North Sea Empire

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The North Sea Region (1014-1035)

The North Sea Empire or Anglo-Scandinavian Empire was a large empire united under King Canute the Great , which included England , Denmark , Norway and parts of northern Germany , Scotland and Sweden . It was created by Knut's coronation as King of England in 1016, broke up after his death in 1035 and became extinct with the death of his son Hardiknut in 1042.

prehistory

The Danish King Sven Gabelbart has ruled Norway since the sea ​​battle of Svold on September 9, 1000 by means of two Jarle . After participating in some raids led by Norway in the years 994-995, Sven carried out some large-scale invasions against England (1003-1005, 1006-1007, 1009-1012 and 1013), in which he collected the Danegeld . The English King Æthelred II had previously ordered the St. Brice's Day massacre , in which all Danish residents of England were to be killed on November 13, 1002. Gabelbart's sister Gunhilde was also killed. In 1013, Gabelbart succeeded in conquering England and driving Æthelred II to Normandy . On December 25, 1013 he was declared King of England and was its actual ruler until his death.

structure

England

English counties around 1025

Canute the Great was the second son of Sven Gabelbart, who died on February 3, 1014 in Gainsborough during his British campaign . At that time, Knut was in command of the fleet on the Trent and was confirmed by the Danes as Sven's successor. With Sven's death, the invasion of England failed for the time being. The English nobles did not recognize Knut as their king and, in return for political reforms, recalled King riebenthelred, who had been expelled to Normandy by Sven in 1013. Knut's allied warriors from Lindsey were not yet ready for battle, and so he fled from Æthelred's army to Denmark without a fight.

In the summer of 1015, Knut set up a new invasion fleet and, with the help of the Norwegian Jarl Erik Håkonsson , sailed again against England. The English were at odds with one another, and with the help of a son of Æthelred, Knut conquered Wessex . Even before the decisive battle, Æthelred died on April 23, 1016. The Londoners chose his son Edmund as king, while most of the nobles met in Southampton and Knut swore allegiance. This first moved north and occupied Northumbria , and then south again to besiege London . In order to replenish their supplies, the besiegers had to withdraw and were defeated by Edmund at Otford . In the pursuit of the Danes by Essex , Edmund was again defeated by the Danes at the Battle of Assandun . As a result, he was forced to let Knut rule over all English territories except Wessex. It was agreed that if one of the two kings died, the other would receive the crown over the entire empire. When Edmund died on November 30, 1016, Canute was crowned King of England at Christmas.

In the summer of 1017 Knut consolidated his claim to rule by marrying Æthelred's widow, Emma of Normandy , although he had previously married the English noblewoman Ælfgifu of Northampton . In the same year he divided his territory into the counties of Wessex, Mercia , Northumbria and East Anglia .

Denmark

Canute the Great and his wife Ælfgifu (1031)

After Sven Gabelbart's death in 1014, Knut's older brother became King Harald II of Denmark. When he died childless in 1018, Knut became king in 1019 and appointed his brother-in-law Ulf Jarl as his deputy. A Danish chronicle says that the Danes had previously dethroned Harald in favor of Knut, but reinstated him because of Knut's frequent absence before Knut finally became king after Harald's death.

King Olav II. Haraldsson of Norway and his brother-in-law King Anund Jacob of Sweden felt threatened by the Anglo-Danish Kingdom. They took advantage of Knut's stay in England and Olav attacked Denmark in Sjælland in 1025 or 1026 , while Anund Jakob attacked Denmark from the east. They were supported by Knut's governor Ulf Jarl, who wanted Knut's son Hardiknut to be elected King of Denmark. Knut sailed from England with his fleet to the Limfjord and the battle of Helgeå between Knut and the Norwegian-Swedish coalition took place in Skåne . The outcome of the battle is controversial, but Olaf and Anund Jakob had to withdraw. Knut had Ulf Jarl killed for collaboration at Christmas 1026 , although he had fought at Knut's side in the battle.

In 1025 Knuts and Emma's daughter Gunhild was given to the son of Emperor Konrad II and his wife Gisela von Schwaben , the future Emperor Heinrich III. promised. In return, Knut was recognized as the ruler of Schleswig . The Eider became the southern border of his empire.

Norway

Olav II supported Æthelred in his reconquest of England in 1014 and thus attracted Knut's enmity. In autumn 1015 he sailed to Norway and took advantage of the absence of Jarl Erik, who fought with Knut in England and left Norway to his son Håkon Eiriksson , and took power there. According to Sigvat Tordsson , the takeover of power was peaceful, while Ottar Svarte and Snorri Sturluson reported a hostile confrontation with the temporary capture of Håkon. Håkon then went to England. Olav won the following year in the Battle of Nesjar against the inferior Jarl Sven, Håkon's paternal uncle. Perhaps there was a good relationship between Olav and Knut or even an agreement between Olav, Knut and Håkon that Olav should get Norway and Håkon become Jarl in England. The crossing of Olav to Norway with only two merchant ships and the peaceful discussion with Håkon speak for it. Such an agreement between Knut and Olav also explains why Sven found so little support for the Battle of Nesjar in 1016.

After 1020, Olav was asked to submit to Knut as a feudal man, as the previous kings of Denmark had also been upper kings in Norway. But Olav refused and a conflict broke out, which culminated in the Battle of Helgeå.

After the battle, Olav lost more and more of his reputation among the Norwegian aristocracy, partly through old alliances between the Ladejarlen and the Danish king, partly through the killing of the Norwegian chief Erling Skjalgsson after the battle in the Boknfjord and also by paying large sums of money to Knuts Norwegian aristocrats. In 1028 Knut sailed to Norway with a large fleet of English and Danish ships in order to defeat Olav. Olav had few allies, fled to Novgorod, and Knut was honored as king at the country's thing meetings .

Håkon Eiriksson was reinstated as Jarl when Knut returned to England. When Håkon was lost on the North Sea in 1029 after a trip to England , Norway was without a strong ruler, as Knut appointed his 13-year-old son Sven Alfivason as Jarl over Norway. This moved Olav to return to Norway in early 1030 to regain his crown. He was supported by the Swedish King Anund Jakob and also by his half-brother Harald Sigurdsson . But his opponents gathered a huge peasant army, the battle of Stiklestad broke out , in which Olav finally fell.

Sweden

After the Battle of Helgeå, Knut also claimed part of Sweden. He had coins with the inscription "CNVT REX SW" (Knut, King of Sweden) minted in the Swedish capital Sigtuna , in Lund and also in Denmark. West Götaland and Blekinge were the newly acquired territories of the empire. But coins are not unequivocal evidence that Knut actually ruled parts of Sweden; there are coins that show Canute ruler of Ireland . Swedish history is not very clear at this early stage.

Tributary areas

The North Sea Empire with its vassal states and allies.
  • The North Sea Empire
  • Tributary areas
  • Allied Territories

    • The Danes ruled from Jomsburg over the Wendish areas on the Oder . In 1022 Knut undertook an expedition through the Baltic Sea with Godwin and Ulf Jarl to confirm his claims over these areas. He appointed his first wife Ælfgifu and his eldest, still underage son, Sven, who became Jarl of Norway in 1029, as governor.

    In the Battle of Carham in 1018, the Scottish King Malcolm II defeated the Anglo-Saxons under the Ealdorman of Bamburgh Eadwulf Cudel , brother of Uhtred of Northumbria , defeated by Canute in 1016 . With that the land between Dunbar and the Tweed fell to Scotland . Canute invaded Scotland with an army in 1031 and subjugated Malcolm II and two other kings. One of the two, Echmarcach mac Ragnaill, was King of Galloway and the Isle of Man and became King of Dublin in 1036 . These, and possibly also the Welsh people, made tribute payments based on the Danegeld , which Æthelred had to pay the Danes. Knut succeeded in expanding his power to the Celtic countries, but could not force them into his realm for good.

    Allied Territories

    Because of the Viking past and Knut's marriage to Emma of Normandy , Normandy was considered an allied duchy.

    It is not certain whether Poland was in a relationship with the Danes, as the sources about Knut's mother Sigrid the Proud , who allegedly came from Poland, are not clear.

    Domination

    Knuts 'Quatrefoil' type penny with the inscription "CNUT REX ANGLORU [M]" (Knut, King of the English) , minted in London by the mint master Edwin.

    In 1017, at the beginning of Knut's reign over England, he divided the country into four counties following the Scandinavian model: Wessex, which he initially ruled himself, and East Anglia, he handed over to the Jomswikinger Torkel der Hohe, the most important man in England after Knut, Erik Håkonsson received Northumbria in 1016, where he was succeeded by Siward in 1023 , and Eadric Streona became Earl of Mercia , who fell from grace and was executed that same year. Leofric followed him . In Wessex, Godwin was installed as Earl in 1022 . In 1017 Knut married Emma of Normandy, which confirmed his claim to rule and averted the danger of attacks from Æthelred's family. He founded at least two more counties in Wessex in 1018 and was recognized that same year at a meeting of English representatives in Oxford as ruler under the laws of King Edgar . At the end of his life, Knut replaced his closest Scandinavian circle of friends almost entirely with Englishmen.

    With the Anglo-Saxons, Knut was very keen on understanding and compensation after the last Danegeld had been collected in 1018 . Through an extensive codification by Archbishop Wulfstan of York, he secured their traditional rights and treated Anglo-Saxons and Danes in exactly the same way at his court and when assigning offices.

    The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle tells of Knut's frequent trips abroad. Torkel stood in for him until the two broke up and Torkel was outlawed in 1021 and fled to Denmark. There the two were reconciled again in 1023 and Torkel became Knuts Jarl in Denmark, which probably suggests strong military support on his side. After Torkel, no earl is recorded in East Anglia until 1045.

    Knut had mint masters from England come to Denmark and brought the English currency system there with him . The English currency system was based on the early medieval Carolingian system (see Karlspfund ).

    The Danes had more reason to complain about Knut's frequent absenteeism, since he ruled mainly from England and appointed governors in Denmark. In England he replaced Torkel with Godwin, whom he had appointed Earl of Wessex, and in 1023 Knut's brother-in-law Ulf Jarl succeeded Torkel in Denmark. Ulf also became the guardian of Hardiknut, Knut's son from his marriage to Emma. Ulf conspired a little later with the kings of Sweden and Norway and made the aristocrats of Denmark swear allegiance to Hardiknut, which actually meant himself. Knut returned to Denmark and after the battle of Helgeå instructed his huscarle to kill Ulf. This act took place at Christmas 1026 in the Trinity Church in Roskilde .

    After taking power in Norway, Knut declared Håkon Eiriksson to be his deputy in Norway in 1028 on a thing in Nidaros , a position he already held under Sven Gabelbart, and his son Hardiknut as King of Denmark. But when Håkon died the following year, Knut appointed his son Sven Alfivason as regent of Norway together with Ælfgifu of Northampton, Knut's first wife. Olav II was beaten back in his attempt to retake Norway, but Sven and Ælfgifu became even more unpopular than Olav had ever been. Ælfgifu introduced new taxes, suppressed the people, who thereby strived more for independence and disapproved of Danish supremacy.

    The British historian Stenton stated that it was not Knut's intention to create an empire that would outlast his death, since he left the individual countries to his various sons to succeed him. But this may simply have been due to the customs of that time. In addition, the greatest weakness of this great empire lay in the difficulty of finding loyal and competent representatives who ruled the country in the absence of the ruler. And Knut's sons could not cope with the task.

    languages

    Approximate distribution of Old Norse in the early 10th century.
  • Old West Norse
  • Old Danish and Old Swedish
  • Old Gutnian
  • Crimean Gothic
  • Old English
  • other Germanic languages ​​with which Old Norse was mutually understandable

    • The languages ​​spoken in the North Sea region were Old Norse in Scandinavia , which the Vikings brought to the British Isles on their campaigns, and Old English , a language spoken in England with Anglo-Saxon roots. It is believed that these languages ​​were quite similar at the time, so that one could communicate with one another.

    religion

    By the early eleventh century England had long been Christianized . The Danelag was in transition from the North Germanic faith to Christianity , but the Scandinavian peoples were still predominantly pagan . Knut's father Sven still followed the old faith at the beginning and became a Christian at the end of his life.

    In England, Knut supported the interests of the Catholic Church , for which he received the recognition of European rulers like no other Scandinavian king before him. In 1027 Knut traveled to Rome to attend the imperial coronation of Conrad II. There he also obtained the recognition of his rule by Pope John XIX. as well as a reduction in taxes for pilgrims who traveled to Rome from northern Europe and for his bishops when conferring the pallium .

    In Denmark, Knut had Archbishop Ethelnod of Canterbury ordained Gerbrand as Bishop of Zealand , Bernhard as Bishop of Skåne and Reginbert as Bishop of Funen and raised St. Peter's penny . As a result, Knut tried to tie the Danish church to the English one in order to convey togetherness to both parts of the country. However, Scandinavia was still under the influence of the Archdiocese of Bremen-Hamburg .

    Knut had churches built in Norway and respected and promoted the clergy. At the same time, however, he allied himself with the pagan tribal chiefs and, unlike Olaf, passed no laws in favor of the church until his power was sufficiently consolidated. In the battle of Stiklestad, contrary to the church doctrine of the time, it was not about the defense of Christianity against the pagans, since Knut had converted to Christianity at an early age.

    Fall of the Empire

    After Knut's death in 1035, the North Sea region disintegrated into its former territories. In Norway, Sven and Ælfgifu were forced to leave Nidaros in the winter of 1033 as they were unpopular due to their rigorous reign. In 1034 the leader of the army that King Olav had defeated and killed in the Battle of Stiklestad allied with the supporters of Magnus , Olav's son, to bring him back from Novgorod and to rule Norway. In autumn 1035, a few weeks before Knut's death, Sven and his mother had to flee to Denmark. Shortly afterwards, Sven also died.

    Hardiknut was king in Denmark, but was threatened by Magnus of Norway. The reports that there was an inheritance contract between Hardiknut and Magnus are likely not true. Knut's second son Harald Harefoot was to rule England and was supported by Leofric von Mercia . He was elected king at Oxford in 1035. But Hardiknut, who was bound in Denmark, also laid claim to England with the help of Queen Emma and Earl Godwin. The English nobles then divided the country: Hardiknut got the southern part, Harald the northern part. In 1037 Harald had found enough followers, drove Emma to Flanders and was crowned king over all of England.

    Hardiknut followed his mother Emma to Flanders in 1039 to conquer the English throne with an army when his half-brother Harald died in Oxford in March 1040. In June 1040 Hardiknut landed at Sandwich with 62 warships and ascended the English throne unchallenged. This reunited England and Denmark. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle tells of him that he had never done anything royal. He imposed heavy taxes on England. After two of his tax collectors were murdered by the mob in Worcester , he had the city burned down, killing several residents and devastating the surrounding area. Hardiknut murdered his relative Eadwulf III, Earl of Bernicia, in 1041 and gave his earldom to Siward , the Earl of York and Northumbria , and he also sold bishoprics that had become vacant. Within a short time he had become completely estranged from the English, who had greeted their new king with joy. Two years later, in 1042, Hardiknut suddenly collapsed at a wedding of one of his followers and died soon after. The Danish-English royal rule dissolved and with Hardiknut the North Sea region also died out.

    In England Edward the Confessor , the elder half-brother of Harald on his mother's side and the last son of Æthelred, became king. Even before Hardiknut died in England, Magnus had already marched into Denmark with an army and was accepted as king over Denmark after his death.

    Attempt at restoration

    As the Danish and Norwegian king, Magnus, as the successor to Sven Gabelbart and Canute the Great, also raised a claim to English royalty and is said to have asked Edward the Confessor to submit a declaration of submission. The threat of possibly going to England in a warlike manner was apparently taken seriously, because the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle reports that Edward, as a precautionary measure, gathered a fleet near Sandwich in 1044 to resist Magnus. He did the same with a huge army in the same place the following year. But arguments with Sven Estridsson forced Magnus to abandon the invasion plans.

    After Edward's death in 1066, the Norwegian King Harald Hardråde also derived a claim to the English crown from the succession of Canute the Great. After his invasion of England there was the Battle of Fulford and the Battle of Stamford Bridge , where he was eventually defeated and killed.

    Sven Estridsson and his son Knut IV also undertook unsuccessful campaigns against England in 1069-1070 (against York) and 1075, but it was not until Knut was murdered in preparation for a new Danish-Norwegian campaign in 1085 that the attempts at reconquest finally ended.

    See also

    literature

    • Timothy Bolton: Cnut the Great. Yale University Press, New Haven 2017.
    • Timothy Bolton: The Empire of Cnut the Great. Conquest and the Consolidation of Power in Northern Europe in the Early Eleventh Century. (= The Northern World , 40) Brill, Leiden / Boston 2009, ISBN 978-90-04-16670-7 , ISSN  1569-1462 .
    • Birgit Sawyer, Peter Sawyer: The world of the Vikings. Siedler, Berlin 2002.

    Remarks

    1. ^ Frank Stenton : Anglo-Saxon England. 3. Edition. Clarendon , Oxford 1971, ISBN 9780198217169 , p. 386.
    2. ↑ Stenton, p. 388 ff.
    3. ↑ Stenton, p. 397.
    4. ^ Edward A. Freeman, The History of the Norman Conquest of England: Its Causes and its Results. Volume 1. Clarendon, Oxford 1867, p. 404, note 1
    5. ↑ Stenton, p. 402 ff.
    6. ↑ Jim Bradbury: The Routledge Companion to Medieval Warfare. Routledge, London 2004, ISBN 0-415-22126-9 , p. 125 ; Philip J. Potter, Gothic Kings of Britain: The Lives of 31 Medieval Rulers, 1016-1399. McFarland, Jefferson, North Carolina: 2009, ISBN 978-0-7864-4038-2 , p. 12 .
    7. ↑ Stenton, p. 407 f.
    8. ^ Viggo Starcke, Denmark in World History. University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia 1962, p. 282.
    9. ^ Herbert A. Grueber, Charles Francis Keary: A Catalog of English Coins in the British Museum: Anglo-Saxon Series , Volume 2, Trustees [of the British Museum], London 1893, p. Lxxvii .
    10. ↑ Stenton, p. 402 f.
    11. ↑ Starcke, p. 284
    12. ↑ Stenton, p. 404
    13. ↑ Starcke, p. 289
    14. ^ Karen Larsen: A History of Norway. Princeton University, Princeton 1950, p. 104
    15. ↑ Rex totius Angliae et Denemarciæ et Norreganorum et partis Suanorum , "King of all England and Denmark and Norway and part of Sweden". Freeman, p. 479, note 2 .
    16. ^ Brita Malmer : The 1954 Rone Hoard and Some Comments on Styles and Inscriptions of Certain Scandinavian Coins from the Early Eleventh Century . In Coinage and History in the North Sea World, c. AD 500-1200: Essays in Honor of Marion Archibald . Edited by Barrie Cook and Gareth Williams. Brill, Leiden 2006, ISBN 90-04-14777-2 , p. 435 ff., P. 443
    17. ^ Franklin D. Scott: Sweden: The Nation's History. 2nd ed. Southern Illinois University, Carbondale 1988, ISBN 0-8093-1489-4 , pp. 25 f.
    18. ↑ Starcke, p. 281 f
    19. ^ Theodor Schieder : Handbook of European History . Vol. 1. Klett-Cotta , Stuttgart 1968, p. 985
    20. ^ David W. Rollason: Northumbria, 500-1100: Creation and Destruction of a Kingdom. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2003, p. 276, ISBN 0521813352
    21. ^ Stenton, p. 419
    22. ^ MK Lawson: Cnut: England's Viking King. Tempus, Stroud 2004, ISBN 0-7524-2964-7 , p. 103: "Cnut's power would seem in some sense to have extended into Wales".
    23. ↑ Starcke, p. 284
    24. ↑ Stenton, p. 398 f
    25. ^ Stenton, p. 416
    26. ↑ Rudolf Schieffer : Christianization and Empire Formations: Europe 700–1200 , CH Beck, Munich 2013, ISBN 3406653766 , p. 162
    27. ↑ Stenton, p. 399 ff
    28. ↑ Stenton, p. 401 f
    29. ↑ Harper-Bill, C., Van Houts E.: A Companion to the Anglo-Norman World. Boydell & Brewer, Londen 2007, ISBN 1843833417 , p. 7
    30. ↑ Money in Denmark - from the Vikings to the present day PDF 1.92 MB; The coins of Denmark (until around 1625)
    31. ^ Jón Stefánsson: Denmark and Sweden: with Iceland and Finland. Unwin, London 1916, OCLC 181662877 , p. 11 : "Cnut's ideal seems to have been an Anglo-Scandinavian Empire, of which England was to be the head and center"; Palle Lauring , tr. David Hohnen, A History of the Kingdom of Denmark. Høst, Copenhagen 1960, OCLC 5954675 , p. 56: "He was fond of England and regarded it as his principle [ sic! ] Kingdom .... Canute actually became an Englishman"; Grueber and Keary, p. 6 : "Though England had been conquered by the Dane she was really the center of his Danish empire".
    32. ^ Jón Stefánsson, p. 11
    33. ↑ Stenton, p. 402
    34. ^ Jón Stefánsson, p. 11
    35. ↑ Stenton, p. 404 f.
    36. ↑ Stenton, p. 405
    37. ↑ Larsen, p. 104 f
    38. ↑ Stenton, p. 405; TD Kendrick, A History of the Vikings . Scribner, New York 1930, repr. Mineola, Dover, New York 2004, ISBN 0-486-43396-X , p. 125 : "Danish taxes were introduced, Danish laws imposed, and preference was given everywhere to Danish interests".
    39. ↑ Stenton, p. 406
    40. ↑ Grueber, Keary, p. 6 : "But what more than anything else ruined these hopes, as they almost always ruined the hopes of extended Scandinavian rule, were the customs of inheritance which obtained among the northern nations".
    41. ↑ Lauring, p. 57: "Now that a single king had assumed power after the pattern of Western Europe, the moment that king went away and omitted to leave strong men in charge behind him, or left a weak one, [the viking threat ] became fatally weakened ".
    42. ^ Lauring, p. 56: "the Danes in England very quickly became Christians".
    43. ↑ Starcke, p. 283
    44. ↑ Stenton, p. 396 f: "Swein... First appears in history as the leader of a heathen reaction... [But] behaved as at least a nominal Christian in later life.... Swein's tepid patronage of Christianity. .. "
    45. ↑ Stenton, p. 397: "the first viking leader to be admitted into the civilized fraternity of Christian kings".
    46. ^ H. Wilfrid: The history of the popes. Salzwasser , Paderborn 2011, p. 46, ISBN 3861957302
    47. ↑ Dieter Strauch: Medieval Nordic law until 1500: A source customer. De Gruyter , Berlin 2011 p. 45
    48. ^ Robert Bohn: Danish history. CH Beck , Munich 2001, p. 11 f, ISBN 3406447627
    49. ↑ Starcke, p. 284
    50. ^ Rasso Knoller: Norway: A country portrait. Ch. Links , Berlin 2013, p 88 f, ISBN 3861537133
    51. ↑ Larsen, p. 110
    52. ↑ Stenton, p. 406
    53. ^ Stenton, p. 420
    54. ↑ Joseph Stevenson, ed. And tr., The Church Historians of England , volume 2 part 1, Heeleys, London 1853, p. 96, entry for 1040 .
    55. ^ Stenton, p. 422
    56. ↑ Lauring, p. 57: "Canute's sons, despite the fact that they were both completely incompetent, were both proclaimed Kings of England".
    57. ↑ Lauring, p. 57
    58. ^ P. Sawyer: Magnus the Good. In: Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde . Volume 19: Lynx - Meter. 2nd, completely revised and greatly expanded edition. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin a. a. 2001, ISBN 3110171635 , p. 152.