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16- كنت العظيم


Cnut the Great] (Old Norse: Knútr inn ríki;[c. 985 or 995 – 12 November 1035), also known as Canute, was a king of Denmark, England, Norway and parts of Sweden. Though after the death of his heirs within a decade of his own and the Norman conquest of England in 1066, his legacy was largely lost to history, historian Norman F. Cantor has made the paradoxical statement that he was "the most effective king in Anglo-Saxon history".[
Cnut was of Danish and Slavic descent. His father was Sweyn Forkbeard, King of Denmark (which gave Cnut the patronym Sweynsson, Old Norse Sveinsson).
) Sweyn I Forkbeard (Old Norse: Sveinn Tjúguskegg; c. 960 − 3 February 1014) was king of Denmark and England, as well as parts of Norway. His name appears as Swegen in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. He was a Viking leader and the father of Cnut the Great).
Cnut's mother was the daughter of the first duke of the Polans, Mieszko I; her name may have been Świętosława (see: Sigrid Storråda), but the Oxford DNB article on Cnut states that her name is unknown.[

As a prince of Denmark, Cnut won the throne of England in 1016 in the wake of centuries of Viking activity in northwestern Europe. His accession to the Danish throne in 1018 brought the crowns of England and Denmark together. Cnut held this power-base together by uniting Danes and Englishmen under cultural bonds of wealth and custom, rather than sheer brutality. After a decade of conflict with opponents in Scandinavia, Cnut claimed the crown of Norway in Trondheim in 1028. The Swedish city Sigtuna was held by Cnut. He had coins struck which called him king there, but there is no narrative record of his occupation.
The kingship of England of course lent the Danes an important link to the maritime zone between the islands of Great Britain and Ireland, where Cnut like his father before him had a strong interest and wielded much influence among the Gall-Ghaedhil.[10]

Cnut's possession of England's dioceses and the continental Diocese of Denmark – with a claim laid upon it by the Holy Roman Empire's Archdiocese of Hamburg-Bremen – was a source of great leverage within the Church, gaining notable concessions from Pope Benedict VIII, and his successor John XIX, such as one on the price of the pallium of his bishops. Cnut also gained concessions on the tolls his people had to pay on the way to Rome from other magnates of medieval Christendom, at the coronation of the Holy Roman Emperor. After his 1026 victory against Norway and Sweden, and on his way to Rome for this coronation, Cnut, in a letter written for the benefit of his subjects, stated himself "king of all England and Denmark and the Norwegians and of some of the Swedes".[11]
Birth and kingship

Cnut was a son of the Danish king Sweyn Forkbeard, and an heir to a line of Scandinavian rulers central to the unification of Denmark.[12]Harthacnut was the semi-legendary founder of the Danish royal house who, according to Adam of Bremen, came to Denmark from Northmania. Gorm the Old, Harthacnut's son, being the first in the official line (the 'Old' in his name being to this effect) and his son, Harald Bluetooth, the Danish king at the time of the Christianization of Denmark (his acceptance of Christianity being the first among all Scandinavian kings).
Cnut's mother's name is unknown, although a Slavic princess, daughter to Mieszko I of Poland (in accord with the Monk of St Omer's, Encomium Emmae[5] and Thietmar of Merseburg's contemporary Chronicon[6]), is likely.[7]Norse sources of the high medieval period, most prominently Snorri Sturluson's Heimskringla, also give a Polish princess as Cnut's mother, whom they call Gunhild and a daughter of Burislav, the king of Vindland.[13] Since in the Norse sagas the king of Vindland is always Burislav, this is reconcilable with the assumption that her father was Mieszko (not his son Bolesław). Adam of Bremen in Gesta Hammaburgensis ecclesiae pontificum is unique in equating Cnut's mother (for whom he also produces no name) with the former queen of Sweden, wife of Eric the Victorious and by this marriage mother of Olof Skötkonung.[14]
To complicate the matter, Heimskringla and other Sagas also have Sweyn marrying Eric's widow, but she is distinctly another person in these texts, by name of Sigrid the Haughty, whom Sweyn only marries after Gunhild, the Slavic princess who bore Cnut, has died.

Different theories regarding the number and ancestry of Sweyn's wives (or wife) have been brought forward (see Sigrid the Haughty and Gunhild). But since Adam is the only source to state the identity of Cnut's with Olof Skötkonung's mother, this is often seen as an error of Adam, and it is often assumed that Sweyn had two wives, the first being Cnut's mother, and the second being the former queen of Sweden.

Cnut's brother Harald was the first born and crown prince.
Some hint of Cnut's childhood can be found in the Flateyjarbók, a 13th-century source, stating at one point that Cnut was taught his soldiery by the chieftain Thorkell the Tall,[16] brother to Sigurd, Jarl of mythical Jomsborg, and the legendary Joms, at their Viking stronghold on the Island of Wollin, off the coast of Pomerania.

His date of birth, like his mother's name, is unknown. Contemporary works such as the Chronicon and the Encomium Emmae, do not mention it. Even so, in a Knútsdrápa by the skaldÓttarr svarti, there is a statement that Cnut was "of no great age" when he first went to war.

It also mentions a battle identifiable with Forkbeard's invasion of England, and attack on the city of Norwich, in 1003/04, after the St. Brice's Day massacre of Danes by the English, in 1002. If it is the case that Cnut was part of this, his birthdate may be near 990, or even 980. If not, and the skald's poetic verse envisages another assault, with Forkbeard's conquest of England in 1013/14, it may even suggest a birth date nearer 1000.[

There is a passage of the Encomiast's (as the author of the Encomium
Emmae is known) with a reference to the force Cnut led in his English conquest of 1015/16. Here (see below) it says all the Vikings were of "mature age" under Cnut "the king".
Cnut, with the legend "CNUT REX DÆNOR[UM]" (Cnut, King of Danes)
A description of Cnut can be found within the 13th-century Knýtlinga saga:
Knut was exceptionally tall and strong, and the handsomest of men, all except for his nose, that was thin, high-set, and rather hooked. He had a fair complexion none-the-less, and a fine, thick head of hair. His eyes were better than those of other men, both the handsomer and the keener of their sight.
—Knytlinga Saga]
Hardly anything is known for sure of Cnut's life until the year he was part of a Scandinavian force under his father, King Sweyn; with his invasion of England in summer 1013. It was the climax to a succession of Viking raids spread over a number of decades. With their landing in the Humber[21] the kingdom fell to the Vikings quickly, and near the end of the year King Aethelred fled to Normandy, leaving Sweyn in possession of England. In the winter, Forkbeard was in the process of consolidating his kingship, with Cnut left in charge of the fleet, and the base of the army at Gainsborough.
On the death of Forkbeard after a few months as king, on Candlemas Sunday 3 February 1014, Harald succeeded him as King of Denmark, while Cnut was immediately elected king by the Vikings, and the people of the Danelaw. However, the English nobility took a different view, and the Witenagemot recalled Aethelred from Normandy. The restored king swiftly led an army against Cnut, who fled with his army to Denmark, along the way mutilating the hostages they had taken and abandoning them on the beach at Sandwich.[ Cnut went to Harald and supposedly made the suggestion they might have a joint kingship, although this found no favour with his brother.[23] Harald is thought to have offered Cnut command of his forces for another invasion of England, on the condition he did not continue to press his claim.[ In any case, Cnut was able to assemble a large fleet with which to launch another invasion.[]

Cnut was generally remembered as a wise and successful king of England, although this view may in part be attributable to his good treatment of the Church, keeper of the historic record. Accordingly, we hear of him, even today, as a religious man (see below), despite the fact that he was in an arguably sinful relationship, with two wives, and the harsh treatment he dealt his fellow Christian opponents.
Under his reign, Cnut brought together the English and Danish kingdoms, and the people saw a golden age of dominance across Scandinavia, as well as within the British Isles.[49] His campaigns abroad meant the tables of Viking supremacy were stacked in favour of the English, turning the prows of the longships towards Scandinavia. He reinstated the Laws of King Edgar to allow for the constitution of a Danelaw, and the activity of Scandinavians at large. He also reinstituted the extant laws with a series of proclamations to assuage common grievances brought to his attention. Two significant ones were: On Inheritance in case of Intestacy, and, On Heriots and Reliefs. He strengthened the currency, initiating a series of coins of equal weight to those being used in Denmark and other parts of Scandinavia. This meant the markets grew, and the economy of England was able to spread itself, as well as widen the scope of goods to be bought and sold.
.]