Saint Knut
Join me today to meet a difficult Northern King who found his way to sainthood.
Name: Knut, Canute
Life: 1042 - 1086 AD
Status: Saint
Feast: January 19
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King Knut was holed up in the small wooden church of Saint Alban, in Odense, in central Denmark. Outside was the rebel army. Knut had put out a call for loyal men to come and defend him. But there at the end, he had less than twenty men. That had always been Knut’s problem. He was very good at winning battles. The one battle he could never win was the battle for the heart of the Danish people.
In a better time, being inside the church would have offered Knut sanctuary.
But outside, the rebels were planning to storm the place, egged on, though Knut did not know it, by a noble named Eyvind Bifra. So far, the king’s brother, Benedikt, was keeping them at bay. Benedict had walked into the doorway of the church and leaned against it, shouting to the rebels that if they wanted to find out what the king’s men were made of, they should try to walk through the door.
They weren’t bold enough to try it.
Not yet.
The road to the last stand in the wooden church began about ten years earlier with the death of Knut’s father, Sven Estridson. Knut had heard about it while he was on campaign, leading his father’s warriors along the coast of the Baltic. In those parts, a king might only rule over a very small area of territory, so there were many kings. Still, to defeat a king was no small accomplishment. On that expedition, Knut had defeated ten kings, so the poets said, and now he sailed back home in triumph and glory to take the crown of his father.
Knut’s tale is told in the story of his family, the Knytlinga Saga. The tale makes it clear that king Sven had hoped that Knut would take his place. Knut had an older brother, Harald. But Harald was not king material. He was shy and conflict averse. So Sven had made a public statement that the next king must be Knut. But by the time Knut arrived in Denmark, powerful nobles had already formed a faction to support Harald’s claim to the throne.
From the point of view of a noble, Harald was perfect. A weak king would leave nobles alone to do as they liked. But Knut had a lot of support among the ordinary people. In the end, the Knytlinga Saga says, it was the wily noble Eyvind Bifra who settled the matter. He tricked Knut so that he was in the wrong place when the actual vote was cast. Harald became king.
Denmark’s nobles had the weak king they were hoping for. But Denmark had real enemies and real problems. Ignoring them might help nobles to get rich, but the problems would just get worse. People started to go back to the old Viking ways, raiding their Christian neighbours and even other Danes. And they were raided in turn, for soon word got out that Denmark’s weak king would not do much about it. The people called him Harald Whetstone, because any blade could poke at him, sharpen itself on him, and he’d just stand there and take it. By the time Harald died, the country was falling apart.
This time, the lords of Denmark couldn’t avoid letting Knut be king. But now, instead of inheriting a wealthy and prosperous kingdom, Knut was going to have to try to put Denmark back together.
Knut looked at the problem like the warlord he was. The country needed discipline. Things needed to get done. And Knut set about doing them without tact or subtlety. He realized that to rebuild meant that he would need money. So he raised taxes. Knut wasn’t taking the money for himself. The king lived a fairly simple life, and after he died his servants revealed that he was often fasting, or mortifying himself, although he kept such acts private. But the Church needed money, and Knut was only too happy to pay. The high taxes made Knut plenty of enemies among his people.
Knut’s approach to justice was equally straightforward. Denmark was lawless. Knut easily crushed the coastal raiders, so that Denmark became safe again. As for lawlessness inside Denmark, Knut thought the law should apply to everybody. He had no time for preferential treatment, and lords who maimed or killed others could expect the king’s swift vengeance. The ordinary people liked this aspect of Knut’s reign. But the lords were used to getting a slap on the wrist for what they did, and Knut’s fairness made him enemies among the aristocracy.
Knut’s disciplinarian approach managed to alienate both ordinary people and nobles, for two very different reasons. And Knut had another flaw as a king. He wanted to see the best in people. Even men who had wronged him - men like Eyvind Bifra - could be forgiven if they showed humility. This was admirable, in a way. But many nobles figured out how to make Knut think that they were trying to improve their lives, even as they did nothing of the sort.
Take the example of the big warrior Egil. Knut heard about his reputation as a fighter and was determined to give Egil a chance to be something more than a thug. So Knut had given Egil charge of the island of Bornholm in the Baltic. But Egil had abused Knut’s trust, raiding the Wends who lived on the Southern coast of the Baltic between modern Poland and Germany. Egil had also acquired a disturbing reputation for drinking the blood of his enemies. Knut was angry that Egil had broken his peace, and disgusted by the blood drinking. He urged Egil to speak to a priest and find a way to atone. Egil kept telling Knut that he was going to get around to it. It took Knut quite some time to realize that Egil was playing him for a fool. It wasn’t until Egil turned to piracy that Knut finally had him put to death.
A few years into his reign, Knut could see that he was unpopular. What he needed was a grand expedition, a worthy mission that would bind his people together. And then it came to him.
He would set England free.
The Danes might seem like unlikely liberators for England. They had been raiding England for centuries. Knut’s ancestor, also called Knut, Knut the Great, had been king of England, Denmark and Norway. But in recent years a different group had conquered the English.
In 1066, William, Duke of Normandy, had conquered and subjugated Anglo-Saxon England. The Normans were a strange people, speaking a language closer to Latin than to the Germanic languages spoken by the English and the Danes. Normans didn’t even look English: they wore their hair short and shaved, so that at first, the English had supposed they were an army of priests. But soon they had learned that Normans were not priests. William brutally subjugated the island, his campaigns causing famine and depopulation as he set up what would prove to be a permanent power structure. Knut was getting a stream of messages from the English, begging him to come and drive the Normans out.
And so Knut began preparing the grand project that would tie all of Denmark together. Knut spoke to the king of Norway, who agreed to send ships and men. Soon the army was massing on the Danish coast.
Duke William of Normandy, now also King William of England, heard about the plans that Knut was making. He was terrified. He knew Knut’s reputation as a warrior. William was in Normandy, but he hastily sailed over to England and poured money into fortifications to prepare for the invasion. William was so nervous that he ordered his English subjects to shave their beards and moustaches. He wanted to give the Danes the impression that he had lots of Norman soldiers.
But over in Denmark, the fleet was delayed. Knut was missing. And as the days passed, the army began to grow restless.
Where was Knut? The Knytlinga Saga explains. Egil, the master of Bornholm, had raided the Wends, against Knut’s express orders. Egil was dead now, but the Wends still saw the Danes as enemies. When the Wends had gotten word of the build up of the Danish fleet they assumed it was coming for them. And so the Wends had mobilized for war and were going to preemptively attack Denmark. Knut had gone over in person to do damage control, and to assure them of his friendship.
The talks dragged on, and Knut’s army grew restless. It was hard for an early medieval army to stay in one place for very long. Supplies were always limited, and many men had agricultural work waiting for them. People began to drift back to their farms.
What would have happened if Knut had managed to get back in time to save his expedition? He might have turned England back into a more Germanic kingdom. History might have gone in a very different direction. Even our language would be different, for our words still show the traces of the brutal Norman hierarchy. A poor English farmer raises ‘sheep’, ‘swine’ and ‘cows’, because those are the Germanic words. But no cultured person would eat sheep, swine or cow. A Norman lord gets fat on ‘mutton’ and ‘pork’ and ‘beef’, because those are the Latin words.
Knut’s great expedition never left Denmark. By the time Knut had made peace with the Wends, the soldiers in his army had wandered back to their homes. Knut did exactly the wrong thing, and tried to punish those who had abandoned the project. He was especially hard on his brother, Olaf, who had been appointed as head of the army in Knut’s absence, throwing him into a dungeon. Knut said that he had seen something very evil in his brother. But even Knut’s closest friends thought that was just unreasonable.
Knut’s attempt to create a unifying project had backfired. Now his people were more divided than ever. They didn’t give him credit for averting war with the Wends. The way they saw it, Knut was taking more money, more power, and delivering nothing. Soon the rebels had formed an army. At its head was none other than Eyvind Bifra, the lord who had cheated Knut out of the kingship ten years earlier.
In the saga of his family history, Knut comes across as a sad king. He had spent his reign trying to bring good things to Denmark: order, glory, a living Church. All his plans had gone wrong. Now Knut sent his wife and young son, the future Blessed Charles the Good, away to his wife’s family in Flanders. He would stay to face the rebels.
Knut sent out messengers to his lords, asking them to come to his aid. But the lords of Denmark did not like a strong king, and so they found reasons to delay. If by some miracle Knut survived, they could always apologize. If Knut was doomed, then no need to waste their strength.
It was at Odense that the rebels finally caught up with the king. The king was in the city. He went to Vespers in the Church of Saint Alban. Now it was evening, although in the Northern summer the sun would not set for a few more hours. Outside was an army. Inside, King Knut had less than twenty men.
Knut’s men suggested that the logical thing to do would be to break out of the Church. Knut could still escape, go elsewhere, raise an army, keep fighting. Knut shook his head. Some of the problems in Denmark were Knut’s fault. Some were beyond his control. But Knut was a manly king, and he took responsibility for all of them.
He would try, if he could, to make peace with the people. He would speak to their representatives, if any could be found. Otherwise, he would meet his fate with his sword in his hand, in the way of his ancestors. Knut made his last confession, and prepared for the end.
But there was no reason for Knut’s men to die. He told his men that they could leave. According to the Knytlinga Saga, Knut’s brother Benedikt stepped up and said:
“We shall never shame ourselves by surrendering you to the weapons of your enemies, … even though it ensure quarter for us. Rather, let it be told to the young women of Denmark that we knew how to use our swords and shield our king. … I never heard it said that cowards were dearer to God than brave and spirited warriors. We’d rather die with honour beside you than live on after you in shame.” (Hermann Pálsson translation)
The rebel army started to assault the Church. Benedikt and the others sealed the doors, then stood behind them as the attackers tried to smash them in. That proved harder than it looked. Eventually, the attackers set fire to the church, but a sudden downpour put out the flames. Other rebels smashed the windows, and some found a loose part of the wall on the side of the church and battered it until it fell down into the building. It fell hard, smashing into the altar and knocking the relics of saints and the crucifix down onto the floor.
At some point, King Knut was killed. Our earliest sources say that he was killed with a spear thrown through the broken window. But a recent forensic study of Knut’s bones suggests that the killing blow wasn’t a spear to the side but a sword thrust to the stomach. And that is interesting, because it fits into the tale of the Knytlinga Saga.
According to the saga, the little church was so well defended that the rebels could not get inside. There was a pause in the fighting and a rebel ambassador came to the door. It was Eyvind Bifra, the man who had betrayed Knut and whom Knut had forgiven. Bifra asked to speak to the king.
Absolutely not, Benedikt told him.
But Knut waved him through. This was the moment Knut had been hoping for. He was going to have a chance to bring a peaceful resolution. Knut tended to think the best of people, and he had done many kindnesses for Eyvind Bifra. Knut trusted him. Eyvind Bifra got close to the king, as though to speak to him. And then he drew a short sword from a fold in his cloak and rammed it into the king’s stomach. Knut staggered over to the altar and fell across it, arms outspread.
Eyvind Bifra had already planned out his escape. He dived out of the open window. But he wasn’t quite fast enough. One of Knut’s men moved fluidly after him, swinging his sword downward with a crushing blow. Only the head and torso of Eyvind Bifra the betrayer made it out of the window.
After the death of the king, some of Knut’s men fled. But Benedikt had no intention of escaping. To another brother who was heading for the door, Benedikt said,
“Hail and farewell, brother, until we meet in Heaven.”
Then Benedikt tossed aside his shield. He and the king’s other guards gripped their swords with both hands, to swing harder, and pushed out of the door into the mass of the rebel army. A forensic examination of Benedikt’s bones tells us that someone caught him in the leg, swinging low under Benedikt’s guard. The deep wound should have killed him, but it didn’t. Benedikt kept fighting, absorbing an almost superhuman amount of punishment before he finally went down. But as the saga says, “a man can’t beat a multitude.”
When Benedikt and the remaining guards had fallen, the rebels had won.
They found Knut splayed over the disturbed altar, his arms thrown wide. And it began to dawn on some of the rebels that though they had gotten what they wanted, they had also done a bad thing. After the rebels were gone, a few men who were loyal to Knut came to bury the body.
Still, Knut was dead. The rebels freed Olaf, whom Knut had thrown into prison, and made him king. And then Denmark began to see exactly what Knut had seen in his brother.
Olaf was a tyrant. He was ruthless and greedy. Lawlessness returned to Denmark. During his reign, the crops failed and the people starved. They stated calling him Olaf Hunger. And in retrospect, it became clearer that for all his faults as a king, Knut had been shielding his people from something much worse.
As the Danes began to reevaluate the legacy of King Knut, they were also surprised by stories of the king’s personal saintliness. He wasn’t above temptation or error. But people who had known him well described a man who walked closely with God. Danes began to pray for Knut’s intercession at the church in Odense, and reports of miracles began to filter out.
These reports were suppressed by King Olaf Hunger, who wanted to hear nothing of them. But then one day Olaf Hunger died, and as the Knytlinga Saga puts it, “amongst people in general there was little grief at his death.” Denmark had a new king, and he would prove to be a good king. A crowd went to disinter the bones of Knut and put them in a shrine in the church. It had been storming that morning, but the people who had come to see Denmark’s first saint couldn’t help but notice that as Knut’s body was brought into the church, the clouds parted, and warm sunlight shone on the procession.
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Great story. You should put these into a book 👍🏽