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- Scandinavian Britain
- II. The Danelaw
- 5. Svein and Knút
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the canal, and the assaults on the city walls. Then it
reverts to the girl at home—poor thing!—mated to
the laggard and pining away like the leaves of the
linden in autumn; and concludes—
Day by day the buckler was reddened with reeking gore,
When we were out on the foray with our champion in the
war :
But now that the war is over and the last hard fight is won.
Merry we sit as the days go by in fair London-town.
So also the treachery and cruelty laid to Knút’s
charge, especially in his earlier years, disappear almost
to vanishing point on examination. Nor, on the other
hand, was he a great beneficent power, always listening
to the merry song of monks and rebuking his
courtiers for their flattery. He was very shrewd ; all the
chess-playing cleverness of the Viking intellect was
shown in his strategy and administration. It mattered
not whether his chessmen were Danish or English
—"Northman" of the Hwiccas, even jarl Eirík, jarl
Hákon Eiríksson and Thorkel were sacrificed, Eadulf
Cudel the Angle and Godwine the Saxon were advanced,
when the game required. Not to press a
powerful family to revolt, he would favour one member
of it when he had removed another : in 1020 Æthelwerd
the ealdorman was banished, and his brother-in-law
Æthelnoth was promoted to the archbishopric.
For the sake of policy Knút in his youth appears to
have married Ælfgifu of Northampton, daughter of
Ælfhelm, ealdorman of Deira ; but in 1017 he married
Emma of Normandy, Æthelred’s widow. In matters
of religion he showed himself almost ostentatiously
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