I downloaded this book because a) it promised to be useful in my ongoing research on northern Europe in the 11th Century, for my Erling books, and b) it was cheap for my Kindle. In general I’m pleased with my purchase. It proved even more helpful than I expected, though I have one complaint.
Canute the Great and the Rise of Danish Imperialism During the Viking Age, by Laurence Marcellus Larson, was first published 100 years ago, but it remains a readable, useful, and occasionally dramatic historical account. This was a great relief to me, since I’d read a more recent biography, Cnut: England’s Viking King by Lawson, and it had been a bow-ring read. I marveled at the time, considering that here we have the saga of a real man who lived a Conan the Barbarian life, rising from exiled prince and pirate to emperor (effectively) of England and much of Scandinavia. But Lawson’s book was a dry recitation of textual citations, concentrating on tallies of Danish and English names in old charters, in order to guess how far Canute (or Cnut) favored his fellow Danes in the English government. As I recall (it’s been a while) he barely touched on Canute’s adventures outside England, while Larson revels in the saga accounts of (Saint) Olaf Haraldsson’s establishment of an independent Norwegian kingdom, in the teeth of Canute’s power.
And this raises my main complaint about the book. Lawson is completely on Olaf’s side. For men like Erling Skjalgsson, who opposed Olaf’s high-handed policies, he has only scorn. They are traitors, bought with English silver, and their cause is essentially heathenry.
If you’ve read my books, or followed what I say about Erling in this blog, you’ll know that I dissent strongly from that opinion. Erling and his allies were defending republican government. Heathenry had almost nothing to do with it. If they took silver from Canute, well, that’s what carls did in those days. Olaf gave rich gifts to his men too.
But other than that, it’s a pretty good book, and even exhibits an enlightened (especially considering the date of publication) view of Viking culture. Recommended. (As is the case with so many e-books, there are some problems with typos due to OCR errors.)
I suspect that kind of attitude was very comment amongst 19th C historians of all nationalities. 19th C national historians tended to see the histories of their countries in the Middle Ages as a continuous evolution towards the modern nation-state (which, obviously, was the end point of all political development…). Those who opposed the people and policies they saw as a part of that process were seen as reactionaries or, as you say, as traitors. When I was taught English history in High School, pretty much all those who opposed the centralising power of the English Monarchs came across that way. It wasn’t till years (and a lot more reading) later that I realised that some of them may have been motivated by ideals and concepts I could very much identify with, and that possibly some of the things I deplored in modern British politics had at least some of their roots very far back.
I think you’re probably right.