Emma of Normandy

Emma (c. 985–March 6, 1052 in Winchester, Hampshire), was daughter of Richard the Fearless, Duke of Normandy, by his second wife Gunnora. She was Queen consort of the Kingdom of England twice, by successive marriages: initially as the second wife to Ethelred the Unready of England (1002-1016); and then to Canute the Great of Denmark (1017-1035). Two of her sons, one by each husband, and two step-sons, also by each husband, were to be kings of England, as was her great-nephew, William the Conqueror, Duke of Normandy.

Upon the Danish invasion of England in 1013, Emma's sons by Ethelred - Edward the Confessor and Alfred Atheling - went to Normandy as exiles, where they were to remain. Canute, the King of England, after the deaths of Ethelred and his son, and Emma's step-son, Edmund II Ironside, married her himself. He was to pledge that Harthacanute, Emma's son by him, should be the heir to his Danish sovereignty, which meant, through this wedding, the Normans were kept at arms length, contentedly quiet and quietly content.

Ethelred's marriage to Emma was an English strategy to avert the aggression of the dangerous Normandy, and the Danish strategy was much the same. With a Normandy in feudal subordination to the kings of France, who kept it as their dukedom, England was the dukes' main target, after baronic feuds and rampaging pillages through Brittany had run their course. English kings could not afford to underestimate the Norman threat. Harthacanute, his name after the first head of Canute's royal house, was certainly intended to rule by the Danish ruler of England, along with most of Scandinavia,, which may have made for a very different history. It is, thought though, due not least to the extolling of her encomium, that Canute was fond of Emma. In this, any fact of such an affebnnnkmnlkhki], who now put himself forward as Harold I with the support of many of the English noblity. In contempt of Harthacanute, at war with his enemies in Scandinavia, the younger Alfred was captured, blinded, and shortly after he was dead from his wounds, and the older Edward escaped to Normandy. Emma herself was soon to leave for Bruges and the court of the Count of Flanders. It was at this court that the Encomium Emmae was written.

Twice the Queen of the English kingdom, Emma of Normandy sits here in receipt of the Encomium Emmae, with her sons Harthacanute and Edward the Confessor in the frame.

The death of Harold I in 1040 and the accession of the more conciliatory Harthacanute, who had lost his Norwegian and Swedish lands, although he had made his Danish realm secure, meant Edward was officially made welcome in England the next year. Harthacanute told the Norman court that Edward should be made king if he himself had no sons. Edward was subsequently King of England on the death of Harthacanute, who, like Harold I, met his end in the throes of a fit. Emma was also to return to England, yet was cast aside, as she was in support of Magnus the Noble, not Edward, her son - she is not thought to have had any love for her children from her first marriage.

Emma of Normandy might well have seen herself as one coming second to the first wife, in two marriages. In England, with respect to Ethelred's first wife Aelfgifu, who possibly died in childbirth, or with a complication after labour, she, was known as Aelfgifu, a mere replacement. With her marriage to Canute, set in the shade of his 'handfast' wife, Aelfgifu of Northampton, she, at the time was known as Aelfgifu of Normandy. Each of her marriages, then, in some way leaves her as a second Aelfgifu, which she was clearly inclined to abandon, preferring her other name, Emma. Her marriages, as a noblewoman, no matter if they were as a second wife, created the England and Normandy connection, which was to find its culmination under her great-nephew William the Conqueror, and 1066.

Family tree

Cnut the Great family tree

Gorm the Old Thyra Rollo Poppa of Bayeux Harald Bluetooth Mieszko I of Poland Dobrawa - Wife of Mieszko William I Longsword Sprota Sweyn Forkbeard Sigrid the Haughty Gunnor Richard I of Normandy Ælfgifu of Northampton Cnut the Great Emma of Normandy Æthelred the Unready Ælfgifu of York Richard II of Normandy Judith of Brittany Svein Knutsson Harold Harefoot Gunhilda of Denmark Alfred Ætheling Edmund Ironside Ealdgyth Robert I of Normandy Herleva Gytha Thorkelsdóttir Godwin, Earl of Wessex Harthacnut Edward the Exile Agatha William the Conqueror Matilda of Flanders Sweyn Godwinson Harold Godwinson Tostig Godwinson Edith of Wessex Edward the Confessor Edgar Ætheling Cristina Gyrth, Gunhild, Ælfgifu, Leofwine & Wulfnoth Malcolm III of Scotland Margaret Other children Matilda of Scotland Henry I of England

Emma Bibliography

• Pauline Stafford. [Queen Emma and Queen Edith: Queenship and Women's Power in Eleventh-century England] 2001 Blackwell's
• Isabella Strachan. [Emma: The Twice-crowned Queen of England in the Viking Age] 2005 Peter Owen
• Harriet O'Brien. [Queen Emma and the Vikings] 2005 Bloomsbury U.S.A.
• Helen Hollick. The Hollow Crown. (August 2004) William Heinemann, Random House. ISBN 0-434-00491-X; Arrow paperback ISBN 0-09-927234-2. This is a historical novel about Queen Emma of Normandy, explaining why she was so indifferent to the children of her first marriage.
• Noah Gordon. [The Physician] 1986 Macmillan ISBN 067147748X . Novel set in the early 11th century.