Cnut The Great - Death and Succession

Death and Succession

Cnut died in 1035, at the Abbey in Shaftesbury, Dorset. His burial was in Winchester, the English capital of the time, and stronghold of the royal house of Wessex, whom the Danes had overthrown more or less two decades before.

In Denmark he was succeeded by Harthacnut, reigning as Cnut III, although with a war in Scandinavia against Magnus I of Norway, Harthacnut was "forsaken (by the English) because he was too long in Denmark", and his mother Queen Emma, previously resident at Winchester with some of her son's housecarls, was made to flee to Bruges, in Flanders; under pressure from supporters of Cnut's other son – after Svein – by Ælfgifu of Northampton. Harold Harefoot – regent in England 1035–37 – succeeded to claim the throne, in 1037, reigning until his death in 1040. Eventual peace in Scandinavia left Harthacnut free to claim the throne himself, in 1040, and regain his mother her place. He brought the crowns of Denmark and England together again, until his death, in 1042. Denmark fell into a period of disorder with the power struggle between the pretender to the throne Sweyn Estridsson, son of Ulf, and the Norwegian king, until Magnus' death in 1047 and restoration of the Danish sovereignty. And the inheritance of England was briefly to return to its Anglo-Saxon lineage.

The house of Wessex was to reign again in Edward the Confessor, whom Harthacnut had brought out of exile in Normandy and made a treaty with. Like in his treaty with Magnus, it was decreed the throne was to go to Edward if Harthacnut died with no legitimate male heir. In 1042, Harthacnut died, and Edward was king. His reign meant Norman influence at Court was on the rise thereafter, and the ambitions of its dukes finally found fruition in 1066, with William the Conqueror's invasion of England, and crowning, fifty years after Cnut was crowned in 1016.

Had the sons of Cnut not died within a decade of him, and his (only known) daughter Cunigund – set to marry Conrad II's son Henry III eight months after his death – not died in Italy before she became empress, Cnut's reign might well have been the foundation for a complete political union between England and Scandinavia.