Final judgement on Cnut the Great

Cnut and his wife Emma, from the New Minster Liber Vitae

Having now finished Timothy Bolton’s biography of Cnut the Great, I can’t resist appending to my earlier post with some additional points. 

The conclusion should be at the start

Bolton’s five-page conclusion makes the life of Cnut much clearer. General readers would find it easier to have this as an introduction or first chapter.

 Get beyond “Englishness”

For much of the book, Bolton admirably examines Cnut both from a Scandinavian and an English point of view. I haven’t read many books about early English history, but I expect the typical book by an English author will look at English sources, and not consider events and sources outside England. But sadly, at moments in this book and in the very last page of this biography, Bolton comes dangerously close to falling into the trap of nationalism. I simply don’t believe that a ruler like Cnut will have seen “English” and “Danish” in the way we regard these terms in the 21st century: 

England may have been of crucial importance to him, but he seems to have remained at heart a Scandinavian. [p129] 

That is not to say that Cnut did not strongly feel himself to be Scandinavian or that he did not really wish to embrace Englishness [p213] 

I don’t imagine William the Conqueror was too bothered about embracing “Englishness”, whatever that is, and I don’t imagine that Cnut was very interested in it either, apart from the political benefit of appearing as the right kind of ruler. In fact, being able to tell the English what they wanted to hear, and the Danes what they wanted to hear, even if it was diametrically opposed, is what strikes me as modern about Cnut. 

Use a contemporary image of Cnut

I mentioned in an earlier post that the book uses a cover image dating two hundred years after Cnut's death. Bolton presumably sanctioned the use of this anachronous depiction of Cnut as a knight in medieval armour, while he includes a fascinating contemporary image of Cnut as one of his plates. He states, on page 192, “This is one of the most widely discussed drawings of Anglo-Saxon history”. A section is shown at the top of this post. .

The British Library states the illustration is “near contemporary”. Talking of dates, this book is maddeningly vague about dates; it doesn’t give a date for the illustration.

The historian’s innocence

Sadly, the author reveals a charming innocence when it comes to evaluating Cnut. He is convinced that Cnut became sincerely religious later in his life. For evidence of this, Bolton mentions the gifts Cnut lavished on English religious institutions. What motivates philanthropy? 

M.K. Lawson suggested in 1993 that many of Cnut’s gifts to the Church may have been politically motivated, and I later followed that approach myself. To some degree we were both probably correct, but genuine piety sits at the heart of an array of sources close to him, and Church gift-giving must also have been a powerful force behind this benevolence. [footnote: A mix of the two motives is perhaps characteristic of almost all medieval donors.][p183] 

I find this astonishing. Bolton gives ample evidence of Cnut’s astuteness (he calls Cnut a “diplomacist”, not a term I have found in a dictionary) yet is convinced he was sincerely Christian. I’d want to see more evidence than giving gifts to churches. 

Cnut turning back the tide

Like it or not, this is what most people think they know about Cnut. Clearly, from Bolton’s description, it is based on a wrong reading of the texts. But to place this in an appendix and footnotes is rather childish. Bolton justifies his decision thus: 

I beg my reader’s forgiveness for my irascibility on this front, but when one spends the better part of one’s adult life researching Cnut, it is the first thing anybody asks you about, and it become as irritating as a stuck record. 

Find a copy-editor

The book would benefit greatly from an editor able to remove some of the unique word forms (“eschelons”) and dead phrases. The quote above mixes “one” and “you”. Another quote above describes “the heart of an array of sources”. Some more examples: 

It in the field of international politics … where we can see that Cnut … ploughed a novel and quite opportunistic furrow. [p158] 

It’s a shame, since the underlying research looks so good, that the book loses the reader in details, when it would be simple to provide a few signposts.