Most British schoolchildren (certainly of my generation) remember the story of silly old King Canute who sat on the beach and tried to hold back the waves to show how all-powerful he was.
Well it turns out, we’ve got this totally wrong.
King Cnut (note the now correct spelling) wasn’t trying to show how powerful he was. He was doing the exact opposite. He was proving to his over eager courtiers that he wasn’t a God and they should stop fawning over him as it was obviously getting on his nerves.
And what’s more, this rather bizarre spectacle didn’t take place on some random English beach, but right here in London in the Westminster area, on the banks of the tidal River Thames.
So, who was King Cnut and why does he have such a tricky name to say out loud. Well, he was our first Viking King and from where he came from it obviously wasn’t such a silly name. In fact, Viking names are particularly good fun. His father’s name was Swein ‘Forkbeard’ and his grandfather Harald ‘Bluetooth’.
Anyway, Cnut had been doing the Viking thing and leading raids against Anglo Saxon England and in 1016 besieged the Saxon army holed up in London, then called by its Anglo-Saxon name of Lundenwic.
A peace treaty was eventually agreed with the Saxon King Edmund, that Cnut would rule everything north of the River Thames, while everything south of the river would be Edmund’s. (I wonder if this is where North-South London rivalry started?)
This arrangement didn’t last long though as Edmund was mysteriously murdered (funny that) and Cnut became King of the whole of England. To start with he exercised the standard new broom act of executing anyone who looked like could be a rival, but then rather surprisingly settled down to be rather a modest and wise king, earning the title ‘Cnut the Great’ which included of course, coming up with the holding back the waves stunt, to prove to everyone he was just a man.
Courtesy of Wikipendia. Image: Illustration of the Cnut and the Waves episode by Alphonse-Marie-Adolphe de Neuville.