. In the first de- cade of this century, the Royal Frankish Annals tell of border conflicts between Charlemagne and a king from another Danish family, Godfrid or Godofrid. One cannot read this account without also encountering two Slavic peoples, the Abodrites (or Obodrites: see Morawiec in the following chapter) and the Wilzi. The Abodrites had been allies of Charlemagne in his war against the Saxons and in 808, Godofrid led a Danish army south against them, putting one of their rulers, Drasco, to flight, and executing another, Godelaib. Godofrid made two thirds of the Abodrites tributary to the Danes; on his way back to Denmark he destroyed a trading-place in Abodrite territory on the Baltic coast called Reric, now identified with a site near Gro\u00df Str\u00f6mkendorf, to the north-east of Wismar.1 In this expedition Godofrid had with him Slavic allies of his own, namely the Wilzi, who, according to the Annals, joined Godofrid voluntarily \u201cpropter antiquas inimicitias\u201d (because of their ancient enmities) with the Abo- drites.2 This chapter will show that such relationships with these westernmost Slavic peoples continued to play an important role in Danish affairs in the tenth and eleventh centuries, and especially in the politics of the Jelling dynasty, whose area of authority grew into the Christian, medieval kingdom of Denmark. Cnut \u2013 who had a Polish mother and an Abodrite grandmother \u2013 was no excep- tion to this rule.3 1 Kempke, \u201cSkandinavisch-slawisch Kontakte,\u201d 18\u201319. See the Map of Abodrites and Wilzi. 2 Annales regni Francorum, ed. Pertz and Kurze, 125\u201326 (s.a. 808). 3 Versions of the paper on which this chapter is based were presented on several occasions at conferences and seminars in Cambridge and London in 2015 and 2016. I would like to thank those who invited me to present at these, namely M\u00e1ire N\u00ed Mhaonaigh, Richard North, and Fraser McNair. I would also like to thank Michael H. Gelting, who very generously read a draft of this chapter and offered his comments, and Jakub Morawiec and Timothy Bolton for their feedback at the London and Cambridge conferences in 2016. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1515\/9781501513336-019","400 Laura Amalasunta Gazzoli The Elbe-Slavs To refer to all the Slavic peoples between the rivers Elbe and Oder, or between the Saxons in the west and the Poles in the east, I will use the term \u201cElbe-Slavs,\u201d which represents the standard term in German research. More precisely, \u201cBaltic Slavs\u201d is used to refer to the northernmost of these tribes bordering the Baltic Sea, who will be the focus of this chapter. The term \u201cPolabians\u201d is also used with the same meaning as \u201cElbe-Slavs,\u201d but is a Slavic formation (Labe being the Slavic name for Elbe). Vin\u00f0r (Wends) is a generic term for Slavs used in Old Norse and other Germanic languages. Most contemporary sources simply call them \u201cSlavs,\u201d or refer to them by a specific name, such as \u201cAbodrites.\u201d These peoples have received relatively little attention from historians of Scandinavia and especially from those in the English-speaking world, even though they were the immediate neighbours of the Danes. Why is this? First, they no longer exist: their territory is in modern Germany,4 and their languages died out in the Middle Ages with only a couple of exceptions: these include a pocket in the Hanoverian Wendland, just south of the Elbe in the east of Lower Saxony, which survived into the eighteenth century,5 and a small community, known as Sorbs, in the south-east of Saxony, where a Slavic language is still spoken by a minority. Second, there is still something of a mental Iron Curtain in operation in scholarship: medievalists who work on western Europe tend not to read Polish and Russian; this limits our access to scholarship on Slavic mat- ters, although much is written in German and the sources themselves are in Latin. Finally, Scandinavian historians have been accustomed to looking in two directions: either northwards in search of the purely Scandinavian, or to the south-west in search of Insular and Continental Christian influences. When we look east, we tend to look very far \u2013 often all the way to Byzantium and Bagh- dad, sometimes stopping in Novgorod or Kyiv on the way \u2013 but the southern shore of the Baltic tends to be a blind spot. Needless to say, it was not so for the Scandinavians of the tenth and eleventh centuries. Adam of Bremen\u2019s description of the area between the Elbe and Oder and its inhabitants can strike one as overwhelming, owing to the number of peoples named.6 These, however, fell largely into three confederacies, of whom the Abodrites were the furthest to the north and west; to their south and east were 4 Although L\u00fcbke, \u201cDie Elbslawen,\u201d 66, notes that the research in the DDR focused on an area bounded to the east by the modern boundary of the Oder-Nei\u00dfe line, and that such a fixed boundary cannot properly be projected onto the region at earlier points in history. 5 Witkowski, \u201cSprachen und Dialekte,\u201d 51\u201354. 6 Gesta Hammaburgensis, ed. Schmeidler, 75\u201381 (II.xxi\u2013ii).","Chapter 18 Cnut, his Dynasty, and the Elbe-Slavs 401 the Liutizi, alternatively known as the Wilzi, which was an earlier name, used in the annal for 808; and further south were the Sorbs. The main sources for the Abodrites and Liutizi in this chapter will be tenth- and eleventh-century German chronicles, such as those of Widukind of Corvey, Thietmar of Merse- burg, and Adam of Bremen, as well as various annals, and Helmold of Bosau\u2019s twelfth-century Chronicle of the Slavs. In addition to the Abodrites proper, with their center in Mecklenburg, there were at least three other peoples associated with the Abodrite \u201cconfederacy,\u201d which expanded to the east and south in the eleventh century.7 There were two main centres of power, with their own dynasties, which often rivaled one an- other: one was Michelenburg, the other Oldenburg in Holstein. Mecklenburg, formerly Michelenburg, which means \u201clarge fortress,\u201d was the center of the Abodrites proper, but it is clear that the rulers of Oldenburg in Holstein (or in Slavic, Starigard, \u201cold fortress\u201d), the center of the Wagrians, often opposed them.8 In the tenth century, the Mecklenburg dynasty established its preemi- nence, and in around 965 the Cordoban Spanish Jew Ibr\u0101h\u012bm ibn Ya\u2019q\u016bb (or Abraham ben Jacob) described the Abodrite ruler Nakon as one of the four great kings of the Slavs, alongside the rulers of the Poles, Czechs, and Bulgars.9 Nakon\u2019s father may have been the unnamed Abodrite ruler who was defeated by the German King Henry the Fowler in 931 and forced to accept Christianity.10 His dynasty, the Nakonids, largely maintained their Christian faith through the frequent Slavic pagan reactions, while they cultivated strong links with the Saxon dukes of the Billung family.11 This Abodrite-Saxon closeness can be traced back to 967, when Duke Hermann Billung helped establish the preemi- nence of the Mecklenburg dynasty under Mstivoi, presumed to be Nakon\u2019s son, over the other Elbe-Slav dynasty based in Wagria at Oldenburg.12 According to the twelfth-century chronicler Helmold, Mstivoi was also known as Billung or 7 On the eastern boundary of the Abodrite confederacy, see Friedmann, Untersuchungen, 26\u201329. 8 L\u00fcbke, \u201cDie Elbslawen,\u201d 70; for example, see Widukind, Res gestae Saxonicae, ed. Waitz, Kehr, Hirsch, and Lohmann, 142\u201343 (III.lxviii). This is possibly also reflected in the two duces, mentioned by the Annales regni Francorum, s.a. 808 (see note 2 above). 9 On the transmission of Ibr\u0101h\u012bm ibn Ya\u2019q\u016bb\u2019s text and for a translation of the relevant sec- tion, see Lunde and Stone, Ibn Fadl\u0101n, 162\u201368 (at 164). 10 L\u00fcbke, Regesten, 2.51\u20132 (no. 33); e.g., Annales Einsidlenses, ed. von Planta, 184 (s.a. 931). For a complete list of annals, see L\u00fcbke. 11 L\u00fcbke, \u201cDie Elbslawen,\u201d 70\u201371. 12 Friedmann, Untersuchungen, 241; Res gestae Saxonicae, ed. Waitz, Kehr, Hirsch, and Loh- mann, 142\u201343 (III.lxviii).","402 Laura Amalasunta Gazzoli Billug: this has been interpreted as a reference to the Billung family, and may have been taken as a baptismal name.13 Map 18.1: Western Slavonic territories in Cnut\u2019s reign (1016\u20131035). Abodrite and Danish Dynastic Politics Mstivoi also cultivated links with the Danes. According to a runestone at S\u00f8nder Vissing in Jutland, he gave his daughter, who bore the Norse name Tufa or T\u00f3fa, in marriage to one Haraldr, a Danish king who can only be Haraldr Bluetooth (see Table 18.1), Cnut\u2019s grandfather. According to a claim on the famous Jelling stone, Halraldr \u201cuan tanmaurk ala auk nuruiak auk t\u0105ni kar\u00fei kristn\u0105\u201d (won all Den- mark for himself and Norway and made the Danes Christian).14 The text of the S\u00f8nder Vissing stone is: \u201ctufa | lEt kaurua | kubl | mistiuis | tutiR | uft | mu\u00feur | 13 Res gestae Saxonicae, ed. Waitz, Kehr, Hirsch, and Lohmann, 142\u201343 (III.lxviii); Fried- mann, Untersuchungen, 243\u201344. The taking of baptismal names was common practice for Scandinavians and Slavs in this period. 14 Jakobsen and Moltke, Danmarks Runeindskrifter, no. 42 (Jelling).","Table 18.1: Dynasties of the Piast, Jelling, and Nakonid kindreds. Piast Jelling Nakonid (Polish) (Danish) (Abodrite) dynasty dynasty dynasty Mieszko I, Harald Mstivoi d. 992 Bluetooth, Billung*, c. c. 963\u2013c. Tufa 967\u2013c. 990 986 Boleslaw I Chrobry, 992\u2013 Mstislav, c. 990\u20131018 1025 Daughter Svend Otto* Forkbeard, c. Chapter 18 Cnut, his Dynasty, and the Elbe-Slavs 986\u20131013 Mieszko II Harald, Cnut \u015awi\u0119tos\u0142awa (same as? \u2192 ) Daughter Pribignev Lade Lambert*, 1013\u20131019 (Santslaue) 1025\u20131034 Lambert*, Estrid Udo*, (Norwegian) Salian 1013\u20131035 (German) dynasty 1020\u20131028 dynasty Henry III, Roman Svend Daughter H\u00e5kon Emperor Estridsen, 1028\u20131030 1039\u20131056 1042\u20131076 Gunnhild Daughter Gottschalk, Gunnhild (Sigrid?) 1043\u20131066 Many other children, Heinrich of including Alt-L\u00fcbeck four Danish 1093\u20131127 kings including Erik Ejegod Knut Sventipolk Dates show time of reign Kund Lavard, King of * Marks a baptismal name a the Abodrites 1129\u201331 403","404 Laura Amalasunta Gazzoli sina | kuna | harats | hins | ku\u00fea | kurms | sunaR\u201d (Tufa, Mstivoi\u2019s daughter, wife of Haraldr the Good, Gormr\u2019s son, had these monuments made for her mother).15 The questions to ask here are when Tufa\u2019s marriage took place, and whether Har- aldr\u2019s son and successor, Sveinn Forkbeard, was the offspring of this union. If we can trust the skaldic poem Vellekla,16 attributed to the Icelandic poet Einarr sk\u00e1la- glamm in ca. 985, \u201cVin\u00f0r\u201d (Wends) fought alongside Franks and Frisians in a battle at what seems to be the Danevirke against the Norwegian Earl H\u00e1kon of Hla\u00f0ir. In all likelihood this refers to Abodrites fighting on the side of Otto II (973\u2013983) against H\u00e1kon\u2019s overlord, Haraldr Bluetooth Gormsson, in 974.17 We might then presume that Tufa\u2019s marriage took place either some years before 974, or some years after. However, it must be stressed that we cannot be sure that this line from Vellekla re- fers to an official Abodrite presence backed by Mstivoi. My own suspicion, therefore, is that the marriage must have taken place early, most probably shortly after 967, when the Saxons helped establish Mstivoi as overall ruler by resolving the quarrel between the Mecklenburg-Abodrites and the Wagrians of Starigard (i.e., Oldenburg in Holstein: see Map 18.1).18 In these circumstances, a Jelling-Mecklenburg alliance that would have surrounded the Wagrians to the north, south, and east would be particularly valuable to Mstivoi. Haraldr would have appreciated support on the south coast of the Baltic while he expanded the influence of his dynasty eastwards across the Great Belt and \u00d8resund, probably in the 970s.19 An early date for the marriage makes it entirely 15 Jakobsen and Moltke, Danmarks Runeindskrifter, no. 55 (S\u00f8nder Vissing). 16 \u201cEinarr sk\u00e1laglamm Helgason: Vellekla,\u201d ed. Marold, 315\u201318 (vv. 26\u201327). Note that the order of these verses cannot be certain, given their scattered disposition in the sources. 17 \u201cEinarr sk\u00e1laglamm Helgason: Vellekla,\u201d ed. Marold, 315\u201318 (vv. 26\u201327); L\u00fcbke, Regesten, 2.250\u201351 (no. 178); Annales Altahenses maiores, ed. Giesebrecht and von Oefele, 12 (s.a. 974); Lampert, Annals, ed. Holder-Egger, 42 (s.a. 974), who places it at Schleswig; Annales Ottenbur- iani, ed. Pertz, 4 (s.a. 974). See also Friedmann, Untersuchungen, 243. It is tempting to look for other candidates than the Abodrites proper: the Wagrians come to mind, but they were not on the best of terms with the Saxons. 18 Given that in the aftermath of the quarrel of 967, the Saxon rebel Wichmann was able to hold out the prospect of getting Danish aid as a reasonable pretext from slipping away from the Wagrians, who had taken up arms (with Wichmann\u2019s support) against the Saxon dukes, this Danish-Abodrite marriage had probably not taken place by this point: Res gestae Saxoni- cae, ed. Waitz, Kehr, Hirsch, and Lohmann, 142\u201343 (III.lxviii). Widukind says that in 968 the Saxons thought a war with the Danes was looming (quod tunc bellum adversum Danos urgeret): see ibid., 147 (III.lxx). 19 Intermarriage at the top levels of Danish and Abodrite society was probably nothing new: at the start of this chapter I have mentioned the Abodrite leader named Godelaib, which appears to be the Old Norse name Gu\u00f0leifr \u2013 which, although it is far from proof, is at least a possible indica- tion of some Norse ancestry. It is worth exploring the possibility that Harald\u2019s Abodrite wife Tufa","Chapter 18 Cnut, his Dynasty, and the Elbe-Slavs 405 possible that Haraldr\u2019s successor, Sveinn Forkbeard, was the child of Haraldr and Tufa: if this is true, Sveinn would have been in his early twenties or perhaps late teens in the 980s when he rebelled against his father. This rebellion is an- other event in which the Slavic context is essential. Since the days of King Henry I the Fowler (919\u2013936), the Saxons had been establishing their authority over areas to the east. The Elbe-Slavs were forced to pay tribute to the Saxons, and in 931 various sources record that Henry defeated the king of the Abodrites and forced him to accept Christianity.20 The amounts exacted in tribute were often extortionate, and on top of this the Elbe-Slavs were expected to pay church tithes as well;21 thus it is hardly surprising that there were frequent revolts against Saxon overlordship and Christianity. In- deed, in the 1070s, the Danish King Sveinn \u00c1str\u00ed\u00f0arson (or Svend Estridsen) re- marked to Adam of Bremen that the Slavs would have been Christianized long ago if the Saxons had not been so avaricious.22 The Danes were also defeated by Henry the Fowler in 931, when their king, \u201cChnuba,\u201d was forced to accept baptism and tributary status.23 The Danes, how- ever, do not seem to have been subject to the same structures that were established or T\u00f3fa herself may also have been half-Danish: her name at least is Norse and not Slavic, and although again this is not decisive proof (some individuals may have had both Norse and Slavic names for different contexts), the fact that she raised a memorial to her mother in Denmark might suggest that her mother was Danish \u2013 presumably from a dynasty other than Harald\u2019s; thus the marriage would have not only had a Slavic component but could have fed into Harald\u2019s domina- tion of Denmark through alliances with other Danish elite groups. However, rune-stones are often memorials rather than grave-markers, although they can be associated with graves \u2013 but no grave is known in connection with this stone, which was found in the nineteenth century, having been reused as part of a gate (see Jacobsen and Moltke, Danmarks Runeindskrifter, no. 55). It is notewor- thy that the mother is not named, perhaps indicating she bore a Slavic name that the carver found difficult to render (although he did manage Mstivoi), which would cast doubt on her being Danish or having lived in Denmark (as then, presumably, she would have had a Norse, or at least some- what Nordicised, name as well as a Slavic one). The lack of a name suggests that her name would not have been familiar enough for locals to recognize it on a stone. On balance, it is thus better to interpret the stone as a memorial, rather than a burial-marker, and to conclude that Tufa\u2019s mother was not part-Danish and was actually buried in Abodrite territory. 20 Res gestae Saxonicae, ed. Waitz, Kehr, Hirsch, and Lohmann, 59 (I.xl); L\u00fcbke, Regesten, nos. 33, 43. 21 Reuter, Germany in the Early Middle Ages, 178. 22 Gesta Hammaburgensis, ed. Schmeidler, 166 (III.xxiii). Tribute seems to have been one of the driving concerns, rather than any programmatic push to territorial expansion: Althoff, \u201cSaxony and the Elbe Slavs,\u201d 278. 23 See note 19 above.","406 Laura Amalasunta Gazzoli over the Slavs, although these varied in different areas:24 the Billungs, whom Henry set over the northern areas (modern Holstein and Mecklenburg), tended to rely on the local elites to control the area, whereas Markgraf Gero in the central and southern areas (modern Brandenburg, Sachsen-Anhalt, and Sachsen) seems to have preferred to eliminate the elites.25 When Henry\u2019s son, Otto I (\u201cthe Great\u201d), died in 973, Haraldr Bluetooth seized the occasion to prepare for attacks to the south, which he launched in the following year, but the new emperor, Otto II, de- feated him and may have forced him to accept some kind of tributary status.26 Nev- ertheless, when Otto II died in 983, not only Haraldr but also the Elbe-Slavs rose up again. Slavs, Danes, and the Turmoil of the 980s The driving force behind their revolt was the confederation of Slavic peoples to the east and south of the Abodrites, known no longer as Wilzi but as Liutizi. The con- federation of the Liutizi was based on a fierce paganism that centered on the tem- ple at Rethra, where they worshipped a god called Redigost, whose name is probably connected to that of the chief people of the confederation, the Redarii;27 the name Liutizi itself comes from the Slavic root ljut-, whose meanings include \u201cfierce,\u201d \u201ccruel,\u201d and \u201csteadfast.\u201d28 Unlike the Abodrite confederacy, in which the peoples were (theoretically) subject to the Abodrite kings, the Liutizi had no overall ruler and were governed by assemblies in which, according to Thietmar of Merse- burg, those who spoke against the will of the majority were beaten with cudgels and risked fines or the destruction of their property if they failed to comply with any decision.29 Their rebellion was directed not only at the Church and the author- ity of the Saxons, but also more broadly at rule by princes: thus the Abodrites and 24 See note 20 above. The date is sometimes given as 934, on which see Friedmann, Untersu- chungen, 183\u201385. 25 Fritze, \u201cDer slawische Aufstand,\u201d 14. 26 Thietmar, Chronicon, ed. Holtzmann, 103\u20134 (III.vi). Otto did almost certainly not (as is often claimed) conquer Hedeby and annex the south of Jutland: this is reading far too much into Thiet- mar\u2019s text, in which sounds more like a border-skirmish than anything else, and recent interpreta- tions of the numismatic evidence have also made this view increasingly untenable: Moesgaard, Guerra, Tarnow Ingvardson, Ilisch, Pentz, and Skov, King Harold\u2019s Cross Coinage, 50. 27 Gesta Hammaburgensis, ed. Schmeidler, 79 (II.xxi); Helmold, Chronica, ed. Schmeidler, 8 (I.ii); Thietmar, Chronicon, ed. Holtzmann, 302\u20134 (VI.xxiii\u2013iv), who calls the city Riedegost. 28 Witkowski, \u201cNamen,\u201d 14. 29 Chronicon, ed. Holtzmann, 304 (VI.xxv).","Chapter 18 Cnut, his Dynasty, and the Elbe-Slavs 407 Hevellians, a Slavic tribe by the Havel to the south in Brandenburg, were also po- tential targets.30 The Liutizi were not, however, proto-socialists resisting the expan- sion of a feudalist system of economic exploitation, as scholarship in the former East Germany sometimes implied, but were dominated by their own landholding class, referred to as \u201cpriores\u201d in Latin, whose interests were threatened by the growth of power at a higher level as well as by the establishment of the Church.31 Thus, Mstivoi does not at first seem to have participated in the revolt, and in 984, according to Thietmar, he was at the court of Quedlinburg in support of Duke Henry the Quarrelsome of Bavaria\u2019s claim to the throne.32 The revolt spread to the Wagrians, and Adam of Bremen reports that sixty priests were killed in the church at Oldenburg in Holstein (Starigard), including the Cathe- dral Provost Oddar, a relative of the later Danish king, Sveinn \u00c1str\u00ed\u00f0arson.33 The rebellion grew in popularity, and in the end Mstivoi does seem to have also taken part in it, although he remained Christian: Thietmar reports that he burnt the cathedral in Hamburg, giving as his source for this none other than Msti- voi\u2019s chaplain.34 30 L\u00fcbke, \u201cDie Elbslawen,\u201d 73\u201374. 31 Fritze, \u201cDer slawische Aufstand,\u201d 35\u201338. For an example of this view in the DDR, see Epper- lein, \u201cVoraussetzungen,\u201d 333\u201334. In the post-war Bundesrepublik, where most pre-war Ost- forscher found jobs after the war (some despite their Nazi past, e.g., Walter Kuhn, Hermann Aubin), the discourse focused more on the expansion of Western Civilization (Abendland), and this expansion as a form of defense against a threat beyond: L\u00fcbke, \u201cGermania Slavica,\u201d 387. This provided some continuity with the pre-1945 narrative of an expansion of Deutschtum, which was justified as a protective bulwark against an eastern threat and fit in well with the context of the Cold War; it could also ultimately flow into the pan-European stream of \u201cthe Europeanization of Europe.\u201d 32 Chronicon, ed. Holtzmann, 132 (IV.ii); L\u00fcbke, Regesten, 3.19\u201321 (nos. 223) and 3.66\u201370 (256\u201356b). 33 Gesta Hammaburgensis, ed. Schmeidler, 102\u20135 (II.xlii\u2013iv); see also Helmold, Chronica, ed. Schmeidler, 33\u201336 (I.xvi). 34 L\u00fcbke, Regesten, 3.19\u201321 (no. 223) notes problems with the chronology \u2013 the year is nor- mally given as around 983, but Mstivoi\u2019s presence at the Hoftag in Quedlinburg in 984 sug- gests it must be later than this. Thietmar, in Chronicon, ed. Holtzmann, 120 (III.xviii), reports that he burnt Hamburg, where a golden hand emerged from the sky, entered into the fire, and returned holding something, which Thietmar and his source conclude was the relics of the saints. He names his source as Avico, Mstivoi\u2019s chaplain, and adds that later Mstivoi died in a fit of madness saying St. Laurence was burning him. Adam, in Gesta Hammaburgensis, ed. Schmeidler, 103 (II.xliii, schol. 30), says that Mstivoi refused to abandon Christanity and thus was expelled from his realm and lived out his days in the Bardengau; but Adam seems to have confused Mistui here with his son, Mstislav, whose flight following a pagan reaction is de- scribed in Thietmar, Chronicon, ed. Holtzmann, 498 (VIII.v).","408 Laura Amalasunta Gazzoli To turn to the situation in Denmark, both Haraldr and his Abodrite in-laws had been drawn into the revolt of the Liutizi against the Saxons, with Haraldr, like Mstivoi, remaining Christian.35 In 985 and 986, various annals record Saxon expe- ditions against the Elbe-Slavs;36 in at least the first of these Duke Mieszko I of Po- land was also involved on the Saxon side. As Mieszko was a Christian ruler amassing a tributary empire not unlike that of the Ottonian emperors, the Liutizi were no friends to him either; moreover, he had excellent relations with the em- peror.37 It is around this time that Sveinn Forkbeard rebelled against his father, Haraldr Bluetooth, who, according to both Adam of Bremen and to the eleventh- century Encomium Emmae, fled to the Slavs after his defeat.38 Adam names the place of his flight as \u201cIumne,\u201d usually identified with the city of Wolin, situated on an island of the same name at the mouth of the Oder (Iumne is also thought to be J\u00f3msborg, seat of the legendary J\u00f3msvikings). Wolin lay in the border-region be- tween the Liutizi and the kingdom of Poland. Although Widukind records Mieszko I of Poland defeating the \u201cVuloini\u201d around 967,39 there is nothing to suggest that this led to any lasting Polish control of the area.40 Rather, in the 980s Wolin was pagan and linked to the Liutizi confederation. Wolin probably maintained this in- dependence, for over the course of the next century, it would develop a reputation as a base for pirates.41 35 The comparative angle provided by the case of Mstivoi is revealing: Adam depicts Svend\u2019s rebellion (see below) as a pagan reaction, but Harald is clearly the one who initiates Danish involvement in what was largely a pagan reaction. The case of Mstivoi shows that rulers could remain Christian while their people were more pagan and attacked Christianity: this divide continued among the Slavs into the twelfth century (see L\u00fcbke, \u201cBeziehungen,\u201d 28), but does not appear to have continued among the Danes. 36 E.g., Annales Altahenses maiores, ed. de Giesebrecht and von Oefele, 15 (s.a. 985); Annales Hildesheimenses, ed. Waitz, 24 (s.a. 985); for other annals, see L\u00fcbke, Regesten, 2.36\u201337 (no. 236). Which group of Slavs is not stated, but presumably it must be the Liutizi and others in rebellion. 37 Widukind, in Res gestae Saxonicae, ed. Waitz, Kehr, Hirsch, and Lohmann, 143\u201344 (III. lxix), describes him as amicus imperatoris. 38 Gesta Hammaburgensis, ed. Schmeidler, 87\u201388 (II.xxvii\u2013iii); Encomium Emmae, ed. Camp- bell, 8 (I.i). 39 Res gestae Saxonicae, ed. Waitz, Kehr, Hirsch, and Lohmann, 143\u201345 (III.lxix). 40 Filipowiak, in \u201cSome Aspects,\u201d 68, suggests that new fortifications at Wolin in the last quarter of the tenth century might be connected to the period of Mieszko\u2019s rule, but I am not aware of any reason why this must be so. 41 L\u00fcbke, \u201cBeziehungen,\u201d 29\u201331.","Chapter 18 Cnut, his Dynasty, and the Elbe-Slavs 409 Sveinn\u2019s Marriage(s) It is in this context that I set the early career and marriage of Sveinn Forkbeard, and thus Cnut\u2019s parentage. My conclusions differ from those of Jakub Morawiec in his discussion of this in the next chapter (pp. 419\u201324). Thietmar records that Sveinn was captured after his father\u2019s death by \u201cNorthmanni\u201d (\u201cNorthmannis insurgentibus captus\u201d), from whom he had to be ransomed;42 Adam, on the other hand, says that he made war on the Slavs and was captured twice and taken to \u201cSclavania,\u201d after which he had to be ransomed.43 Moreover, a skaldic verse attributed to the late-eleventh-century Icelandic poet Mark\u00fas Skeggjason claims that the Wends were subject to a Sveinn \u2013 possibly Sveinn Forkbeard, but also possibly his grandson, Sveinn \u00c1str\u00ed\u00f0arson.44 To my mind, the variety of this detail suggests that hostilities between Sveinn Haraldsson and his father\u2019s supporters dragged on even after Haraldr\u2019s flight to Wolin and his death there. The confusion over whether Sveinn\u2019s captors were Norse or Slavic would fit well with the idea that his enemies were a group made up of Haraldr\u2019s Danish support- ers and Slavic allies, particularly ones based on Wolin.45 A recent and controver- sial artefact, a medallion called the \u201cCurmsun disc,\u201d whose authenticity has not been universally accepted, was discovered allegedly at Wiejkowo near Wolin. If genuine, its inscription, bearing the name Haraldr Gormsson, may show that it was originally associated with Haraldr\u2019s grave. If that is the case, the object bears archaeological witness to Haraldr\u2019s having enough support in the area for it to have been commissioned.46 This object has also, however, been dated to the elev- enth or twelfth century.47 Faced with this continuing difficulty from Wolin, the most rational place for Sveinn to look to for help would have been Poland. The Saxons and the 42 Chronicon, ed. Holtzmann, 442 (VII.xxxvi). 43 Gesta Hammaburgensis, ed. Schmeidler, 91 (II.xxix). 44 \u201cMark\u00fas Skeggjason: Eir\u00edksdr\u00e1pa,\u201d ed. Carroll, 450 (v. 21). 45 Filipowiak, in \u201cSome Aspects,\u201d 67\u201368, identifies Scandinavian influence in the material evidence from Wolin during this period, though defining \u201cScandinavian influence\u201d when Slavs and Scandinavians were interacting on both sides of the Baltic is no straightforward mat- ter. Wolin, however, would not have been unique in this mingling, as the present chapter has been arguing. See, for example, the presence of priests related to the Danish royal family in Oldenburg in 983 (see note 32 above). 46 For discussion, see Rosborn, \u201cA unique object.\u201d The inscription \u201c+ARALD | CVRMSVN | REX AD TAN | ER+SCON+J | VMN+CIV | ALDIN+\u201d seems to represent \u201cHarald Gormsson, King of the Danes, Sk\u00e5ne, Jumne and the civitas of Oldenburg\u201d or \u201cKing of the Danes and Sk\u00e5ne, (at?) Jumne in the bishopric of Oldenburg.\u201d 47 Harps\u00f8e, \u201cHaraldsguldet,\u201d 25\u201327.","410 Laura Amalasunta Gazzoli emperor were separated from Wolin by the rest of the Liutizi. Moreover, they seem to have had little interest in Denmark in this period, whereas the Polish rulers were very keen to expand to the west.48 Adam and Thietmar both record that Sveinn\u2019s wife was of the Polish royal dynasty,49 and the naming of Cnut\u2019s sister as \u201cSantslave\u201d in the Liber vitae of New Minster, Winchester, for \u015awi\u0119to- s\u0142awa, seems to confirm this.50 For these reasons it would make perfect sense for Sveinn to have contracted this marriage in the 980s, when Mieszko\u2019s daugh- ter would probably have been in her mid-teens and thus perfectly marriageable by the standards of the day. We are not told what her own name was, but it is often assumed that it was also \u015awi\u0119tos\u0142awa.51 If this marriage took place, Adam of Bremen\u2019s claim, that Sveinn\u2019s revolt against his father was a pagan one, would be the wrong way round \u2013 in fact, it was the Wolin-allied Haraldr who was taking part in (or at least, taking advantage of) a pagan revolt, and Sveinn who, I would suggest, fought against him alongside Christian allies. There is nothing in the material record to suggest that Sveinn Fork- beard rejected Christianity. The diploma of 988 giving Danish bishops rights in Germany, which is often advanced as evidence that Sveinn expelled the bishops sent by Hamburg-Bremen,52 nowhere states that the bishops were in exile. This document can be explained easily enough by the turmoil of the times and by what would have seemed a very real fear that the pagan reaction that had begun among the Slavs would spread to the Danes. The bishops, far from being expelled, may well have fled of their own accord (or at least spent less time in Denmark). To return to Sveinn\u2019s marriage, however, the picture I have painted here is complicated by Adam\u2019s report that Sveinn\u2019s queen was the widow of Eir\u00edkr the Vic- torious of Sweden, whose death is normally placed around 995.53 There are several ways of dealing with this complication. In one way, it does all seem to add up to 48 Reuter, Germany in the Early Middle Ages, 255. 49 Gesta Hammaburgensis, ed. Schmeidler, 95\u201396 (II.xxxv, schol. 24) and 99 (II.xxxix); Chron- icon, ed. Holtzmann, 446 (VII.xxxix). 50 Uspenskii, in \u201cDynastic Names,\u201d 20, identifies it as a typical female name of the dynasty. 51 Adam (see above, note 48) records that it was either the sister of Boles\u0142aw (hence daughter of Mieszko) or daughter. In the latter case, she could not have been older than eight in 992, which is the earliest she could have married Erik (as according to Adam, the union was created by Boles\u0142aw, who became king in 992). Thus it is unlikely that she bore Erik a son before his death in 995: see Lund, \u201cSvend Estridsens blodskam,\u201d 43, n. 13. For a different view, see Mor- awiec in this volume, pp. 419\u201324. 52 Ottonis II. et III. diplomata, ed. Sickel, 441 (D O III 41); as argued by (among others) Gelting, \u201cThe Kingdom of Denmark,\u201d 83. 53 Gesta Hammaburgensis, ed. Schmeidler, 95 (II.xxxv, schol. 24 [25]): Erik\u2019s marriage of a sis- ter or daughter of Boles\u0142aw) and 99 (II.xxxix: Sveinn\u2019s marriage with Eir\u00edkr\u2019s widow).","Chapter 18 Cnut, his Dynasty, and the Elbe-Slavs 411 one person: we know from Thietmar that Sveinn\u2019s wife was a Polish princess, while from Adam we know that Mieszko\u2019s son, Duke Boles\u0142aw Chrobry (\u201cthe Brave\u201d) of Poland (992\u20131025) gave his sister (or daughter, Adam is not sure) to Eir- \u00edkr as part of a Swedish-Polish alliance, and that Sveinn married Eir\u00edkr\u2019s widow. In another way, if one is to suggest that Sveinn took a Polish wife in the 980s, it is worth noting that Adam nowhere says that the Polish princess who married Eir\u00edkr was the same person as the widow of Eir\u00edkr, whom Sveinn then married. The virtue of treating these brides, Eir\u00edkr\u2019s and then Sveinn\u2019s, as two different women is that it involves the least meddling with the documentary re- cord. The two-women reading solves the problem neatly, because it fits with Thietmar\u2019s account from ca. 1018 that Sveinn had rejected his Polish wife at some point long ago: this would have left him free to marry Eir\u00edkr\u2019s widow in ca. 995.54 If Eir\u00edkr\u2019s widow was Duke Mieszko\u2019s daughter, the same Polish prin- cess whom Adam records Boles\u0142aw giving him in marriage, she could have been a sister or niece of Sveinn\u2019s previous Polish wife: this might seem un- usual, but it is not impossible. Whether Sveinn had two marriages or only one, we should consider at what point he might have sent away his (second?) wife. The most likely time would probably have been between the years 1002\u20131005. After the death of Otto III on January 23, 1002, Boles\u0142aw of Poland (992\u20131025) took the opportu- nity to seize territory among the southern Elbe-Slavs as well as in Bohemia and Moravia, for which he refused to do homage to Otto\u2019s successor, King Henry of the Romans (son of Duke Henry the Quarrelsome of Bavaria and crowned as emperor in 1014). In response, King Henry allied himself with the Liutizi against the Poles; given the steadfast paganism of the Liutizi, this was an alliance many contemporaries found objectionable.55 Since Sveinn was focused on Eng- land from 1002 onwards, it is likely that he had no wish to return to hostilities with the Liutizi. Cnut and the Slavs This brings us to Sveinn\u2019s son, Cnut. The Encomium reports that on Sveinn\u2019s death on February 3, 1014, Cnut and his brother Haraldr retrieved their mother from 54 Chronicon, ed. Holtzmann, 446 (VII.xxxix). 55 Strzelczyk, \u201cBohemia and Poland,\u201d 525\u201326.","412 Laura Amalasunta Gazzoli \u201cSclavonia.\u201d56 Although this does not necessarily imply the renewal of any Dan- ish-Polish alliance, the peace of Merseburg in 1013 between the Poles and King Henry (later Emperor Henry II, 1014\u20131024) meant that one year later Cnut and Har- aldr would not have been under any obligation to fight for the Poles against the Liutizi and Saxons.57 However, fighting the Liutizi seems to have been precisely what Cnut did a few years later. The twelfth-century Chronicle of Henry of Huntingdon records that, in the third year of his reign, hence in 1019, Cnut went to Denmark to attack the \u201cWandali,\u201d that is, the \u201cWends.\u201d58 Timothy Bolton has argued that this expedition should be redated to 1022 and connected with Thorkell the Tall.59 I would like to propose, however, that the Slavic context makes 1019, the year we know Cnut did travel to Denmark, a more likely year for this expedition.60 In 1018 the peace of Bautzen finally brought an end to the conflict between Emperor Henry II and Bole- s\u0142aw. The Liutizi, who had been Henry\u2019s allies in this war, took the opportunity to attack the Abodrites, who were then ruled by Mstislav, the son of Mstivoi. Like his father, Mstislav was a Christian, but his people were largely pagan and joined with the Liutizi in driving him out and rejecting Christianity and the rule of princes for what Thietmar called \u201clibertas more Liuticico\u201d (freedom, Liutizi-style).61 Bishop Benno of Oldenburg in Holstein informed Emperor Henry about these events, but Henry took no immediate action and put off a decision until Easter.62 He clearly had no wish to entangle himself in the affairs of his former Liutizi allies. The Abodrite dynasty was, however, still connected to the Danes (see Table 18.1): Cnut\u2019s grandmother had been Mstislav\u2019s sister, while, accord- ing to the Chronicle of St. Michael\u2019s in L\u00fcneburg, Mstislav\u2019s own son Pribignev Uto was married to a Dane. Although we do not know if she was of royal stock, it 56 Encomium, ed. Campbell, 18 (II.ii). 57 Strzelczyk, \u201cBohemia and Poland,\u201d 526. 58 Henry of Huntingdon, Historia Anglorum, ed. Greenway, 362\u201364 (VI.xv). 59 Bolton, Empire of Cnut, 213. His argument is based on the following notice that \u201choc circa tempus\u201d (around this time), \u00c6thelnoth went to Rome, which occurred in 1022. However, this is hardly an exact formulation, and the next dated event is not until the eighth year of Cnut\u2019s reign; Historia Anglorum, ed. Greenway, 364 (VI.xvi). This gives ample space for the event to have occurred. The connection to Thorkell the Tall relies on the later, problematic evidence surrounding the J\u00f3msvikings, which should be treated with suspicion; See also Morawiec in the next chapter, pp. 426\u201329. 60 ASC (D) ed. Cubbin, 63 (s.a. 1019; CE as well). 61 Chronicon, ed. Holtzmann, 498 (VIII.v); L\u00fcbke, Regesten, 4.89\u201392 (nos. 536\u201337) argues that the Liutizi could not have undertaken such a step (i.e., attacking the establishment of Chris- tianity among the Abodrites) while allied with Henry II. 62 Chronicon, ed. Holtzmann, 498\u2013500 (VIII.vi); L\u00fcbke, Regesten, 4.92\u201393 (no. 538).","Chapter 18 Cnut, his Dynasty, and the Elbe-Slavs 413 is not out of the question, as St. Michael\u2019s was where Pribignev\u2019s son, Gottschalk, was brought up; this lends credibility to the source.63 Moreover, Cnut and his brother Haraldr could not have liked the prospect of \u201clibertas more Liuticico\u201d spreading to Denmark as well. By 1020, the Abodrite dynasty seems to have been restored, with Pribignev in charge. A Danish expedition led by Cnut to help them against the Liutizi and the Abodrite rebels in 1019 would fit perfectly with these events. The Billung dukes of Saxony seem to have assisted in the endeavour as well, as the tributary status of the Abodrites to the Saxons was restored.64 A Slavic Prince in England: A New Suggestion The years that followed seem to have largely seen a cooperation between the Danes, the Billungs, the Abodrite dynasty, and the Poles in containing the Liutizi. Emperor Henry II was not always an enemy, but he was no friend at least to the Billungs or the Poles. According to John of Worcester, a sister of Cnut had married a \u201cking of the Wends\u201d called \u201cWyrtgeorn.\u201d65 This man might be identical with the \u201cWrytsleof dux\u201d who attests one of Cnut\u2019s charters in 1026;66 we know of no king with this name, which looks like the Slavic name Vartislav (Warcis\u0142aw), but he could have been an important Abodrite, Pole, or perhaps Pomeranian.67 I have a new and different suggestion, however, that the name \u201cWyrtgeorn\u201d (the Old English name for the legendary Vortigern) is a garbling of Pribignev, a name which would normally have been Latinized as \u201cPribigneus.\u201d Not only would such an Abodrite name have looked incomprehensibly alien to Anglo- Saxon eyes, but the letter P could have been mistaken for the Old English letter wynn (\u01bf) at some point during the manuscript transmission.68 Thus, I would 63 Chronicon S. Michaelis, ed. Weiland, 395; Uspenskii, in \u201cDynastic Names,\u201d 22, n. 17 notes this, though he misses out a generation, making Gottschalk a grandson, rather than a great- grandson of Mstivoi. Neither Adam nor Helmold know of this union. Strictly speaking, the annal only reports that Gottschalk\u2019s mother was Danish, not that she was Pribignev\u2019s wife. 64 L\u00fcbke, Regesten, 4.99\u2013103 (nos. 547\u201349). 65 Keynes, \u201cCnut\u2019s Earls,\u201d 62; L\u00fcbke argues, wrongly, that this is a Welsh king, in Regesten, 3.288\u201389 (no. 436); John of Worcester, Chronicon, ed. Darlington and McGurk, II, 510\u201311 (s.a. 1029) and 540\u201341 (s.a. 1044). 66 Keynes, \u201cCnut\u2019s Earls,\u201d 64\u201365. 67 L\u00fcbke, Regesten, 4.133\u201334 (no. 578). Also discussed by Morawiec in the next chapter, p. 429. 68 The name Pribignev is not attested before Saxo, in Gesta Danorum, ed. Friis-Jensen, II, 750 (X.xvii.3); Adam and Helmold call him by the baptismal name Uto\/Udo. Adam, in Gesta Hammburgensis, ed. Schmeidler, 125\u201326 (II.lxvi), does mention three princes of the Slavs:","414 Laura Amalasunta Gazzoli suggest that Cnut\u2019s unnamed sister could have been the unnamed Danish wife of Pribignev who is mentioned in the Chronicle of St. Michael\u2019s as the mother of Gottschalk (king of the Abodrites 1043\u20131066; see Table 18.1).69 Given that John of Worcester records a daughter being born of this union, who was mar- ried to Cnut\u2019s earl and nephew H\u00e1kon Eir\u00edksson in 1029, and given that Gott- schalk took part in a pagan revolt around the same year before returning to Christianity,70 this postulated union of Pribignev and Cnut\u2019s sister could not have taken place much later than ca. 1015; probably it would have taken place a few years earlier. In this period the Danes, Abodrites, Poles, and Saxons collaborated in con- taining the Liutizi. The ties between the Danish and Polish royal houses must also still have been strong. Not only have we heard about Cnut and Haraldr re- trieving their mother from the Poles, and about Cnut\u2019s sister \u201cSantslaua\u201d (a name matching the Polish \u015awi\u0119tos\u0142awa) in England, but it is also worth noting that Cnut and Mieszko II both bore the same baptismal name: Lambert.71 This web of relationships is important to bear in mind, in light of what happened after Emperor Henry\u2019s death in 1025. In that year, it began to break down, and to take a new form.72 With Henry gone, Duke Boles\u0142aw had himself crowned king of Poland, a title that did not have the permission of the new emperor Con- rad II (1027\u20131039). Although Boles\u0142aw died shortly after, his successor, Mieszko II (1025\u20131031), continued this policy of independence.73 Emperor Conrad needed friends when this renewal of differences with the Poles broke out into open warfare three years later in 1028. Allying with the pagan Liutizi, as Henry II had done before him, would have been a bad move: it would have scandalized Christian opinion; moreover, the Liutizi could be Anatrog, Gneus, and Uto; the first two are unknown and Gneus is only a second element of a name (Trillmich, Quellen, 307, n. 259); it could be a mangling of Pribignev. The name Udo could refer to Luder-Udo I, Count of Stade, who died in 994, as a baptismal patron: Stoob, Helmolds Slawenchronik, 97, n. 4. 69 It is also tempting to identify her with \u015awi\u0119tos\u0142awa. John of Worcester, in Chronicon, ed. Darlington and McGurk, II, 510\u201311 (s.a. 1029) and 540\u201341 (s.a. 1044), records that her daugh- ter\u2019s name was Gunnhild, which was also Cnut\u2019s daughter\u2019s name and possibly his mother\u2019s name; this might imply that this sister of Cnut was also called Gunnhild: see also Uspenskii, \u201cDynastic Names,\u201d 19. 70 This activity in the revolt may be linked to why Cnut chose to send H\u00e1kon away from his court \u2013 especially as a representative of the dynasty of Hla\u00f0ir (Lade), whose power had been anchored in Norwegian paganism. 71 Uspenskii, \u201cDynastic Names,\u201d 20\u201321. See also Morawiec in the following chapter, pp. 424\u201325. 72 L\u00fcbke, Regesten, 4.131\u20132 (no. 577). 73 Wipo, Gesta Chuonradi II, ed. Bresslau, 31\u201332 (IX).","Chapter 18 Cnut, his Dynasty, and the Elbe-Slavs 415 unpredictable. So Conrad instead looked to the north and attempted to lure Cnut away from his Polish kin. In 1027 Cnut came to Rome to attend Conrad\u2019s coronation, ceremonially walking at the emperor\u2019s side as they left after the mass.74 Probably a year or so after that, Cnut betrothed his daughter, Gunnhild, to Conrad\u2019s son Henry, the future emperor Henry III (1046\u20131056).75 As a result of this realignment, the Poles and the Liutizi seem to have reached a rapproche- ment.76 Cnut cooperated with the Saxons, the emperor, and the Abodrite dy- nasty both in securing peace north of the Elbe and in fighting the Liutizi and the pagan reaction among the Abodrites.77 Moreover, Cnut\u2019s close relationship with the emperor set a precedent for the reign of his sister\u2019s son and ultimate successor, Sveinn \u00c1str\u00ed\u00f0arson, who continued the tradition of Abodrite connec- tions by giving his daughter in marriage to Gottschalk, son of Pribignev.78 Gottschalk reportedly remained for a long time at Cnut\u2019s court.79 After the death of Harthacnut and the end of Danish rule in England, he returned to take up power in his Abodrite homeland in ca. 1043. By then King Magn\u00fas \u00d3l\u00e1fsson of Nor- way had taken the opportunity to seize control of Denmark. His rival for power there was Cnut\u2019s nephew, Sveinn \u00c1str\u00ed\u00f0arson, who, as we have seen, was also Gott- schalk\u2019s father-in-law. During this period, Magn\u00fas not only warred with Sveinn but 74 Wipo, Gesta Chuonradi II, ed. Bresslau, 36 (XVI). 75 The marriage is recorded by Wipo, Gesta Chuonradi II, ed. Bresslau, 35 (LIV). Gelting, in \u201cElusive Bishops,\u201d 178, however (following Lawson, Cnut: Danes in England, 109), argues that this alliance would have been unlikely before the death of the Byzantine Emperor Constantine VIII in November 1028. Conrad had initially hoped to marry Henry to one of Constantine\u2019s daughters. 76 L\u00fcbke, Regesten, 4.131\u201332 (no. 577). 77 Gesta Hammburgensis, ed. Schmeidler, 125\u201326 (II.lxvi). 78 Gesta Hammburgensis, ed. Schmeidler, 162 (III.xix) and 194 (III.li). This alliance would have been very useful to Svend in gaining control of Denmark and establishing his rule; a con- nection to Abodrite royalty might have even bolstered his legitimacy in Danish eyes (some- thing he might have needed as he was not descended from a direct male line of kings), given the connections between the two dynasties. By the relationship I have proposed, Gottschalk and Svend would be first cousins, admittedly making the marriage incestuous; but given the reports of Svend\u2019s own incestuous marriage, it is hardly inconceivable that such a union would take place. Given the prevalence of polygamy and lack of primogeniture in Scandinavia at this time, the genetic consequences of one incestuous union would have been no great mat- ter of concern as a king had very many other opportunities to procreate. 79 Gesta Hammburgensis, ed. Schmeidler, 125\u201326 (II.lxvi). If it was his father Pribignev who attested Cnut\u2019s charter in 1026, there would be every precedent for his being at the court too. Given his revolt after Pribignev\u2019s death in 1028, his time in England probably dated from around 1030.","416 Laura Amalasunta Gazzoli fought several notable battles against the Slavs.80 Adam of Bremen does not draw a connection between Gottschalk and Sveinn, Magn\u00fas\u2019s opponents here, but one might suspect that the Norwegian king\u2019s venture had something to do with their marriage alliance and, indeed, with the closeness of their families. When Gottschalk was killed in 1066 in the wake of another Abodrite pagan reaction,81 his son Heinrich found refuge in Denmark;82 he returned and took power in 1093.83 After Heinrich\u2019s death in 1127, his sons Sventipolk and Knut (see Table 18.1, and note the choice of a Danish royal name) fought a civil war,84 bringing not only widespread destruction but also, according to Hel- mold, the extinction of the Nakonid line.85 In 1129, after this, the Abodrite crown passed to Knud Lavard, son of the former Danish king Erik \u201cEjegod\u201d (\u201cHericus bonus,\u201d \u201cEgoth,\u201d \u201cinn g\u00f3\u00f0i\u201d) and nephew of the reigning King Niels (and the first cousin of Heinrich, son of Gottschalk; see Table 18.1). Knud was the father of Valdemar the Great, who ushered in a new era of Danish history, in which Denmark expanded its power in the Baltic \u2013 as I have argued, this is not entirely a new development, although it is often framed as one. When the Danish kings in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries took the title \u201cKing of the Wends,\u201d it was not only their conquests or ambitions they were reflecting, but a deeply ingrained part of their family history. Conclusion: Cnut\u2019s Slavic Background By putting together the history of the Danes and the Elbe-Slavs, I have tried to fill a gap, and hope I have shown that there is much to be gained from the new perspectives that result. The Slavic context is essential for understanding the relationship between Haraldr Bluetooth and his son, Sveinn Forkbeard: Adam of Bremen\u2019s depiction of Sveinn as a pagan rebel ends up looking highly ironic, as it was Haraldr who took part in a revolt initiated and dominated by pagan Slavs, whereas it was Sveinn, who, in the reinterpretation I have argued for here, allied with the Christian Poles against them, possibly through a marriage- alliance as early as the 980s. Moreover, Slavic connections continued to be im- portant even after Sveinn\u2019s and Cnut\u2019s conquests of England. It was probably in 80 Gesta Hammburgensis, ed. Schmeidler, 137\u201338 (II.lxxviii, schol. 56 [57]). 81 Gesta Hammburgensis, ed. Schmeidler, 193 (III.l). 82 Helmold, Chronica, ed. Schmeidler, 47 (I.xxv). 83 Helmold, Chronica, ed. Schmeidler, 66\u201367 (I.xxxiv). 84 Helmold, Chronica, ed. Schmeidler, 91\u201392 (I.xlvi). 85 Helmold, Chronica, ed. Schmeidler, 94\u201396 (I.xlviii).","Chapter 18 Cnut, his Dynasty, and the Elbe-Slavs 417 ca. 1015 that Cnut\u2019s sister married a Slavic king, who, I have argued, is identical with Pribignev Uto, ruler of the Abodrites in the 1020s. These relationships, as well as the later ones between the Abodrite ruler Gottschalk and his father-in- law, Sveinn \u00c1str\u00ed\u00f0arson, up through Knud Lavard, played a vital part in defin- ing not only Denmark\u2019s relationship with her closest neighbours to the south, but also those relationships further afield, as well as the identity of Denmark\u2019s own ruling dynasty.","","Jakub Morawiec Chapter 19 Cnut\u2019s Reign in England and Denmark: The Western Slavonic Perspective The fact that an anonymous daughter of Duke Mieszko I (ca. 960\u2013992) was the mother of Cnut the Great, as we have seen discussed in the previous chapter, raises questions about the nature and importance of political contacts in the Baltic zone during the tenth and eleventh centuries, and those especially between Poland and the Scandinavian kingdoms. It is important to investigate the circumstances that led to the Piast princess marrying into the Nordic royal families, first with Eir\u00edkr inn sigrs\u00e6li (\u201cthe Victorious\u201d), King of the Swedes, and then with Sveinn tj\u00fagus- kegg (\u201cForkbeard\u201d) Haraldsson, King of Denmark. However, it is even more in- triguing to consider if these connections affected Cnut\u2019s policy as king of both England and Denmark, and to explore what place the Baltic zone occupied in the king\u2019s plans and his interactions with other countries. This chapter will analyse these issues, which have so far failed to attract significant scholarly attention. Cnut\u2019s Unnamed Mother Reliable information about Cnut\u2019s mother is limited. Several more or less con- temporary sources provide us with scanty pieces of data. The Chronicon of Thietmar, Bishop of Merseburg, is the most important: omitto et de geniminis viperarum, id est filiis Suenni persecutoris, pauca edissero. Hos peperit ei Miseconis filia ducis, soror Bolizlavi successoris ejus et nati; quae a viro suimet diu depulsa, non minimam cum caeteris perpessa est controversiam.1 [in only a few words I will refer now to this offspring of a lizard, namely the sons of this Sveinn the oppressor. They were born of the daughter of Duke Mieszko, and sister of Bole- s\u0142aw, his successor. Driven away by her husband for a long time, she suffered much, to- gether with others. Her sons resembled their father in every respect.] Other references to Cnut\u2019s mother are found in Adam of Bremen\u2019s Gesta Ham- maburgensis ecclesiae pontificum. In the main text, referring to Sveinn Fork- beard and his endeavours, Adam writes: 1 Chronicon, ed. Holtzmann, 446 (VII.xxxix). My translation. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1515\/9781501513336-020","420 Jakub Morawiec post mortem diu optatam Herici Suein ab exilio regressus optinuit regnum patrum suo- rum, anno depulsionis suae vel peregrinationis XIIII. Et accepit uxorem Herici relictam, matrem Olaph, quae peperit ei Chnut. [after the long-wished-for death of Eir\u00edkr, Sveinn returned from exile and regained the kingdom of his fathers in the fourteenth year of his deposition and wanderings. And he married Eir\u00edkr\u2019s widow, the mother of \u00d3l\u00e1fr, and she bore him Cnut.]2 Then, in one of the scholia attached to the main text, there is an additional ac- count of Eir\u00edkr, King of the Swedes: Hericus, rex Sueonum, cum potentissimo rege Polanorum Bolizlao foedus iniit. Bolizlaus filiam vel sororem Herico dedit. Cuius gratia societatis Dani a Sclavis et Sueonibus iuxta impugnati sunt. [Eir\u00edkr, king of the Swedes, entered into alliance with Boles\u0142aw, the most powerful king of Poles. Boles\u0142aw gave his daughter or sister in marriage to Eir\u00edkr. Because of this league the Danes were jointly attacked by the Slavs and the Swedes.]3 A further marginal note about Cnut\u2019s mother is found in the Encomium Emmae Reginae. She is mentioned when the Encomiast describes the political situation in Denmark after Sveinn\u2019s death, when his sons, Cnut and Haraldr, \u201cpariter uero Sclauoniam adierunt, et matrem suam, quae illic morabatur, reduxerunt\u201d (went to the land of the Slavs and brought back their mother who resided there).4 Due to the ambiguity in them, these accounts cannot fully satisfy his- torians nowadays. The case of Cnut\u2019s mother and her marriages is not central to any of these texts. Rather, one can assume that both Thietmar and Adam felt obliged to refer to this matter in order to explain and elaborate on other, more important, aspects of Danish history. In the case of Thietmar it was the desire to draw as negative as possible a picture of Sveinn Forkbeard. In the case of Adam, the variability of political alliances in the North was at issue.5 Neither these authors nor the Encomiast even found it necessary to give Cnut\u2019s mother a name, while the scope of the information to be found in their accounts also raises questions and doubts about the life and career of this Polish princess. Scholars who have previously been interested in reconstructing the life of Cnut\u2019s mother nearly all agree that these medieval writers were referring to the 2 Gesta Hammaburgensis, ed. Schmeidler, 99 (II.xxxix). Adam of Bremen: History, trans. Tschan, 81. 3 Gesta Hammaburgensis, ed. Schmeidler, 95 (II.xxxv, schol. 24 [25]). Adam of Bremen: His- tory, trans. Tschan, 78. 4 Encomium, ed. Campbell, 18 (II.ii). 5 Both Thietmar and Adam of Bremen were motivated to provide negative images of Sveinn Forkbeard by the Danish king\u2019s resistance to accepting the claims of the German church (and","Chapter 19 Cnut\u2019s Reign in England and Denmark 421 same person.6 Thus, it has been concluded that a Piast princess, hypothetically but wrongly called \u015awi\u0119tos\u0142awa (Santslaua), was married to the Swedish king, Eir\u00edkr the Victorious, between 983 and 984. Eir\u00edkr and his Polish wife are said to have had a son, \u00d3l\u00e1fr. This Swedish king died in 994 or 995, and his widow is then said to have become the wife of Sveinn Forkbeard, who managed to re- gain power in Denmark after Eir\u00edkr\u2019s death.7 They had five children together, including two sons, Cnut and Haraldr, and at least two daughters, \u015awi\u0119tos\u0142awa and \u00c1str\u00ed\u00f0r. Following Thietmar\u2019s account, scholars assume that sometime later, shortly before or after the year 1000, she was driven off by Sveinn, but the reason for this remains unknown. The Encomiast\u2019s note leads us to believe that she found shelter in Poland and stayed at the court of her brother until 1014. In that year Cnut\u2019s mother returned to Denmark, accompanied by her sons. Her subsequent fate is unknown.8 We do not know how long she lived, nor exactly when she died. Neither do we know if she spent the rest of her life in Denmark. Some years ago, Kazimierz Jasi\u0144ski, studying Thietmar\u2019s account, gave us good grounds to believe that she was still alive in 1016\u20131017.9 I have argued elsewhere that Li\u00f0smannaflokkr, an anonymous skaldic poem composed around 1016\u20131017, may throw additional light on the fate of Cnut\u2019s mother.10 In my opinion, one may identify her with the \u201cSyn\u201d or \u201cIlmr\u201d (lady) whom the skald, referring to her great interest in Cnut\u2019s achievements during the conquest, addresses in the second part of the poem.11 Such an identification sup- ports Jasi\u0144ski\u2019s argument and points to her potential role not only as a witness to Cnut\u2019s campaign in England in 1015\u20131016, but also as a crucial supporter or ad- viser of the young monarch during the initial stage of his reign. Duke Mieszko I was particularly concerned with his relationship with the Ottonian Empire, Bohemia, and the Polabian Slavs (or the Elbe-Slavs); an alli- ance with the the Swedes, concluded by his daughter\u2019s marriage to King Eir\u00edkr, might therefore seem surprising. A laconic note on the alliance by Adam of Bre- men, however, points clearly to the anti-Danish character of this union. There especially of the archdiocese of Hamburg-Bremen) for control over Denmark\u2019s ecclesiastical institutions. See Sawyer, \u201cSwein Forkbeard and the Historians,\u201d 27\u201340. 6 For another view, see Gazzoli in the previous chapter, pp. 409\u201311. 7 This Polish princess\u2019 Swedish marriage is dismissed as Adam\u2019s invention in Lund, \u201cWhy did Cnut conquer England?,\u201d 39. 8 Jasi\u0144ski, Rodow\u00f3d, 99; Duczko, \u201cA. D. 1000,\u201d 374\u201375; Wa\u015bko, \u201c\u015awi\u0119tos\u0142awa-Sygryda,\u201d 34\u201335; Uspenskii, \u201cDynastic Names,\u201d 18. 9 Jasi\u0144ski, Rodow\u00f3d, 98. 10 \u201cLi\u00f0smannaflokkr,\u201d ed. Poole, 1014\u201328; Morawiec, \u201cLi\u00f0smannaflokkr,\u201d 93\u2013115. 11 A contrary view is presented by Russell Poole, who identifies this \u201clady\u201d with queen Emma in his Viking Poems, 113.","422 Jakub Morawiec is no reason, in my opinion, to disregard Adam\u2019s statement. Tensions between the rulers of Denmark and Sweden, reaching a zenith in Eir\u00edkr\u2019s attack on Den- mark in 991\/994, were serious enough to make the Swedish king look for new allies. Mieszko could have been considered an appropriate candidate, as he was also forced to face Danish ambitions in the Polabian Slavs\u2019 territories, espe- cially in the Oder estuary where both parties sought to control long-distance trade in Wolin. Although it is difficult today to estimate how effective this alli- ance was, the political turbulence in Denmark, along with rebellions against Haraldr, some Swedish attacks on Denmark, and Sveinn Forkbeard\u2019s exile, all suggest that Mieszko and Eir\u00edkr had many incentives to join forces against the Danes, now their common enemy. Mieszko\u2019s daughter\u2019s second marriage, with Sveinn Forkbeard, was a part of the bigger political changes that took place in Scandinavia in 995. As Adam of Bremen\u2019s account indicates, the death of Eir\u00edkr the Victorious allowed Sveinn to return to Denmark and regain power there.12 Perhaps the marriage with Eir- \u00edkr\u2019s widow was part of this process. Again, the circumstances remain unclear, but it is obvious from these sources that Sveinn quickly managed not only to consolidate his position at home but also to become the protector of his step- son, young \u00d3l\u00e1fr \u201cs\u0153nski\u201d (the Swede).13 Undoubtedly, Sveinn\u2019s betrothal to a new wife comprised a key element of this role. The princess\u2019s second marriage resulted in numerous offspring.14 Inspite of all this, so we learn from Thietmar, Sveinn decided to drive her away.15 Although the reasons for the king\u2019s deci- sion remain unclear, one can speculate either that Sveinn felt strong enough not to need Eir\u00edkr\u2019s widow anymore, or that she was too ambitious to refrain from trying to influence her husband\u2019s policy. In fact, these alternatives do not contradict each other, although the latter characterization is based mainly on a later source, the profile of Sigr\u00ed\u00f0r \u201cst\u00f3rr\u00e1\u00f0a\u201d (the haughty), which is the name provided for this woman by the sagas. Whatever the reason, Mieszko\u2019s daughter was deprived of her status as royal wife and mother. Significantly, Mieszko\u2019s daughter did not return to Sweden after she was driven out of Denmark, but instead moved to \u201cSclavonia,\u201d as the Encomiast 12 Gesta Hammaburgensis, ed. Schmeidler, 99\u2013100 (II.xxxix). 13 Duczko, \u201cThe Fateful Hundred Years,\u201d 11\u201328. 14 Their two sons, Cnut and Haraldr, are mentioned by both the Encomiast and Adam of Bre- men. The latter notes also \u00c1stri\u00f0r, one of their daughters. A different set of sources records two other daughters: \u201cSaintslaua\u201d is mentioned only in the Liber Vitae of New Minster in Win- chester, whereas Gy\u00f0a is known only to authors of Icelandic kings\u2019 sagas. See Morawiec, Knut Wielki, 88\u201389. 15 Chronicon, ed. Holtzmann, 446 (VII.xxxix).","Chapter 19 Cnut\u2019s Reign in England and Denmark 423 implies with his note of her sons\u2019 retrieval of her there; this term most probably denoted Poland.16 One can only wonder about the reaction of Duke Boles\u0142aw Chrobry (\u201cthe Brave\u201d) to the dramatic breakdown of his sister\u2019s marriage. Did he try to intervene on her behalf? Did he try to marry her off again? The answer to the first question is probably negative, for cases similar to that of Cnut\u2019s mother were frequent during the period; Boles\u0142aw himself had driven out his first two spouses when his own political alliances shifted.17 He could have treated his sister\u2019s situation in the same way, finding her a burden, but one with potential future benefits. This would accord with the second question. However, the sources we have at our disposal remain silent on this matter. One can only regret that the author of the Encomium Emmae Reginae did not elaborate on the circumstances of Cnut\u2019s mother in Denmark, nor on her role in the political decisions that were then reached concerning the future of her sons. It is possible to limit the discussion to the purely symbolic aspects connected with her status as the king\u2019s widow and mother.18 It seems, however, that she could have been active in settling terms between the brothers and mak- ing decisions about the organization of the expedition to England in 1015. Per- haps, as mother to both of them, she also played a role in the agreement between Cnut and his half-brother, \u00d3l\u00e1fr the Swede, who, according to Adam of Bremen, supported Cnut with a contingent of warriors.19 The identification of the \u201clady\u201d from Li\u00f0smannaflokkr as the mother of Cnut points not only to the importance of the success of the English campaign from the point of view of the Danish political elite, but also to the young king\u2019s per- sonal abilities in leading such an enterprise, at least formally. Later sources such as the Kn\u00fatsdr\u00e1pur, a group of skaldic poems dedicated to Cnut and com- posed at his court,20 as well as the Encomium Emmae Reginae, suggest that the king himself paid great attention to the ways in which an appropriate vision of the Conquest was promoted, with Cnut portrayed as the sole leader and victor of the campaign.21 Li\u00f0smannaflokkr, with its clear tendency to level the military achievements of Cnut and his fellow leader Earl \u201c\u00deorkell inn h\u00e1vi\u201d (Thorkell the Tall), seems to reveal the especially high degree of risk encountered on this expedition. If one assumes that, at some point, Cnut\u2019s mother joined her son in England, this was perhaps dictated by the need to counterbalance the influence 16 Encomium, ed. Campbell, 18 (II.ii). 17 Chronicon, ed. Holtzmann, 225 (IV.lviii); Jasi\u0144ski, Rodow\u00f3d, 83\u201385. 18 See Enright, Lady with a Mead Cup, 1\u201368. 19 Gesta Hammaburgensis, ed. Schmeidler, 113 (II.lii). 20 Townend, \u201cContextualising the Kn\u00fatsdr\u00e1pur,\u201d 145\u201379. 21 Morawiec, Mi\u0119dzy poezj\u0105 a polityk\u0105, 413\u201346.","424 Jakub Morawiec of Earl Thorkell, whose potential and ambitions were certainly known to the king and his followers.22 However certain they may be, all pieces of information we have about the mother of Cnut point to a person who was distinguished, ambitious, and charis- matic. The Polish princess seems to have been aware of her position as a royal widow and mother, especially during moments of political transition in 995 and 1014. This self-awareness is most likely to have resulted in a willingness to take an active part in decision-making processes, something that marked her life with both success and failure. Such a profile could have inspired saga authors to create Sigr\u00ed\u00f0r the Haughty, one of the most exceptional women of Old Norse literature.23 Since Sigr\u00ed\u00f0r follows the same political and matrimonial path, with Eir\u00edkr the Victorious and then Sveinn Forkbeard becoming her husbands, one can only wonder if her literary character is also based on Cnut\u2019s mother. Cnut\u2019s Policy in the Baltic In this way it seems even more appropriate to investigate whether Cnut\u2019s Baltic pol- icy, and especially his dealings with the Western Slavs, were in any way affected by his kinship with the Piast dynasty. It is striking that the sources we have at our disposal record no contact of any kind between Cnut and his uncle, Boles\u0142aw the Brave. Nevertheless, the relationship between them might have been stimulated not only by the issue of the return of Cnut\u2019s mother to Denmark, but also, initially, by their likely shared enmity towards Emperor Henry II ((1002\u2013)1014\u20131025).24 Such contacts between Cnut and Boles\u0142aw would have become even more relevant when Cnut took control of Denmark in 1019. Unfortunately, our main informant, Thiet- mar, died in 1018, so the final years of King Boles\u0142aw, who died in 1025, remain almost totally unknown to historians. According to Adam of Bremen, Cnut was named \u201cLambert\u201d at his baptism.25 This is perhaps the only remaining trace of contact between the dynasties. Fyodor Uspenskii has suggested that the name 22 Poole, Viking Poems, 99\u2013103; Townend, \u201cContextualising the Kn\u00fatsdr\u00e1pur,\u201d 151. 23 Sigr\u00ed\u00f0r is mentioned in several Old Norse texts, mainly in connection with a plot against \u00d3l\u00e1fr Tryggvason that results in the defeat and death of the Norwegian king. Sigr\u00ed\u00f0r feels dis- honored by \u00d3l\u00e1fr, who has rejected marriage with her because of her pagan beliefs; this also motivates her new husband, Sveinn Forkbeard, to make war on \u00d3l\u00e1fr. See \u00d3l\u00e1fs saga Tryggva- sonar eptir Odd munk, ed. \u00d3lafur Halld\u00f3rsson, 179\u201384; Fagrskinna, ed. Bjarni Einarsson, 115; Heimskringla II, ed. Bjarni A\u00f0albjarnarson, 343\u201349. 24 See Lawson, Cnut: England\u2019s Viking King, 104, 118. 25 Gesta Hammaburgensis, ed. Schmeidler, 112 (II.lii, schol. 37 [38]).","Chapter 19 Cnut\u2019s Reign in England and Denmark 425 Lambert, which was popular within the Polish dynasty at the time and was given to a son of Mieszko and Oda, was chosen on the initiative of Cnut\u2019s Polish mother.26 Lambert was also the baptismal name of Mieszko II (1025\u20131031), son of Boles\u0142aw the Brave (992\u20131025) and so Cnut\u2019s first cousin. One cannot exclude the possibility of a more or less direct influence from the Polish court on the Danish royal dynasty via Cnut\u2019s mother. However, it is also possible that we are dealing with the result of an independent influx of imperial and Saxon fashions. Some scholars have suggested that Cnut and his cousin Mieszko II cooperated during the latter\u2019s conflict with Emperor Conrad II (1027\u20131039).27 This Polish king, well educated and already experienced in international politics, was ambitious in trying to continue the policy of his father. Although Mieszko allied himself with Ernest of Swabia, who rebelled against Conrad, his raids in Saxony (1027\u20131028) did not bring the expected results,28 and the emperor was forced to act. Creating an alliance with Jaroslav (Jarizleifr) the Wise of Russia in support of Mieszko\u2019s younger brothers, Conrad organized military expeditions against Poland in 1030 and 1031, which quickly resulted in the weakening of the Polish king\u2019s position in his own country. Moreover, Emperor Conrad regained Saxon lands such as Lusatia and Meissen, which had previously been controlled by Boles\u0142aw the Brave. Finally, he took advantage of a conflict between Mieszko and his wife, Richeza of Lotharin- gia, who was a niece of Emperor Otto III (996\u20131002). Richeza found refuge in Sax- ony in 1031, bringing with her Mieszko\u2019s crown. Mieszko, desolate and humiliated, was forced to seek reconciliation with Conrad. The conditions of the agreement reached in Merseburg in 1032 were hard on Mieszko, who had to resign his royal title and accept the division of his country.29 German and Anglo-Saxon sources are silent about Mieszko\u2019s potential attempts to secure Cnut\u2019s support during his en- counters with Conrad. It seems likely that even if the Polish king did so, his case would have been hopeless, for it was in Cnut\u2019s best interest to cooperate with Con- rad. Imperial recognition, as demonstrated by Cnut\u2019s visit to Rome and his partici- pation in the emperor\u2019s coronation in 1027,30 was more important to this young king of England and Denmark than any blood ties with a Polish ruler too weak to keep the position won by his father. 26 Uspenskii, \u201cDynastic Names,\u201d 21. 27 Sochacki, Stosunki publicznoprawne, 68. 28 Mieszko\u2019s raiding is recorded in several German accounts, for example in the Annales Hil- desheimenses and Annales Magdeburgenses. On Mieszko\u2019s conflict with Emperor Conrad II, see Labuda, Mieszko II, 56\u201359, 65\u201374; Wolfram, Conrad II, 213\u201320, 235\u201336. 29 Labuda, Mieszko II, 65\u201396; Sochacki, \u201cKontakty,\u201d 373\u201390; Delimata, \u201cUcieczka z Polski,\u201d 79\u201384. 30 See also Bolton, Empire of Cnut, 103, 181\u201382.","426 Jakub Morawiec The lack of direct evidence for any contact between Cnut and Poland does not mean that he was uninterested in political encounters with the Western Slavs. Rather, one may assume that this was a vital element of his policy as the king of Denmark. It can be clearly seen in the conflict between Cnut and Earl Thorkell the Tall. In 1021 the king outlawed the earl.31 Presumably Thorkell returned to Denmark, because a year later his challenge to Cnut\u2019s position forced the king to go there on a military expedition, albeit the destination of this is variously recorded: in 1022, ac- cording to the Abingdon (C) and Peterborough (E) Chronicles, \u201cCnut kyning for ut mid his scypum to Wiht\u201d; according to the Worcester (D) Chronicle, this was \u201cto Wihtlande.\u201d32 Most sources treat \u201cWight\u201d or \u201cWightland\u201d as the Isle of Wight, al- though explaining why Cnut, on his way east to deal with Thorkell in Denmark, would have moved his fleet first here does raise some difficulties. The Chronicle\u2019s statement is further developed and complicated by Henry of Huntingdon, according to whom Cnut, in the third year of his reign (thus in 1019), led an army consisting of Danes and Englishmen through Denmark to fight the \u201cWandali.\u201d33 This statement would refer to King Cnut\u2019s first expedition to Denmark in that year. Henry relates a story, however, in which Earl Godwine, leading Cnut\u2019s English army, made a sur- prise night attack on the enemy\u2019s camp and won a superb victory. The problem here is that Godwine\u2019s presence in the king\u2019s retinue dates from 1023, in the context of King Cnut\u2019s second expedition to Denmark. Although one cannot exclude the possi- bility that Earl Godwine took part in the 1019 expedition, Henry of Huntingdon aligns his exploit with the following events, which took place in 1022 and 1023: Hoc circa tempus Leving archiepiscopo defuncto, Athelnod successor ejus Romam petiit . . . Archiepiscopus vero Roma rediens, corpus S. Alfei a Londonia transtulit Cantuariam. [At that time [1022] \u00c6thelnoth, who came after archbishop Lyfing, came to Rome. . . . On his return [1023], the archbishop decided about the translation of St. \u00c6lfheah\u2019s body from London to Canterbury.]34 It seems likely, in this way, that Henry conflated information about two sepa- rate expeditions into his account of the first, and that Cnut\u2019s campaign against the Wandali took place in the second expedition.35 31 ASC (C), ed. O\u2019Brien O\u2019Keeffe, 104 (s.a. 1021); (D), ed. Cubbin, 63 (s.a. 1021); (E), ed. Irvine, 75 (s.a. 1021); trans. Swanton (D), 154 (s.a. 1021). For the synoptic view: ASC (CDE), ed. Plummer, I, 154\u201355. 32 ASC (C), ed. O\u2019Brien O\u2019Keeffe, 104 (s.a. 1022); (D), ed. Cubbin, 63 (s.a. 1022); (E), ed. Irvine, 75 (s.a. 1022); trans. Swanton, 154\u201355 (s.a. 1022): \u201cto (the Isle of) Wight.\u201d 33 Historia Anglorum, ed. Greenway, 362\u201363. 34 Historia Anglorum, ed. and trans. Greenway, 362\u201363. 35 See Bolton, Empire of Cnut, 213; Morawiec, Knut Wielki, 209. For the view that Cnut\u2019s expe- dition against the Wandali took place in 1019, see Gazzoli in the previous chapter, pp. 411\u201313.","Chapter 19 Cnut\u2019s Reign in England and Denmark 427 There is no doubt that the Wandali mentioned by the chronicler, \u201cWends\u201d as they have been named by historians, should be identified with the Slavs. Henry does not mention Thorkell\u2019s rebellion, but if his account is to be treated as reliable, one must ask about possible connections between Cnut\u2019s raid on the Slavs and his dealings with the outlawed Thorkell. For this reason, Johanes Steenstrup proposed identifying the Worcester Chronicle\u2019s \u201cWihtland\u201d not with the Isle of Wight, but with the Slavonic coast of the south-eastern Baltic. Ac- cording to Steenstrup, Cnut would have made an expedition to the Baltic in 1022, aiming to take control of the territories of the Slavs and the Prussians.36 Responses to Steenstrup\u2019s proposals have been varied. Niels Lund found the suggestion tempting, in contrast to Michael Lawson, who considered it unreli- able.37 A view similar to Lawson\u2019s prevails in Polish scholarship. Gerard Labuda and Adam Turasiewicz prefer to identify \u201cWiht\u201d with the Isle of Wight.38 Such an identification seems to be confirmed by a record in the Anglo-Saxon Chroni- cle for the year 998, in which \u201cWihtland\u201d is unequivocally the name for the Isle of Wight.39 Moreover, Steenstrup\u2019s theory points to territories, namely the marches of the Slavonic-Prussian border, that are barely represented in Cnut\u2019s political agenda as we know it. Perhaps the most reasonable solution to this problem is to follow the sources as they are and to say that in 1022 Cnut moved his fleet to the Isle of Wight, even though the reason for such a move at this time is another knotty problem. Assumptions about Cnut\u2019s undertaking an expe- dition to Normandy should be rejected, as there is nothing in the sources that could indicate the king\u2019s military plans against Duke Richard II (996\u20131026).40 Nonetheless, it seems to me that the most probable explanation for this Wight- bound movement of the royal fleet is to see it as part of a defensive manoeuvre by Cnut to secure England from an attack by Thorkell directed from Denmark. I do, however, agree with Lawson that the area around Sandwich, not Wight, would have been a more probable destination in that case.41 The rejection of Steenstrup\u2019s proposals does not mean we must discredit Henry of Huntingdon\u2019s account. Rather, it is worth investigating the possibility of a link between Cnut\u2019s expedition against the Wandali and the case of Thorkell. This also means rejecting older theories that date Cnut\u2019s encounters with the Slavs 36 Steenstrup, Venderne og Danske, 66. 37 Lund, \u201cCnut\u2019s Danish Kingdom,\u201d 36; Lawson, Cnut: England\u2019s Viking King, 94. 38 Labuda, Fragmenty, 139; Turasiewicz, Dzieje polityczne, 128. 39 ASC (E), ed. Irvine, 63 (s.a. 998). 40 Lawson, Cnut: England\u2019s Viking King, 92\u201393. 41 Lawson, Cnut: England\u2019s Viking King, 92.","428 Jakub Morawiec to 1019 and see these as an attempt to conquer part of the Slavonic territories.42 By the same token, we must reject attempts to see these encounters as the result of a degree of cooperation between Cnut and Emperor Henry II or Boles\u0142aw the Brave. If we look at the evidence in this way, Timothy Bolton is absolutely right: in 1022\u20131023 King Cnut\u2019s main concern was the potential risk that Earl Thorkell\u2019s army posed.43 The king\u2019s encounters with Slavs should be treated as part of the same military political strategy that aimed to eliminate this threat. Some English accounts, such as the Vita Edwardi Regis and the Translatio Sancti \u00c6lfegi, indicate that the outlawed Thorkell returned to Denmark and continued to plot against Cnut there.44 It seems probable that the earl also decided to look for support from the Slavs, and in particular the Obodrites, a confederation of Western Slavonic tribes that occupied the territories now Mecklenburg and Holstein in northern Ger- many. Of course, it is difficult either to confirm or discount an arrangement of this kind between Thorkell and the Slavs. However, the conflict between Magn\u00fas inn g\u00f3\u00f0i (\u201cthe Good\u201d) and Sveinn \u00dalfsson in the 1040s provides us with a good analogy here. Earl Sveinn allied with the Slavs when he tried, unsuccessfully, to drive this Norwegian king out of Denmark.45 Perhaps a similar situation arose in 1023. Cnut\u2019s campaign against the Slavs, as we see it in the account of Henry of Huntingdon, could have resulted from an alliance between them and Thorkell in his own bid for military power. Such a threat was most probably too serious to ignore and prompted Cnut to intervene. Direct clashes with the Slavs could have taken place in Denmark, and there is no need to argue, with Herwig Wolfram, that the king subdued the Obodrites, forcing them to pay tribute.46 Unfortunately, the course of these events remains unknown to us, except its conclusion, in which Cnut and Thorkell decided to reconcile. Their mutual exchange of sons was to guarantee this peace, even though afterwards it appears that the earl\u2019s position was weaker. We do not know whether this reconciliation affected Cnut\u2019s relations with the Slavs. It seems likely that he had priorities elsewhere and merely wished to elimi- nate an Obodritian threat in the interests of securing his Danish dominion. In this way, despite being heavily engaged in English affairs, Cnut kept his eye on the Western Slavs and their lands, trying to maintain Danish influence there just as his father and grandfather had done before him. This may explain the presence of Slavonic noblemen at the king\u2019s court, of whom two are named. 42 Labuda, Fragmenty, 182\u201384; Turasiewicz, Dzieje polityczne, 125\u201328 (see further references there). 43 Bolton, Empire of Cnut, 213\u201315. 44 See further Bolton, Empire of Cnut, 213. 45 Morawiec, Vikings among the Slavs, 321\u201349. 46 Wolfram, Conrad II, 212."]