Cnut, king of all England and Denmark and of the Norwegians and of some of the Swedes.

Cnut, rex totius Angliae et Denemarciae et Norreganorum et partis Suanorum.

Cnut the Great

Politicians

Cnut the Great

King of England (1016-1035), Denmark (1018-1035), and Norway (1028-1035), founder of the short-lived North Sea Empire that briefly united the Anglo-Scandinavian world. The Danish prince who conquered England as a teenage commander, he then governed it through cultural integration, marriage to Æthelred's widow Emma of Normandy, two pastoral letters to his English subjects (1019, 1027), and a pilgrimage to Rome for Conrad II's imperial coronation. Famous from the tide legend recorded by Henry of Huntingdon, he is also remembered for the execution of Eadric Streona and the heavy Danegeld levies — a king whose institutional achievements were matched by the political ruthlessness that founded them.

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