Moments in Time: The Vikings Conquer England

Twice a year, I record a broadcast (or series of broadcasts) for my college's public radio station, WUCX for their Moment in Time segment. I decided to collect the texts of these together here, as I have not been using this blog for anything else. Bear in mind these are aimed at a popular audience, so they are not the most cutting-edge scholarship. I have oversimplified a little at times, but hope I've avoided any outright errors.

This entry was first broadcast in January 2016.

Silver penny of Cnut

1016: The Vikings Conquer England

Growing up in England, I was taught that my country was saved from conquest by brutal Vikings by the heroic Alfred the Great, king of Wessex, the last Anglo-Saxon kingdom to stand against the invaders. At elementary school we watched an educational TV drama called The Raven and the Cross in which Alfred, representing England and Christianity, defeats the barbaric pagan Danes, who fight beneath Odin’s raven banner.

However, the Vikings came back and conquered England, 1000 years ago this year. In 1016 the Danish king Cnut became king of England, ending a long period of war between the weak Anglo-Saxon king Ethelred ‘The Unready’ and various Scandinavian invaders, including Cnut’s father the splendidly-named Sven Forkbeard. Cnut’s reign challenges a lot of the stereotypes about civilized, Christian Anglo-Saxons resisting brutal, pagan Vikings.

The Danish Cnut appears an altogether more attractive figure than the Saxon Ethelred. Cnut’s rule marked a period of peace and prosperity following the troubles of Ethelred’s time; the new Danish king paid off his warriors, and England was untroubled by Viking raids for this rest of his reign. Any idea that the Anglo-Saxon English were somehow less violent than the Danes is contradicted by the St Brice’s Day massacre of 1002, when Ethelred commanded the slaughter of Danish people in England, including a group who were burned alive in a church – hardly a Christian act.

The fact that the Vikings sought sanctuary in a church reminds us that, by Cnut’s day, the Danes were Christian. Not that there is necessarily any connection between Christianity and civility or between paganism and violence; many historians argue that the negative image of the Vikings has been exaggerated by the fact that so many of their raids were on monasteries, and the Christian monks were the ones who wrote the history. Monasteries provided rich pickings but were virtually undefended, as they housed liturgical silver and pacifist monks. But the point is the Danish Vikings who conquered England in 1016 (or at least their leaders) were Christian, and had been since Cnut’s grandfather Harald Bluetooth had unified Denmark and converted to Christianity in the 960s. And yes, Bluetooth technology is named after King Harald; its creators wished to unify different networks just as Harald had unified Denmark.

Cnut presented himself to his new subjects as an English and Christian king. He married King Ethelred’s widow, Emma of Normandy, who changed her name to the reassuringly Anglo-Saxon Aelfgyfu (which, confusingly - and no doubt awkwardly - was also the name of Cnut’s first wife). An image in a book from the abbey of New Minster depicts Cnut and Emma as idealized Christian rulers, presenting a great gold cross to the abbey, while an angel places a crown on Cnut’s head – a far cry from the image of the bloodthirsty pagan Viking.

The Danish conquest of England was only temporary; Cnut’s second son, Harald, died in heroically Viking fashion, collapsing while drinking heavily at a feast. After that, the crown was restored to the Anglo-Saxon king Edward the Confessor. However, the Viking influence on England remains in the language we speak today; hundreds of our words are of Scandinavian origin. If – heaven forbid - you are so berserk with anger that you ransack and slaughter – congratulations - you are talking like a Viking!