511

Contextualising the Kntsdrpur:

Skaldic Praise-Poetry at the Court of Cnut
Matthew Townend
Centre for Medieval Studies, University of York, UK
It is generally recognised that during the reign of Cnut the Danish kings court
came to represent the focal point for skaldic composition and patronage in the
Norse-speaking world. According to the later Icelandic Skldatal, no fewer than
eight poets were remembered as having composed for Cnut,
1
and the works of
five of them survive (some, admittedly, in fragmentary form): Sigvatr
rarsons Kntsdrpa;
2
ttarr svartis Kntsdrpa;
3
Hallvarr hreksblesis

1
For the Skldatal list see Edda Snorra Sturlusonar, ed. Sveinbjrn Egilsson et al, 3 vols in 4
(Copenhagen, 1848- 87), III, 251-86: 282-3.
2
For text see Den Norsk-Islandske Skjaldedigtning, ed. Finnur Jnsson, 4 vols (Copenhagen,
1912-15), IB, 232-4. For (almost complete) translation see English Historical Documents:
Volume I c. 500-1042, ed. Dorothy Whitelock (London, 1955), 310-11 (No. 16, where the poem is
titled Tgdrpa).
3
For text see Skjaldedigtning, ed. Finnur Jnsson, IB, 272-5; Margaret Ashdown, English and
Norse Documents Relating to the Reign of Ethelred the Unready (Cambridge, 1930), 136-9 (text
and translation). For translation see English Historical Documents, ed. Whitelock, 308-9 (No. 15).
512 Matthew Townend
Kntsdrpa;
4
rarinn loftungas Hfulausn
5
and Tgdrpa;
6
and (probably)
a fragment by Arnrr jarlaskld.
7
Of the other poets cited in Skldatal, no verse
in honour of Cnut is extant by Bersi Torfuson, and none at all by Steinn
Skaptason and the obscure arkeptr. However, an extant anonymous poem in
honour of Cnut is Lismannaflokkr,
8
and one is justified in also bringing into
general consideration an extant poem in honour of one of Cnuts earls, namely
rr Kolbeinssons Eirksdrpa.
9
In addition to a number of lausavsur
believed to have been addressed to Cnut, there is also a good deal of poetry
which either mentions Cnut or is, at some remove, composed about him, the
most important of which is Sigvatrs Vestrfararvsur;
10
but the discussion that
follows is concerned only with the poetry composed directly for and in honour
of him.
As an initial observation, such an extant collection of skaldic praise-poetry
is remarkable in terms of its sheer quantity: Cnut can be ranked alongside Earl
Hkon Sigurarson, lfr Haraldsson, and Haraldr harri as one of the most
prominent of patrons for extant skaldic verse, and without question he is the
most important non-Norwegian according to such terms. As has been
acknowledged, therefore, skaldic verse associated with Cnut represents a
substantial, and reasonably discrete, subject for investigation - a body of poetry
which I shall collectively refer to by the shorthand label of the Kntsdrpur.
11

4
For text see Skjaldedigtning, ed. Finnur Jnsson, IB, 293-4; Roberta Frank, King Cnut in the
verse of his skalds, in The Reign of Cnut: King of England, Denmark and Norway, ed. Alexander
R. Rumble, Studies in the Early History of Britain (London, 1994), 106-24: 119-21 (text and
translation).
5
For text see Skjaldedigtning, ed. Finnur Jnsson, IB, 298. For translation see Frank, King Cnut
in the verse of his skalds, 116.
6
For text see Skjaldedigtning, ed. Finnur Jnsson, IB, 298-9. For translation see English
Historical Documents, ed. Whitelock, 312 (No. 19).
7
For text see Skjaldedigtning, ed. Finnur Jnsson, IB, 326 (strophe 3); Diana Whaley, The Poetry
of Arnrr jarlaskld: An Edition and Study, Westfield Publications in Medieval Studies 8
(Turnhout, 1998), 134, 308-10 (text and translation). For the grounds for believing this fragment
is from a poem on Cnut see Whaley, The Poetry of Arnrr jarlaskld, 34-5.
8
For text see Skjaldedigtning, ed. Finnur Jnsson, IB, 391-3; Russell Poole, Skaldic Verse and
Anglo-Saxon History: Some Aspects of the Period 1009-1016, Speculum 62 (1987), 265-98:
281-3 (text and translation); R.G. Poole, Viking Poems on War and Peace: A Study in Skaldic
Narrative, Toronto Medieval Texts and Translations 8 (Toronto, 1991), 86-90 (text and
translation); also Ashdown, English and Norse Documents, 140-3 (partial text and translation).
9
For text see Skjaldedigtning, ed. Finnur Jnsson, IB, 203-6. For (partial) translation see English
Historical Documents, ed. Whitelock, 307 (No. 14).
10
For text see Skjaldedigtning, ed. Finnur Jnsson, IB, 226-8; for translation of the stanzas
relating to Cnut see English Historical Documents, ed. Whitelock, 311 (No. 17).
11
The most important studies are Dietrich Hofmann, Nordisch-Englische Lehnbeziehungen der
Wikingerzeit, Bibliotheca Arnamagnana 14 (Copenhagen, 1955), 59-101 (52-109); Poole,
Skaldic Verse and Anglo-Saxon History; and Frank, King Cnut in the verse of his skalds. See
also Alistair Campbell, Skaldic Verse and Anglo-Saxon History, Dorothea Coke Memorial
Lecture (London, 1971); and Matthew Townend, English Place-Names in Skaldic Verse, English
Place-Name Society Extra Series 1 (Nottingham, 1998).
11
th
International Saga Conference 513
In what follows I wish to consider in particular the context or contexts in which
these poems in honour of Cnut were originally produced and received, and in
doing so to explore more generally the role of original context in the generation
of literary meaning for skaldic praise-poetry; in particular I shall endeavour to
contextualise the poems in terms of their geographical and physical place of
delivery.
Cnut was king of all England from 1017 to 1035. With the possible
exception of Sigvatrs poem there is no reason to believe that any of the
Kntsdrpur are erfidrpur or memorial lays, and so by the very fact of Cnuts
regnal dates one can position these poems within a fairly narrow eighteen-year
band. Such ready datability may seem an obvious and fortuitous quality of
praise-poetry, but in the study of early medieval vernacular poetry such a
quality is all too rare and therefore not at all to be taken for granted. There is
unfortunately no space here to engage in an exploration of the more precise
dating of the Kntsdrpur according to internal and external indicators, but
following the opinions of earlier scholars I would propose the following likely
chronology for the poems: Lismannaflokkr c.1016-17; rrs Eirksdrpa
c.1016-23; ttarrs Kntsdrpa c.1027; Sigvatrs Knt sdrpa c.1027
(probably); rarinns Hfulausn c.1027-28 and Tgdrpa c.1029; Hallvarrs
Kntsdrpa c.1029; and Arnrrs fragment c.1031-35. For a number of these
poems - especially, perhaps, Hallvarrs and Arnrrs - it is the terminus ante
quem that is lacking or weakly established, with Cnuts death forming the only
real end-point. Sir Frank Stenton famously remarked that Cnuts reign in
England was so successful that contemporaries found little to say about it;
12
and while this may or may not be true for chronicles and other documentary
sources, the observation is quite aptly applicable to the genre of praise-poetry.
Peaceful times give little cause for celebration in such a competitive and
militant literature, and the Kntsdrpur mention no event later than the 1028
expedition to Norway: in terms of Cnuts own activities these years are blank
too in all manuscripts of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.
13
Hence the poets look
back to the empire-making battles and wars, either to the most recent campaign
or (presumably) the most important: ttarrs Kntsdrpa, perhaps the most
militant of all of the praise-poems for Cnut, looks back some ten years to the
winning of the English throne.
The literary and cultural implications of this chronology for the
Kntsdrpur will be discussed in more detail after consideration has been given
to the geographical and physical contexts for the poems; but one or two points

12
F.M. Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England, 3rd edn, Oxford History of England 2 (Oxford, 1971),
399.
13
For ease of reference see M.K. Lawson, Cnut: the Danes in England in the early eleventh
century (London, 1993), 231-2. The entry for 1031 in MSS DE is very probably misplaced from
1026, though the one event which may be correctly dated to 1031 is the submission of the
Scottish kings.
514 Matthew Townend
are worth observing at this stage. Above all, it is notable how the poems fall
into two groups, with Lismannaflokkr and Eirksdrpa coming soon after the
conquest of England, but the rest of the poems after the battle of Holy River in
1026 and (in some cases) the Norway expedition in 1028. One might also
suggest that the two early poems are in some sense by insiders, those who had
already thrown in their lot with Cnuts assault on England (especially
Lismannaflokkr), whereas the later poems are by outsiders, those who came
seeking Cnuts court at a subsequent point. And chronologically that point is
clearly Cnuts establishment of a pan-Scandinavian hegemony, after Holy River
(against the Swedes) and the Norway expedition: it is this creation of a wider
Scandinavian empire that shifts the centre of skaldic culture to Cnuts court and
that makes the Danish king the crucial patron for poets to seek out and cultivate.
There is only a tiny amount of Viking Age verse extant for any Danish kings
other than Cnut; but the events of 1026 and 1028 re-orientate the axis of skaldic
composition, and so lead to the type of chronology proposed above. In or
around 1030 it clearly made sense for a poet launching his international career
to seek out Cnut first of all as the most important of patrons - as, from Diana
Whaleys chronology, Arnrr appears to have done when leaving Iceland for
the first time.
14
Cnuts political hegemony in Scandinavia thus led to a poetic
one.
In turning to the geographical and physical contexts of the Kntsdrpur,
the first question is whether one should locate the activities of Cnuts poets to
England rather than to Denmark (or even Norway), and the usual ascription to
England seems securely based on a number of convergent strands of evidence:
above all, on the historical record of Cnuts movements, the centrality of
England in his Anglo-Danish empire, and the marked linguistic influence on the
poems from Old English. The first two of these factors point to the localisation
of Cnuts court, while the third would seem to indicate that such a localisation
is correct with regard to the composition of court poetry. Between 1017 and
1035 there is record of Cnut being absent from England on no more than four or
five occasions, and each time fairly briefly. What is apparent therefore is the
dominant proportion of his reign which Cnut spent in England, and how this
would appear to signal England rather than Denmark as the centre of his
empire. The linguistic evidence of Old English influence on the Old Norse of
poems, catalogued by Dietrich Hofmann,
15
is indeed, as Roberta Frank
remarks, the most persuasive indicator that the poems were originally
addressing Danes resident in England,
16
and it suggests also that the poems
should not be ascribed to Cnuts few occasions of campaign in Scandinavia: the

14
Whaley, The Poetry of Arnrr jarlaskld, 41-7. Arnrrs choice of destination may also have
been governed by the earlier career-successes of his father, rr Kolbeinsson.
15
Hofmann, Nordisch-Englische Lehnbeziehungen, 59-100 (52-108).
16
Frank, King Cnut in the verse of his skalds, 108.
11
th
International Saga Conference 515
poems are coming out of an Anglo-Scandinavian milieu, rather than one that is
wholly Scandinavian.
More intriguing is the question of whereabouts in England one should
locate this culture of courtly patronage. Frank assumes without discussion that
London was the prime location of Cnuts court and therefore in Cnuts reign
constituted the centre in the North for the production and distribution of skaldic
poetry.
17
However, courts of late Anglo-Saxon kings were still to a significant
degree itinerant,
18
and during his reign Cnut is variously recorded engaged in
legal or political activity in Kingston, Oxford, Abingdon, Cirencester,
Ashingdon, Canterbury, and Shaftesbury.
19
In essence, though, the search for
the centre of poetic patronage in Cnuts reign comes down to a straight choice
between the two other places where Cnuts presence is recorded, namely
London (as Frank assumes) and Winchester - that is, between the emergent
economic powerhouse of eleventh-century England and the ancient ceremonial
seat of the West Saxon monarchy.
As usual, this is not really a case of either/or, and in fact the two cities
appear to have been in what might be termed complementary distribution.
Russell Poole has demonstrated persuasively that Lismannaflokkr is what it
purports to be, an expression of rank and file jubilation at Kntrs conquest,
composed almost contemporaneously with the events it describes,
20
and the
geographical centre of the poem is London (referred to in stanza 7 in Pooles
ordering, as is the Thames in stanzas 3 and 6). Lismannaflokkr, then, appears
to be coming directly out of the newly-occupied city, and the poems concerns
are thus emblematic of Londons status under Cnut: on account of its successful
resistance in the preceding wars it became a guarded and garrisoned city, the
main focus for Cnuts punitive measures in terms of geld-raising and forceful
political action. So, for example, it was in London (according to John of
Worcester) that Cnut in 1017 executed the dangerous Eadric streona;
21
it was
upon London that Cnut placed the burden of a distinctive geld of 10,500 in

17
Roberta Frank, Skaldic Poetry, in Old Norse-Icelandic Literature: A Critical Guide, ed. Carol
J. Clover and John Lindow, Islandica 45 (Ithaca, 1985), 157-96: 179.
18
See for example Simon Keynes, The Diplomas of King thelred the Unready 978-1016: A
Study in their Use as Historical Evidence, Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought, 3rd
series 13 (Cambridge, 1980), 269-73; David Hill, An Atlas of Anglo-Saxon England (Oxford,
1981), 90-1, 94 (maps 160-3 and 167-9); Martin Biddle, Seasonal Festivals and Residence:
Winchester, Westminster and Gloucester in the tenth to twelfth centuries, Anglo-Norman Studies
8 (1986), 51-72: 56, 69-72.
19
Hill, An Atlas of Anglo-Saxon England, 91 (map 163); reprinted in David Hill, An urban
policy for Cnut?, in The Reign of Cnut, ed. Rumble, 101-5: 103.
20
Poole, Skaldic Verse and Anglo-Saxon History, 286.
21
The Chronicle of John of Worcester, ed. R.R. Darlington and P. McGurk, 3 vols, Oxford
Medieval Texts (Oxford, 1995-), II, 504-5; Lawson, Cnut, 83-4.
516 Matthew Townend
1018;
22
and it was from London that Cnut removed the relics of the martyred
Archbishop lfheah in 1023.
23
Above all, and quite apart from individual
events such as these, London was a city under careful military occupation. It
never fell in the Anglo-Danish wars, and its citizens had preferred Edmund
Ironside to Cnut in 1016:
24
post-1017, therefore, it could not be relied upon to
support the new Danish king, and might potentially become the crucible of anti-
Danish rebellion. Hence the punitive taxes and political gestures of potency;
hence also it appears to have been the base for Cnuts lismenn or standing
fleet,
25
one of whom may be commemorated by two of his comrades in the
Ringerike-style St Pauls rune-stone,
26
while the appearance of strategically-
positioned churches dedicated to Scandinavian saints may well indicate that
they functioned as garrison chapels.
27
The signs therefore are that London was
a closely guarded city in the reign of Cnut, and that presumably the king had
some sort of base there.
28
As early garrison-poetry, Lismannaflokkr - the
flokkr of the lismenn - should clearly be localised there; but it must be doubtful
whether London represented the centre of court culture for the Danish king and
his followers.
Instead it is to Winchester one should look, and in Winchester, arguably,
that one should primarily contextualise the Kntsdrpur. David Hill has
observed that any ... punishment of London would also explain the efforts to
embellish Winchester as capital, a policy that is certainly discernible in the
reign of Cnut.
29
So it was in Winchester at Christmas 1020 or 1021 that Cnut

22
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle MSS CDE (though MS E states 11,000); Lawson, Cnut, 83; Hill,
An urban policy for Cnut?, 103.
23
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle MSS CDE (with a particularly lengthy account in MS D); Lawson,
Cnut, 140-2, 180- 2; Alexander R. Rumble, Textual Appendix: Translatio Sancti lfegi
Cantuariensis archiepiscopi et martyris (BHL 2519): Osberns account of the translation of St
lfheahs relics from London to Canterbury, 8-11 June 1023, in The Reign of Cnut, ed. Rumble,
282-315.
24
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle MSS CDE.
25
James Campbell, Some Agents and Agencies of the Late Anglo-Saxon State, in Domesday
Studies, ed. J.C. Holt (Woodbridge, 1987), 201-18: 204-5; Nicholas Hooper, Military
developments in the reign of Cnut, in The Reign of Cnut, ed. Rumble, 89-100: 98-100.
26
The inscription reads (in normalised form) Ginna lt leggja stein ensi auk Tki Ginna and
Tki had this stone raised. See David M. Wilson and Ole Klindt-Jensen, Viking Art (London,
1966), 135-6; Signe Horn Fuglesang, Some Aspects of the Ringerike Style: A phase of 11th
century Scandinavian art, Mediaeval Scandinavia Supplements 1 (Odense, 1980), 189 (No. 88);
The Vikings in England and in their Danish Homeland, ed. Else Roesdahl, James Graham-
Campbell, Patricia Connor and Kenneth Pearson (London, 1981), 136, 163 (No. I 19); Lawson,
Cnut, 206-7; Michael Barnes,Towards an Edition of the Scandinavian Runic Inscriptions of The
British Isles - Some Thoughts, in Twenty- Eight Papers Presented to Hans Bekker-Nielsen on the
Occasion of his Sixtieth Birthday 28 April 1993 (Odense, 1993), 21-36: 33 (No. E 2).
27
Pamela Nightingale, The Origin of the Court of Husting and Danish Influence on Londons
Development into a Capital City, English Historical Review 102 (1987), 559-78: 566-9.
28
Alan Vince, Saxon London: An Archaeological Investigation (London, 1990), 57.
29
Hill, An urban policy for Cnut?, 103-4.
11
th
International Saga Conference 517
promulgated the law-codes now known as I and II Cnut,
30
and it was in the Old
Minster at Winchester that Cnut was to be buried.
31
It is also, of course, from
Winchester that the supreme image of Cnut derives, in the form of the
frontispiece to the New Minster Liber Vitae, commemorating his and his wife
Emmas donation of a gold cross to be placed on the foundations altar.
32
For
Emma herself the evidence is more extensive, in that she held property in
Winchester from 1012 up till her death in 1052: there are documentary records
of Emmas presence there, and her house in the High Street was still able to be
identified in the twelfth century.
33
She too was buried in the Old Minster, as
was her and Cnuts only son, Harthacnut,
34
so confirming its status as (in
Pauline Staffords phrase) a dynastic mausoleum.
35
To this discussion of Cnut (and Emma) in Winchester one should add two
other more general factors: the status of Winchester as late West Saxon
capital, and evidence for a Danish presence in late West Saxon Winchester.
Our extensive knowledge of Winchester derives substantially from the
programme of excavations conducted there in the 1960s (led by Martin Biddle)
and the accompanying publication project.
36
Winchesters trajectory involves
its development as the ceremonial royal centre of Wessex in the seventh to
ninth centuries, its urban renovation in the late ninth-century burghal system,
and its confirmation as the royal and cultural centre of the unified kingdom of
England in the tenth and eleventh centuries, before it declined in status at the

30
Felix Liebermann, Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen, 3 vols (Halle, 1898-1916), I, 278-371;
Lawson, Cnut, 61-3; M.K. Lawson, Archbishop Wulfstan and the homiletic element in the laws
of thelred II and Cnut, in The Reign of Cnut , ed. Rumble, 141-64: 157-61; Patrick Wormald,
The Making of English Law: King Alfred to the Twelfth Century. Volume I Legislation and Its
Limits (Oxford, 1999), 345-66.
31
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle MS E 1036. See John Crook, A worthy antiquity: the movement
of King Cnuts bones in Winchester Cathedral, in The Reign of Cnut, ed. Rumble, 165-92.
32
For discussion see Robert Deshman, Benedictus Monarcha et Monachus: Early Medieval
Ruler Theology and the Anglo-Saxon Reform, Frhmittelalterliche Studien 22 (1988), 204-40:
223-5; Jan Gerchow, Prayers for King Cnut: The Liturgical Commemoration of a Conqueror, in
England in the Eleventh Century: Proceedings of the 1990 Harlaxton Symposium, ed. Carola
Hicks, Harlaxton Medieval Studies 2 (Stamford, 1992), 219-38: 222-30; Richard Gameson, The
Role of Art in the Late Anglo-Saxon Church (Oxford, 1995), 22, 74, 82-3, 230-1, 263; The Liber
Vitae of the New Minster and Hyde Abbey Winchester, ed. Simon Keynes, Early English
Manuscripts in Facsimile 26 (Copenhagen, 1996), 38-9, 79-80. On the gold cross itself see The
Liber Vitae of the New Minster, ed. Keynes, 35-7.
33
See The Liber Vitae of the New Minster, ed. Keynes, 34; Pauline Stafford, Queen Emma and
Queen Edith: Queenship and Womens Power in Eleventh-Century England (Oxford, 1997), esp.
252 (Figure 9); Simon Keynes, Introduction to the 1998 Reprint, Encomium Emmae Reginae,
ed. Alistair Campbell, Camden Classic Reprints 4 (Cambridge, 1998), xix, xxvi-xxviii, lxxv.
34
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle MSS EF 1041, MS C 1051.
35
Stafford, Queen Emma and Queen Edith, 96.
36
See Martin Biddle, The Study of Winchester: Archaeology and History in a British Town,
1961-1983, Proceedings of the British Academy 69 (1983), 93-135; revised version reprinted in
British Academy Papers on Anglo- Saxon England, ed. E.G. Stanley (Oxford, 1990), 299-341.
518 Matthew Townend
rise of Westminster.
37
So for instance Winchester appears to have been the
central repository of the kings treasure,
38
and upon Cnuts death in 1035 ealle
a betstan grsaman e Cnut cyng ahte were taken from Emma there by
Harold Harefoot.
39
The royal palace itself (in which, one may assume, the
treasury was located) was positioned directly to the west of the Old Minster and
south of the New Minster cemetery, though the form of the buildings
themselves is unknown as the area itself has not been excavated;
40
nonetheless,
Biddle and Keene suggest that the evidence available for rural palaces, and the
illustrations in the Bayeux Tapestry of the Confessors palace at Westminster,
may lead us to suppose a considerable complex of stone structures, probably not
out of scale beside the two great churches of the Old and New Minsters.
41
For
of the form of the monasteries abutting the palace, on the other hand, a very
great deal is known, and in the Benedictine reforms of the late tenth century, a
mere generation before Cnut, both had experienced ambitious building
programmes: the tower of the New Minster was completed sometime between
980 and 987, while the Old Minster was wholly rebuilt between 971 and 994,
with its westworks in particular being completed in 980.
42
These were
formidably impressive structures: the Old Minster westworks, centred upon the
tomb of St Swithun, was probably over thirty-five metres in height, while the
New Minster tower comprised six storeys, and its exterior was decorated with
different carvings at every level.
43
In such an environment it is perhaps surprising to find a variety of forms of
evidence for a conspicuous Danish presence in the early eleventh century.
44
Funeral evidence is supplied in the form of a number of essentially

37
Martin Biddle, Winchester: the development of an early capital, in Vor- und Frhformen der
europischen Stadt im Mittelalter, ed. Herbert Jankuhn, Walter Schlesinger and Heiko Steuer, 2
vols (Gttingen, 1975), I, 229-61.
38
Martin Biddle and D.J. Keene, Winchester in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries, in Frank
Barlow, Martin Biddle, Olof von Feilitzen and D.J. Keene, Winchester in the Early Middle Ages:
An Edition and Discussion of the Winton Domesday, ed. Martin Biddle, Winchester Studies 1
(Oxford, 1976), 241-448: 290-1; Stafford, Queen Emma and Queen Edith, 99.
39
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle MS D, ed. G.P. Cubbin, The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: A
Collaborative Edition 6 (Cambridge, 1996), 65 (all the best treasures which King Cnut owned).
40
Martin Biddle, Felix Urbs Winthonia: Winchester in the Age of Monastic Reform, in Tenth-
Century Studies: Essays in Commemoration of the Millennium of the Council of Winchester and
Regularis Concordia, ed. David Parsons (London and Chichester, 1975), 123-40: 132-3.
41
Biddle and Keene, Winchester in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries, 292.
42
Biddle, Felix Urbs Winthonia, 134-9.
43
R.N. Quirk, Winchester New Minster and its Tenth-Century Tower, Journal of the British
Archaeological Association, 3rd series 24 (1961), 16-54; The Liber Vitae of the New Minster, ed.
Keynes, 29-30. For artists reconstructions see The Vikings in England, ed. Roesdahl et al, 167,
170 (No. J 14); Tom Beaumont James, Winchester, English Heritage (London, 1997), 49 (Figure
25).
44
For summaries see Barbara Yorke, Wessex in the Early Middle Ages, Studies in the Early
History of Britain (London, 1995), 143-5; The Liber Vitae of the New Minster, ed. Keynes, 40 n.
227.
11
th
International Saga Conference 519
Scandinavian burials in the New Minster cemetery,
45
and in the hogback-
shaped gravestone from the east of the Old Minster bearing the inscription HER
L[I] G[VN]N[I :] EORLES FEOLAGA Here lies Gunni, the earls [or
possibly Eorls] comrade.
46
Beside this stone one can set the rune-stone
found at St Maurices church in Winchester but almost certainly coming
originally from the New Minster cemetery.
47
The stone is only fragmentary,
and the inscription correspondingly difficult to read, but it is plainly in
Scandinavian runes and enough is extant to indicate that the language of the
inscription is Old Norse:
48
the writing of Old Norse in eleventh- century
Winchester would thus seem to presuppose an audience for the reading thereof,
and also an Old Norse speech community.
To this epigraphical evidence one may add visual evidence in the form of
the controversial frieze sculpture found amongst the rubble resulting from the
demolition of the Old Minster in 1093.
49
This has been interpreted as deriving
from a narrative stone frieze depicting episodes from the legend of Sigmundr in
the Vlsung cycle, and Biddle suggests that it was Cnut who had this frieze
erected, since it celebrate[s] the shared traditions of England and Denmark.
50
Less speculative is the so- called Winchester weathervane - now relabelled as
a decorative casket mount - which was found beneath the south transept of the
present cathedral and exemplifies the Ringerike style of decoration.
51
Half a
dozen bone spoons also show influence from the Ringerike style,
52
while other
small Scandinavian-style artefacts include over a dozen combs and an isolated
(and possibly pre-Cnut) silver-gilt strap-end in the Jellinge style.
53
Finally, and
more generally, one may note the unusually high number of Old Norse personal

45
Martin Biddle, Excavations at Winchester 1962-63: Second Interim Report, The Antiquaries
Journal 44 (1964), 188-219: 211.
46
Martin Biddle, Excavations at Winchester 1965: Fourth Interim Report, The Antiquaries
Journal 46 (1966), 308-32: 325; Birthe Kjlbye-Biddle and R.I. Page, A Scandinavian Rune-
Stone from Winchester, The Antiquaries Journal 55 (1975), 389-94: 390-2; Elisabeth Okasha,
Hand-list of Anglo-Saxon Non-Runic Inscriptions (Cambridge, 1971), 126-7 (No. 138).
47
Kjlbye-Biddle and Page, A Scandinavian Rune-Stone from Winchester, 389.
48
Kjlbye-Biddle and Page, A Scandinavian Rune-Stone from Winchester, 392-4; Barnes,
Towards an Edition of the Scandinavian Runic Inscriptions, 33 (No. E 12).
49
Martin Biddle, Excavations at Winchester 1965, 329-32 (Appendix: a late Saxon frieze
sculpture from the Old Minster); The Golden Age of Anglo-Saxon Art 966-1066, ed. Janet
Backhouse, D.H. Turner and Leslie Webster (London, 1984), 133-5 (No. 140).
50
Biddle, Excavations at Winchester 1965, 331.
51
Wilson and Klindt-Jensen, Viking Art, 141; Fuglesang, Some Aspects of the Ringerike Style,
170-1 (No. 54); The Golden Age of Anglo-Saxon Art, ed. Backhouse, Turner and Webster, 107
(No. 102).
52
The Vikings in England, ed. Roesdahl et al, 168 (No. J 5); The Golden Age of Anglo-Saxon Art,
ed. Backhouse, Turner and Webster, 129 (No. 134).
53
Kjlbye-Biddle and Page, A Scandinavian Rune-Stone from Winchester, 390; The Vikings in
England, ed. Roesdahl et al, 168-9 (Nos. J 6, J 8); The Golden Age of Anglo-Saxon Art, ed.
Backhouse, Turner and Webster, 106 (No. 101).
520 Matthew Townend
names recorded in Winchester: in the surveys of the city made in the eleventh
and twelfth centuries, approximately one in twenty of the persons recorded bore
Old Norse personal names.
54
This cumulative collection of evidence therefore
leads Barbara Yorke to conclude that in the reign of Cnut Winchester was
probably the place in Wessex where the greatest concentration of Danish
settlers was to be found,
55
and there are indications that in the post-Cnut years
also Winchester continued to be regarded as the centre of Danish (or Anglo-
Danish) interests.
56
What all these signs of Scandinavian culture in Winchester
have in common, however, is their high or aristocratic status: as Birthe Kjlbye-
Biddle observes, [the] finds showing Scandinavian influence do not occur
among common household goods, but reflect the upper ranges of the social
hierarchy, as might be expected with a Danish king on the throne and his men at
court.
57
I would suggest therefore that Winchester is the physical location in which
one should contextualise the Kntsdrpur - in particular, in which one should
contextualise the main group of poems from the late 1020s, after Cnuts
establishment of a Scandinavian hegemony. In fact, such a context was
proposed long ago by L.M. Larson, who suggested that Sigvatr and ttarr came
to Winchester in 1027, rarinn in 1029.
58
Larsons dates may need a little
fine-tuning (though not much), but he appears to have been correct in believing
that it was most probably the court at Winchester that briefly, in the reign of
Cnut, came to be the prime centre for skaldic composition in the Norse-
speaking world. After Holy River and the Norway expedition, it was to
Winchester that the poets came, and so in this respect it is worth briefly
recalling Sigvatrs Vestrfararvsur, supplying as they do a contemporary
account of a skalds visit to Cnuts court: in the course of his report Sigvatr
draws particular attention to the processes of etiquette required to gain access to
the king (tan vark, r Jta / andspilli fekk stillis, ... / ... hsdyrr fyrir
spyrjask), and to the kings great generosity (Kntr ..., mtra / mildr ... / ...
hringa), especially as a benefactor to the poets who seek him (Kntr hefr okr ...
/ ... bum / hendr, es hilmi fundum, / ... skrautliga bnar).
59

54
Olof von Feilitzen, The Personal Names and Bynames of the Winton Domesday, in
Winchester in the Early Middle Ages, ed. Biddle, 143-229: 179-91.
55
Yorke, Wessex in the Early Middle Ages, 144.
56
The Liber Vitae of the New Minster, ed. Keynes, 39-40. In Harthacnuts reign the Encomium
Emmae Reginae may well have been written at Winchester in the service of precisely such
interests: see Keynes, Introduction to the 1998 Reprint, xxxix-xli, lxx-lxxi.
57
Kjlbye-Biddle and Page, A Scandinavian Rune-Stone from Winchester, 390.
58
Laurence Marcellus Larson, Canute the Great 995 (circ)-1035, and the Rise of Danish
Imperialism during the Viking Age, Heroes of the Nations (London, 1912), 294.
59
Skjaldedigtning, ed. Finnur Jnsson, IB, 226 (Vestrfararvsur 2.1-2, 4: I had to engage in
inquiries outside, before the hall door, before I obtained conversation with the governor of the
Jutes), 227 (7.1-3: Cnut, generous with precious rings; 5.1-4: Cnut has splendidly adorned the
arms of both of us [i.e. Sigvatr and Bersi] when we met the prince).
11
th
International Saga Conference 521
We return, therefore, to the role of context in the generation of meaning for
praise-poetry. The royal palace at Winchester, right up close to the enclosure
and tower of the New Minster, and directly over-shadowed by the Swithun-
centred westworks of the Old Minster, seems an astonishing place for the Norse
poets to be saying what they do: for Sigvatr to be declaring that Cnut soon
killed the sons of Ethelred or drove out every one (Ok senn sonu / sl, hvern ok
, / Aalrs, ea / t flmi, Kntr);
60
for ttarr to be reminding the king
that Lord of the Jutes, you struck the race of Edgar on that expedition (tt
drapt, Jta drttinn, / Jtgeirs fr eiri);
61
for Hallvarr to be describing him
as the Freyr of the noise of weapons or the tree of the Midgard serpents
path (jalm-Freyr ... malma, br ... / ... holmfjturs leiar).
62
The precincts of
the royal palace are a remarkable location for Sigvatr and ttarr to be
celebrating Cnuts triumph over named West Saxon kings, the skyline of the
monastic complex an unlikely backdrop for Hallvarrs mythological kennings.
For those who have ears to hear, this is a radically different image of King
Cnut: in praise-poetry like this, context is an essential part of meaning.
Naturally, therefore, the question of audience arises: to whom are these
poems speaking in such a culturally-charged environment? Roberta Frank
suggests that Cnuts poets were directing their message to one identifiable
group at court - namely, of course, the kings Danish followers.
63
Localising
the poems to Winchester, the presence of such a group is indicated by the
archaeological and anthroponymical evidence cited earlier, and one may
justifiably employ here the contested term housecarls. From the work of
Nicholas Hooper it has become clear that the housecarls should not, unlike the
lismenn, be conceived of as some kind of bodyguard or standing army, but
rather as Cnuts aristocratic followers and courtiers,
64
and Hooper observes that
[i]f a prince was to maintain fitting dignity and keep around him a retinue he
would have to provide food and lodging, entertainment and, by this time, a
monetary stipend:
65
one may therefore suggest that the Kntsdrpur should be
ranked among the entertainments for Cnuts Danish followers at court. Names
can be put to some of these followers, as can be readily seen from Simon
Keynes prosopographical survey of Scandinavians who attest Cnuts

60
Sigvatr, Kntsdrpa 2.1-4 (Skjaldedigtning, ed. Finnur Jnsson, IB, 232). For the reality
behind this phrase see Simon Keynes, The thelings in Normandy, Anglo-Norman Studies 13
(1991), 173-205: 174.
61
ttarr, Kntsdrpa 3.5-6 (Skjaldedigtning, ed. Finnur Jnsson, IB, 273).
62
Hallvarr, Kntsdrpa 6.6, 4.1-2 (Skjaldedigtning, ed. Finnur Jnsson, IB, 294).
63
Frank, King Cnut in the verse of his skalds, 110.
64
Nicholas Hooper, The Housecarls in England in the Eleventh Century, Anglo-Norman
Studies 7 (1985), 161-76; Hooper, Military developments in the reign of Cnut; see also
Campbell, Some Agents and Agencies of the late Anglo-Saxon State, 203-4.
65
Hooper, The Housecarls in England, 170-1.
522 Matthew Townend
charters;
66
and one may also note the four benefactors entered into the New
Minster Liber Vitae who each receive the label Danus, apparently indicating the
perception of a distinctive group at the court in Winchester.
67
In Cnuts Winchester one should therefore predicate a thriving
Scandinavian culture at the higher levels of court society, and this includes
verbal culture: the Kntsdrpur clearly indicate that the Old Norse language
continued to be spoken at Cnuts court, and Old Norse literary traditions to be
highly prized, while the writing of Old Norse is demonstrated by the runic
inscription cited earlier; however, that none of the manuscript documents from
Cnuts reign is in Old Norse is not significant, as there is no evidence that Old
Norse was ever written in the Roman alphabet in Viking Age England, and one
must therefore imagine the co-existence of written English (and Latin) and
spoken Norse (and English).
68
M.K. Lawson suggests that the law-codes I and
II Cnut were perhaps read out by Wulfstan at a Christmas court at
Winchester;
69
in such a society, in which two vernaculars were being spoken,
and literary works in those two vernaculars being recited, one may reasonably
postulate a variety of different audiences, correlating, in some degree, with
different court-groupings. The question of the possible intelligibility of skaldic
verse to monolingual Anglo-Saxons is an old imponderable,
70
but even here
one may propose a scale of difficulty: Hallvarrs Kntsdrpa, for example, is
especially dense in terms of language and allusions,
71
but Sigvatrs verse is
much less intractable, and Russell Poole has even suggested with regard to
ttarrs Kntsdrpa that [t]he relative simplicity of the style may indicate a
special effort toward intelligibility in a mixed English-Scandinavian milieu.
72
If this is so, then the poems stance and subject would seem to presuppose that
any such English audience must have aligned their interests with the Danish
perspective of the conquerors.
For the chronology proposed earlier is significant here, in that most of the
Knt s dr pur are from the latter half of Cnuts reign: except for
Lismannaflokkr and Eirksdrpa, they indicate that skalds came seeking

66
Keynes, Cnuts earls, 54-66.
67
Liber Vitae: Register and Martyrology of New Minster and Hyde Abbey Winchester, ed.
Walter de Gray Birch, Hampshire Record Society (London, 1892), 55 (nos. xlvii-l) ; The Liber
Vitae of the New Minster, ed. Keynes, 40, 94.
68
See Matthew Townend, Viking Age England as a Bilingual Society, in Cultures in Contact:
Scandinavian Settlement in England in the Ninth and Tenth Centuries, ed. D.M. Hadley and J.D.
Richards, Studies in the Early Middle Ages (Turnhout, forthcoming).
69
Lawson, Archbishop Wulfstan and the homiletic element, 161.
70
See Matthew Townend, Pre-Cnut Praise-Poetry in Viking Age England, The Review of
English Studies (forthcoming).
71
See Frank, King Cnut in the verse of his skalds, 119-23, who writes of its decidedly ancien
rgime iconography (119).
72
Russell Poole, ttarr svarti, in Medieval Scandinavia: An Encyclopedia, ed. Phillip Pulsiano
(New York, 1993), 459-60: 459.
11
th
International Saga Conference 523
Cnuts court after Holy River and the Norway expedition, and could expect a
profitable reception when they arrived. In other words, these poems would seem
to indicate that on Cnuts part there was no jettisoning of Norse traditions -
whether suddenly or gradually - as his reign in England progressed: on the
contrary, Cnuts reputation in the Scandinavian world as a patron of Norse
culture appears to have been at its height in the late 1020s. The earliness (or
otherwise) of the Kntsdrpur is therefore not the issue here, as it would be if
one were primarily interested in the poems as historical sources: Alistair
Campbell, for instance, had no very high opinion of ttarrs Kntsdrpa as a
source since it probably dates from some ten years after the Anglo-Danish wars
it describes and may be dependent in some of its details on earlier skaldic
verse;
73
but if one is concerned, as here, with tracing the continuing literary
culture of Cnuts court, then it becomes extremely interesting to see what forms
the telling of those wars had assumed at Cnuts court a decade later, and what
stories about the gaining of the throne the conqueror was pleased to hear. Much
modern historiography on Cnuts reign stresses the care with which an Anglo-
Danish rapprochement was achieved: it is therefore salutary to note that
ttarrs Kntsdrpa is instead concerned with celebrating the Danish military
triumph over the English, even ten years after the accession.
Another strand in recent historiography on Cnut emphasises the degree to
which the king assumed an English persona, and the rapidity with which he did
so: this is especially apparent in his dealings with the church, in which his
conspicuous acts of pious patronage earned the famous praise from Fulbert of
Chartres that [Y]ou, whom we had heard to be a pagan prince, we now know to
be not only a Christian, but also a most generous donor to churches and Gods
servants.
74
So, for instance, Lawson notes that [i]n matters of religion he was
largely obliged to play an English game, with English men, and by English
rules,
75
and Susan Ridyard has suggested that in his dedication to the cult of St
Edith, Cnut appears as almost more West Saxon than the West Saxons.
76
T.A.
Heslop has sought to explain the increase in the number of sumptuous
illustrated manuscripts in eleventh-century England by attributing their
production to the patronage of Cnut and Emma.
77
In the light of such an

73
Campbell, Skaldic Verse and Anglo-Saxon History, 12-14.
74
The Letters and Poems of Fulbert of Chartres, ed. and trans. Frederick Behrends, Oxford
Medieval Texts (Oxford, 1976), 66-9 (te quem paganorum principem audieramus, non modo
Christianum, uerum etiam erga ecclesias atque Dei seruos benignissimum largitorem
agnoscimus). For Cnuts relations with the church see Lawson, Cnut, 117-60.
75
Lawson, Cnut, 130.
76
Susan J. Ridyard, The Royal Saints of Anglo-Saxon England: A Study of West Saxon and East
Anglian Cults, Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought, 4th series 9 (Cambridge, 1988),
195.
77
T.A. Heslop, The production of de luxe manuscripts and the patronage of King Cnut and
Queen Emma, Anglo- Saxon England 19 (1990), 151-95; however, for important reservations see
Gameson, The Role of Art in the Late Anglo- Saxon Church, 258-9.
524 Matthew Townend
ecclesiastical emphasis, the Kntsdrpur therefore constitute an invaluable re-
assertion of the continuing Norseness of Cnuts court, and of the continuing
importance to Cnut of his Scandinavian inheritance: as praise-poems they can
imply much about the ways in which [Cnut] wanted to be seen,
78
and this was
as the gold-giving warrior-king, proud of his Danish origins and by no means
metamorphosing into an honorary Englishman. This sense of the continuing
importance to Cnut of his Scandinavian inheritance is of course observable in
other ways: for example in the way in which Cnut does not choose to give his
children English names - which would have been an obvious gesture of
rapprochement - but rather names his three sons Sveinn, Harald and
Harthacnut, following in sequence the names of his father, grandfather and
(probably) great-grandfather.
79
But it is the Kntsdrpur that provide the fullest
and clearest evidence for this alternative image of a Scandinavian Cnut. It is not
that the image of the English Cnut is incorrect - clearly it is not - but simply
that such a portrait is partial, and privileges one perspective on Cnuts reign
over other possible views. It is therefore interesting to return again to the
chronology of the Kntsdrpur, and to note that the supreme images of both the
Scandinavian and English Cnuts co-exist exactly in time and space: the Norse
poems derive from Winchester in the late 1020s or early 1030s, and the
frontispiece to the New Minster Liber Vitae was produced in Winchester in
1031.
80
To conclude: in this paper I have not endeavoured to give a close reading or
stylistic analysis of the Kntsdrpur, not least on account of the excellence of
Roberta Franks 1994 undertaking to that effect;
81
and nor have I attempted to
probe them for historical information, as has been done for some of the poems
in Russell Pooles invaluable studies.
82
Rather, I have attempted to recover
something of the immediate physical context in which these poems were
originally delivered, and to sketch out some of the ways in which context and
meaning are inseparable in an emphatically social type of literature such as
praise-poetry. It is worth closing, therefore, with the observation that the
Kntsdrpur are remarkable, even unique, in the degree to which one can
specify the circumstances of production and reception. For these poems can be
dated to particular phases in the reign of the king, and some of them to a
particular year or two; they can be localised not just to a region or place, but
perhaps even (for the Winchester poems) to a particular, locatable building,

78
Lawson, Cnut, 75; see also 130, 221-2.
79
Lawson, Cnut, 114-15; Stafford, Queen Emma and Queen Edith, 86-7, 233. That Cnuts great-
grandfather Gorm was also called Harthacnut is stated by Adam of Bremen (Adam of Bremen,
Gesta Hammaburgensis Ecclesiae Pontificum: Hamburgische Kirchengeschichte, ed. Bernhard
Schmeidler, 3rd edn (Hanover, 1917), 56).
80
For the date of the Liber Vitae see The Liber Vitae of the New Minster, ed. Keynes, 37-8.
81
Frank, King Cnut in the verse of his skalds.
82
Poole, Skaldic Verse and Anglo-Saxon History; Poole, Viking Poems on War and Peace.
11
th
International Saga Conference 525
surrounded by other identifiable and well-recorded buildings; they can be
attributed to named poets, for some of whom we have biographical information
and by nearly all of whom we have other works; and their genesis can, of
course, be ascribed to a particular patron, whose court-followers can be
postulated as the wider audience for the poems oral delivery.
There is more or less no other vernacular poetry from Anglo-Saxon
England - and certainly no other corpus of poetry - that can be contextualised as
well as this; and this, as I have tried to suggest, is fortuitously for a type of
poetry that is deeply dependent on original context for generating its meaning,
and for which we must attend to context if we are to re-capture its effects. The
Kntsdrpur might thus arguably be ranked amongst the most important of
poetic remains from Anglo-Saxon England, and so I would conclude by
asserting that these Old Norse poems from Cnuts court are just as much a part
of Anglo-Saxon Englands literary history as, say, Latin works composed at the
time - though one may look in vain for them in the standard handbooks of
Anglo-Saxon literature.