Canute the Great Part 26

We do not know what efforts Canute may have made to improve the material conditions in his Anglo-Saxon kingdom, but it appears that such undertakings were not wholly wanting. The King showed great favour to the religious establishments in the Fenlands and was evidently impressed with the difficulty of travel from abbey to abbey. An attempt was made to remedy this:

and that same road through the marshes between Ramsey and the borough that is called King's Delf he caused to be improved that the danger of pa.s.sing through the great swamps might be avoided.[448]

Matthew Paris, our authority for this statement, wrote nearly two centuries after Canute's day, but it is likely that he is reporting a correct tradition; if the work had been done at the instance of one of the later kings, it is not probable that it would have been a.s.sociated with the name of the Danish ruler.

The Norwegian sources have little to say of Canute after the battle of Stiklestead; but they follow the troubles of the Norse regency in some detail. It was thought best, when Sweyn was sent to Norway, to give him the royal t.i.tle; but as he was a mere youth, the actual power was in the hands of his mother, Elgiva, who was probably a.s.sociated with Earl Harold of Jomburg, Harthacanute's minister and guardian in Denmark, who seems to have acted as Canute's personal representative in his eastern kingdoms.[449] Mention has already been made of the opposition that soon arose to the Danish regime. It was not long before the dissatisfied elements formed an alliance with the partisans of the old dynasty who were a.s.siduously disseminating the belief that the fallen Olaf was a saint.

All through the winter that followed the King's martyrdom stories were current of miracles performed by the holy relics: wounds had been healed and blindness removed by accidental contact with the royal blood. At the same time much ill-feeling developed against Bishop Sigurd who had shown such a partisan spirit on the eve of the tragedy at Stiklestead. Sigurd was a Dane who had served as chaplain at the English court[450] and had therefore a double reason for preferring Canute. Under the regency he had continued as chief of the Norwegian Church, but soon the murmur became so loud that the zealous prelate had to withdraw to England.

Einar Thongshaker now came forward to lead the opposition to the regents. He was the first of the chiefs to express his belief in Olaf's sanct.i.ty and many were ready to follow his lead. Bishop Grimkell, who since Olaf's flight in 1029 had remained in comparative quiet in the Uplands, was asked to come and investigate the current rumours of miraculous phenomena. The Bishop responded very promptly. On the way he visited Einar, by whom he was gladly welcomed. Later the prelate appeared at Nidaros and began extended investigations into the matter of the reported wonders. Einar was next summoned to conduct the negotiations with the regency. The plans of the national faction seem to have been carefully laid; it was probably not accidental that the city suddenly was thronged by incoming Nors.e.m.e.n.

Having secured permission from King Sweyn to act in the matter, Einar and Grimkell, followed by the mult.i.tude, proceeded to the spot where Olaf's remains were said to have been buried. According to the legend that Snorre in part follows, the coffin was found to have risen toward the surface and looked new as if recently planed. No change was observed in the remains except that the hair and nails showed considerable growth; the cheeks were red as those of one who had just fallen asleep.

But the Queen-mother was not easily convinced:

"Very slowly do bodies decay in sand; it would have been otherwise if he had lain in mould." Then the Bishop took a pair of shears and clipped off a part of the King's hair and beard,--he wore a long moustache, as custom was in those days. Then said the Bishop to the King and Alfiva: "Now is the King's hair and beard as long as when he died; but it has grown as much as you see I have cut off." Then replied Alfiva: "I believe hair to be sacred if it is not consumed in fire; often have we seen whole and uninjured the hair of men who have lain in the earth longer than this man." So the Bishop placed fire in a censer, blessed it, and added the incense. Then he laid Olaf's hair in the fire. But when the incense was consumed, the Bishop took the hair from the fire, and it was wholly unburnt.

The Bishop showed it to the King and the other chiefs. Then Alfiva requested them to place the hair in unblessed fire; but Einar Tremblethong spoke up, bade her keep silence, and used many hard words. Then by the Bishop's decision, the King's consent, and the judgment of the entire a.s.sembly, it was decreed that King Olaf was in truth a holy man.[451]

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE FALL OF SAINT OLAF (Initial in the Flat-isle Book.)]

Whatever the procedure employed, there can be no doubt that King Olaf was canonised in the summer of 1031 (August 3d is the date given) by popular act; nor can it be doubted that Elgiva resisted the act--she must have seen that the canonisation meant her own and her son's undoing. For she must surely have realised that political considerations were an important element in the devotion of the Nors.e.m.e.n to their new patron.

There was later a tradition among the monks of Nidaros that Canute at one time planned to establish a monastery in the northern capital.[452]

If such an attempt was made, it evidently failed; but it would not be strange if the King should try to establish an inst.i.tution where loyalty to the empire might be nursed and which might a.s.sist in uprooting nationalistic tendencies. If the attempt was made, it was probably soon after the canonisation, when it became important to divert attention from the new cult.

For the worship of Saint Olaf spread with astonishing rapidity not only through Norway but through the entire North and even farther. The Church had saints in great number; but here was one from the very midst of the Scandinavian people. Moreover, Saint Olaf was a saint whom the men of the day could appreciate: he was of their own type, with the strength of Thor and the wisdom of Woden; they had seen him and felt the edge of his ax. So all along the sh.o.r.es that Olaf the Stout had plundered in his earlier heathen days churches arose dedicated to the virile saint of the North.[453]

There were other difficulties, too, that the regents had to contend with. Hunger stalked over the land. The Norwegian people had always been accustomed to hold their kings responsible for the state of the harvest; they were to secure the favour of the G.o.ds; a failure of crops meant that this duty had been shirked. The feeling lingered for some time after the disappearance of heathendom. Sweyn was only a youth and was not held responsible; the blame fell upon the hated Queen-mother and the hard years of her rule were known as the "Alfiva-time." The general discontent is expressed in a contemporary fragment attributed to Sighvat:

Alfiva's time our sons will Long remember; then ate we Food more fit for oxen, Shavings the fare of he-goats.

It was not thus when the n.o.ble Olaf governed the Nors.e.m.e.n; Then could we all boast of Corn-filled barns and houses.[454]

And Thorarin Praise-tongue in the Shrine-song addressed to Sweyn the son of Canute urges the young regent to seek the favour of the new saint, "the mighty pillar of the book-language":

Pray thou to Olaf that he grant thee (He is a man of G.o.d) all his land rights; For he can win from G.o.d himself Peace to men and good harvests.[455]

In 1033, a revolt broke out in Norway in the interest of one Trygve, a pretended son of Olaf Trygvesson and an English mother. The attempt failed; the Norse chiefs had other plans. In Russia was Magnus, the illegitimate son of the holy King, now about nine or ten years old; him had the chiefs determined upon as their future leader. Early the next year an emba.s.sy was sent to Russia led by the two magnates Einar and Kalf. Here oaths were sworn and plans were laid, and in the following spring (1035) Magnus Olafsson appeared in Norway as the foster son of Kalf who had led his father's banesmen at Stiklestead.

From the moment when Magnus set foot on his native soil Norway was lost to the empire. Sweyn was farther south in his kingdom when news came of revolt in the Throndelaw. He promptly summoned the yeomanry, but feeling that their devotion to him was a matter of grave doubt, he gave up his plans of resistance and fled to his brother Harthacanute in Denmark, where he died less than a year later.[456] His mother Elgiva evidently withdrew to England, where the death of Canute the following November doubtless gave her another opportunity to play the politician.

So far as we know, Canute made no effort to dislodge Magnus. It may be true that he was ill; or perhaps the power of the Church restrained him: Magnus was the son of a saint; would not the martyred King enlist the powers of heaven on the side of his son? But it was probably want of time and not lack of interest and purpose that prevented reconquest.

There is an indication that Canute was preparing for important movements: at Whitsuntide, 1035, while the imperial court was at Bamberg, he was renewing his friendship with the Emperor and arranging for the marriage of his daughter Gunhild to the future Henry III.[457]

Perhaps we should see in this a purpose to secure the southern frontier in antic.i.p.ation of renewed hostilities in the North.

But whatever may have been Canute's plans, they were never carried out--the hand of death came in between. On Wednesday, November 12, 1035, the great Dane saw the last of earth at Shaftesbury, an old town on the Dorset border, a day's journey from the capital. The remains were brought to Winchester and interred in the Old Minster,[458] an ancient abbey dedicated to the chief of the Apostles, which Canute had remembered so liberally earlier in the year.

We have already noted the tradition reported by both Norse and English writers that his death was preceded by a long and serious illness; one of the sagas states that the fatal disease was jaundice.[459] There would be nothing incredible in this, but the evidence is not of the best. The fact that death came to him not in the residential city but in the neighbouring town of Shaftesbury seems to indicate that he was at the time making one of his regular progresses through the country, as seems to have been his custom.[460] In that case the illness could hardly have been a protracted one.

It is likely, however, that Canute was not physically robust; he died in the prime of manhood, having scarcely pa.s.sed the fortieth year; and he seems not to have transmitted much virility to his children. Three sons and a daughter were born to him, but within seven years of his own death they had all joined him in the grave. Sweyn, who seems to have been the oldest, died a few months after his father, perhaps in the early part of 1036. Gunhild followed in 1038; Harold in 1040; and Harthacanute in 1042. With Harthacanute pa.s.sed away the last male representative of the Knytling family; after a few years the crown of Denmark pa.s.sed to the descendants of Canute's sister Estrid, to the son of the murdered Ulf.

None of Canute's children seems to have attained a real maturity: Harold and Harthacanute probably reached their twenty-fourth year; Sweyn died at the age of perhaps twenty-two; Gunhild could not have been more than eighteen when she laid down the earthly crown. There is no reason for thinking that any of them was degenerate with the exception of Harold Harefoot, and in his case we have hostile testimony only; at the same time, they were all surely lacking in bodily strength and vigour.

Nor is there any reason for thinking that these weaknesses were maternal inheritances, for the women that Canute consorted with were evidently strong and vigorous and both of them survived him. We know little of the concubine Elgiva except that she was proud and imperious, on fire with ambition for herself and her sons. Emma was a woman of a similar type.

Canute apparently found it inconvenient to have the two in the same kingdom, and when the mistress returned to England after the Norse revolt, we seem to see her hand in the consequent intrigues. Queen Emma survived her husband more than sixteen years; "on March 14 [1052], died the Old Lady, the mother of King Edward and Harthacanute, named Imme, and her body lies in the Old Minster with King Canute."[461] At the time of her death she must have been in the neighbourhood of seventy years of age.

Of Canute's personality we know nothing. The portraits on his coins, if such rude drawings can be called portraits, give us no idea of his personal appearance. Nor is the picture in the _Liber Vitae_ likely to be more than an idealistic representation. Idealistic, too, no doubt, is the description of Canute in the _Knytlingasaga_, composed two centuries or more after his time:

Canute the King was large of build and very strong, a most handsome man in every respect except that his nose was thin and slightly aquiline with a high ridge. He was fair in complexion, had an abundance of fair hair, and eyes that surpa.s.sed those of most men both as to beauty and keenness of vision.[462]

The writer adds that he was liberal in dealing with men, brave in fight, favoured of fortune, but not wise. Except for the details as to the nose, which give the reader the feeling that the writer may, after all, have had some authentic source of information at his disposal, this picture would describe almost any one of the heroic figures of the time.

On his own contemporaries Canute made a profound impression which succeeding generations have shared. In Britain he was called the Great; in Scandinavia the Rich, the Mighty or the Powerful. The extent of his possessions, the splendour of his court, the size of his navy, his intimate relations with Pope and Emperor--all these things gave him a position and a prestige that was unheard of in the Northlands. And it was indeed a marvellous achievement for a pirate chief from a nation just emerging from heathendom to gather into his power the realms and territories that made up the Knytling empire.

To a.n.a.lyse a character such as that of Canute is a difficult task, as character a.n.a.lysis always must be. There was so much that was derived from a heathen time and ancestry, and also so much that had been acquired by contact with Christian culture and influences, that the result could be only a strange composite out of which traits and characteristics, often contradictory and hostile, would come to the surface as occasion would suggest. Canute was a Christian, probably baptised in his youth by some German ecclesiastic, as the Christian name Lambert, which in harmony with custom was added to the one that he already possessed, seems distinctly German. But the new name was evidently not much employed, except, perhaps, on occasions when the King wished to emphasise his Christian character. He seems to have entered into some sort of fraternal relations with the monks of Bremen: in the book of our brotherhood, says Adam the monk, he is named Lambert, King of the Danes.[463]

The historians of Old English times, both Saxon and Norman, were ecclesiastics and saw the reign of Canute from their peculiar view-point. To them the mighty Dane was the great Christian King, the founder of monasteries, the giver of costly gifts and valuable endowments to the houses of G.o.d. To the undisputed traits of Christian liberality, they added those of piety and humility, and told stories of the visit to the monks of Ely and of Canute's vain attempt to stem the tides and compel their obedience. The former is probably a true story; there is no reason why the King, who seems to have taken great interest in the abbeys of the Fenlands, should not have visited the cloisters of Ely, and he may have been attracted by the chants of the monks, which is more doubtful. But the tale of how Canute had to demonstrate his powerlessness before his admiring courtiers is a myth too patent to need discussion.[464] There was nothing of the Oriental spirit in the Northern courts.

That Canute was religious cannot be denied. Nor should we doubt that he was truly and honestly so, as religion pa.s.sed among the rulers of the age. The time demanded defence and support of the priesthood, and this Canute granted, at least toward the close of his life. Perhaps in real piety, too, he was the equal of his contemporaries whom the Church has declared holy: Saint Stephen of Hungary, Saint Henry of Germany, and Saint Olaf of Norway. Still, it becomes evident as we follow his career that at no period of his life, unless it be in the closing years of which we know so little, did Canute permit consideration for the Church or the Christian faith to control his actions or determine his policies.

The moving pa.s.sion of Canute's life was not a fiery zeal for the exaltation of the Church, but a yearning for personal power and imperial honours.

In the Northern sources written by laymen, especially in the verses of the wandering scalds, we get a somewhat different picture of Canute from that which has been painted in the English cloisters. Little emphasis is here placed on Canute's fidelity to the new faith; here we have the conqueror, the diplomat, the politician whose goal is success, be the means what they may. The wholesale bribery that he employed to the ruin of Saint Olaf, the making and breaking of promises to the Norwegian chiefs, and the treatment of his sister's family suggest a sense of honour that was not delicate, a pa.s.sion for truth that was not keen. In his preference for devious ways, in the deliberate use that he made of the lower pa.s.sions of men, he shows a characteristic that is not Northern. All was not honest frankness in the Scandinavian lands; but the pirates and their successors, as a rule, did not prefer bribery and falsehood to open battle and honest fight.

Slavic ancestry, Christian culture, Anglo-Saxon ideas, and the responsibilities of a great monarchy did much to develop and modify a character which was fundamentally as much Slavic as Scandinavian. Still, deep in his strong soul lay unconquered the fierce pa.s.sions that ruled the viking age--pitiless cruelty, craving for revenge, consuming hatred, and l.u.s.t for power. As a rule he seems to have been humane and merciful; he believed in orderly government, in security for his subjects; but when an obstacle appeared in the path of his ambitions, he had little scruple as to the means to be employed in removing it. The mutilation of the hostages at Sandwich, the slaughter and outlawry of earls and ethelings in the early years of his rule in England, the a.s.sa.s.sination of Ulf in Roeskild church suggest a spirit that could be terrible when roused. Something can be said for Canute in all these instances: Ulf was probably a traitor; the hostages represented broken pledges; the ethelings were a menace to his rule. But why was the traitor permitted to live until he had helped the King in his sorest straits; and what was to be gained by the mutilation of innocent Englishmen; and was there no other way to make infants harmless than to decree their secret death in a foreign land?

Canute possessed in full measure the Scandinavian power of adaptation, the quality that made the Northmen such a force in Normandy and Naples.

He grasped the ideals of mediaeval Christianity, he appreciated the value of the new order of things, and undertook to introduce it among the Northern peoples. But he did not permit the new circ.u.mstances and ideals to control him; only so long as they served his purpose or did not hinder him in the pursuit of that purpose did he bow to them. When other means promised to be more effective, he chose accordingly.

The empire that he founded did not survive him; it had begun to crumble in his own day; the English crown was soon lost to the Danish dynasty.

It would appear, therefore, as if the conqueror accomplished nothing that was permanent. But the achievements of genius cannot be measured in such terms only: the great movement that culminated in the subjection of Britain was of vast importance for the North; it opened up new fields for Western influences; it brought the North into touch with Christian culture; it rebuilt Scandinavian civilisation. These are the more enduring results of the reign and the preceding expeditions to the West.

At the same time, Canute's reign minimised the influence that was working northward from the German outposts. The connection with England was soon interrupted; but while it endured the leavening process made rapid spread and the Northern countries were enabled to absorb into their culture much that has remained a native possession.

To England Canute brought the blessings of good government. For nearly twenty years England had peace. Troubles there were on the Scotch and Welsh borders; but these were of slight importance compared with the earlier ravages of the vikings. It is true, indeed, that the Danish conquest paved the way for the later invasion by the Normans; but this was a result that Canute had not intended. It was not a part of his plan to have the sons of his consort educated in Normandy; at the same time, he was not in position to take such steps in their case as he may have wished, for they were the sons of his own Queen.

In his early years Canute was a viking; when he died the viking age had practically come to its close. Various influences contributed to this result: the new creed with its new conceptions of human duty; new interests and wider fields of ambition in the home lands; and the imperial position of Canute. We do not know that Canute at any time issued any decree against the practice of piracy; but he gained the same end by indirect means. The viking chiefs evidently entered his service in large numbers either in the English guard or in the government of the eastern domains. Furthermore, as the dominant ruler of the northern sh.o.r.es, as the ally of the Emperor and the friend of the Norman duke, he was able to close fairly effectually the Baltic, the North, and the Irish Seas together with the English Channel to viking fleets; and the raven was thus forced to fly for its prey to the distant sh.o.r.es beyond Brittany. Piracy continued in a desultory way throughout the eleventh century; but it showed little vigour after Canute's accession to the Danish kingship.

FOOTNOTES:

[442] The author has discussed this subject further in the _American Historical Review_, xv., 741-742.

[443] Larson, _The King's Household in England_, 141.

[444] Kemble, _Codex Diplomaticus_, No. 749.

[445] Kemble, _Codex Diplomaticus_, Nos. 748, 750, 751, 1322. The Croyland charter is clearly a forgery, but Canute may have made the grant none the less as the forged charters frequently represent an attempt to replace a genuine doc.u.ment that has been lost or destroyed.

[446] _Chronicon Monasterii de Abingdon_, i., 443.