King Cnut and the Viking Conquest of England 1016

The Viking Conquest of England in 1016 – a far tougher and brutal campaign than the Norman Conquest exactly half a century later – saw two great warriors, the Danish prince Cnut and his equally ruthless English opponent King Edmund Ironside fight an epic campaign. Cnut sailed in 200 longboats landing first in September 1015 on the Wessex coast with 10,000 soldiers and the two forces fought each other to the point of exhaustion for the next 14 months. It was a war of terrifying violence that scarred much of England, from the Humber to Cornwall. It saw an epic siege of the great walls of London - built by Alfred the Great to keep the Danes out - and bruising set-piece battles at Penselwood, Otford, and the conclusive Danish victory at Assandun on 18 October 1016. Edmund’s death soon after finally resolved a brutal, bloody conflict and ended with Cnut crowned king of England on Christmas day that year.

This book tells the extraordinary story of Cnut the Great’s life. Cnut was far removed from the archetypal pagan Viking being a staunch protector of the Christian Church and a man who would also become Emperor of the North as king of Denmark and Norway. Yet in other ways the older Viking attributes lived on, Cnut was a vicious fighter and a risk-taking adventurer. Cnut was also a man with fascinating family connections. His wife, Emma of Normandy, was a remarkable woman who would outlive the two kings of England that she married. His son Harthacnut would be the second and last Danish king of England, the greatness of his dynasty did not long survive his death.

This saga also features the incompetent Ethelred the Unready, the ferocious Sweyn Forkbeard and the treacherous Eadric Streona, recreating one of the great stories of the Dark Ages of English history and the tale of one of the few English monarchs of the time to have truly European significance.