In the Track of the Danish Invaders page 2

It lasted for nineteen years. For the latter part of this period Cnut was king of Norway, and he became king of Denmark in succession to his brother Harold in 1018. In addition to these three great kingdoms he possessed a vague suzerainty over the Slavs who dwelt along the southern shore of the Baltic. No other king of England ever ruled so wide a Continental territory. It is not surprising that in course of time popular stories gathered round the name of Cnut, such as the tale of his rebuke to his courtiers as he sat by the sea at Bosham. In England he proved himself a ruler of unexpected wisdom.

To his English subjects he gave peace after nearly forty years of misery, and to the men of the next generation his reign seemed a time of good law. Few figures in English history are stranger than this king, by descent half Dane, half Slav, but capable of ruling the conquered English with moderation and anxious to introduce something of their ancient civilization among his own people beyond the sea. He died while still in the prime of life in 1035 a Shaftesbury. Neither of the two sons who followed him in his English kingdom possessed his strength or his understanding. In 1042 the Old English dynasty was restored in the person of Edward the Confessor, and no Danish king ever reigned again in England, though it was long before the victories of Cnut were forgotten in the Scandinavian world.

It is never easy to compare one race with another. To the English of the ninth and tenth centuries the Danes were pirates, despoilers of churches and wasters of the land. Contemporary opinion is always valuable, and here, as always, it reflects part of the truth. The Danes overthrew the brief Christian civilization of northern and eastern England. Letters and learning perished utterly for the time in the countries they visited.

When William the Conqueror landed there was not a single monastery of ancient foundation in all England north of Welland. But the English view does not represent the whole truth. The independent peasantry of the Danelaw formed a new element in English society. They proved, as men of their class in the south had no chance of proving, that self-government was possible to communities of free men, and the influence of their example was permanent. From a wider point of view we may recognize in the Danish invaders of England qualities which the English themselves may once have possessed, but possessed no longer in the ninth century.