Sweyn I of Denmark

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Sweyn Forkbeard
King of Denmark, England and parts of Norway
Reign	Denmark: 986-February 3, 1014 Norway: 999- February 3, 1014 England: 1013-February 3, 1014
Born	????
	Denmark
Died	1014
	England
Buried	Roskilde Cathedral
Consort	Gunhild Sigrid the Haughty
Father	Harald Bluetooth
Mother	Gunhilde

Sweyn I, or Sweyn Forkbeard, (Danish: Svend Tveskæg, originally Tjugeskæg or Tyvskæg, Old Norse: Sveinn Tjúguskegg, Norwegian: Svein Tjugeskjegg), (??? – February 3, 1014), king of Denmark and England, a leading Viking warrior and the father of Canute the Great (Cnut I). He succeeded his father Harald I "Blåtand" (Bluetooth) as king of Denmark in late 986 or early 987 and controlled most of Norway in 1000. In 1013, shortly before his death, he conquered England, forming a Danish North Sea empire.

Sweyn Forkbeard's nickname, which was probably used during his lifetime, refers to a long, pitchfork-like moustache, a "tjúga" in Old Norse, not to a full beard.

Swyen Forkbeard is the founder of Swansea in Wales. Swansea is a corruption of Swyen's Ey, meaning "Swyen's Island".

[edit] Life and legacy

Sweyn's coin.

Sweyn had coins made with his likeness, being the first Danish king to do so. The inscription read "Zven, Rex ad Dener" which translates to "Sweyn, king of Danes".^[1] His father Harald accepted Christianity in the early or mid-960s. The 11th century historian Adam of Bremen reported that when the royal family converted, Sweyn was given the Christian name Otto in honour of the German emperor^[2] However, Sweyn is not recorded as having used this name officially. He did not use it on his coinage and when he was accepted by the Anglo-Saxon Witan he was referred to as king Sweyn. Many details about Sweyn’s life are contested. There is an ongoing dispute among scholars over the extent of trust historians may place in the historic sources from the era, such as the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Adam of Bremen's Gesta Hammaburgensis Ecclesiae Pontificum and the 13th century Icelandic author Snorri Sturluson’s Heimskringla^[3]. Some historians, including Lauritz Weibull, have argued that Sweyn’s wife, the Swedish dowager queen Sigrid the Haughty, is purely fictional, whereas others have accepted her existence on the evidence of the Norse sagas. In some of the old sources, such as the Jómsvíkinga saga, Sweyn appears as an illegitimate son of Harald, raised by the legendary Jomsviking and jarl of Jomsborg, Palnatoke.

Sweyn and the Jomsvikings at the funeral of Harald

Sweyn is also depicted as a rebel, leading a 987 uprising against his father, then chasing Harald out of the country, forcing him to flee to Wendland, Germany.^[4] Many negative accounts build on Adam of Bremen's writings; Adam is said to have watched Sweyn and Scandinavia in general with an "unsympathetic and intolerant eye".^[5] He accused Sweyn of being a rebellious pagan who persecuted Christians, expelled German bishops from Scania and Zealand, and betrayed his own father. According to Adam, Sweyn was therefore duly punished by his father's pious German friends by being sent into exile and then deposed in favor of king Eric the Victorious of Sweden, whom Adam wrote ruled Denmark until his death in 994 or 995. However, some modern scholars have found little support for Adam's claim that Sweyn was driven into exile in Scotland for such a long time as 14 years, pointing out that Sweyn built churches in both Lund and Roskilde, as well as led raids against England, during the time he is said to have been deposed and exiled.^[6] Some scholars have argued that the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is the work of Archbishop Wufstan II of York and thus created as a propaganda piece against the Danes, in favour of King Edmund Ironside.^[3]

The map shows the division of Norway after the Battle of Svolder according to Heimskringla. Eirik Hákonarson ruled the purple area as a fief from Sweyn. The yellow area was held by his half-brother, Sveinn Hákonarson, as a fief from the Swedish king Olof Skötkonung while the red area was under direct control of Sweyn Forkbeard.

Sweyn's grandfather Gorm and father Harold Bluetooth are considered to have laid the foundation for a centralized Danish monarchy.^[4] Even so, this foundation appears to have been insufficient in sustaining Sweyn's grip on power in Denmark when he faced a bid by king Eric the Victorious for hegemony over Scandinavia.^[3] As a result, Sweyn left to join in the raids against England from 991 to 995, whether deposed or not, fighting as one of a number of warband leaders seeking wealth and tribute. By 994, Swein had been hired as a mercenary by Aethelred II.^[3]

After the death of king Eric the Victorious in 995, Sweyn's authority in Denmark grew. The same year, he also started a feud with king Olaf Tryggvason of Norway. With the help of the Swedish king Olaf Skötkonung and Norwegian Eiríkr Hákonarson, Earl of Lade, he defeated Olaf in the Battle of Svolder in 1000.^[4]Following the death of king Olaf in the battle, Sweyn shared sovereignty with his allies, establishing Danish control over most of Norway by posing Eiríkr Hákonarson as his vassal. Most historical sources agree^{[citation needed]} that Sweyn used both Danish and Norwegian forces in a combined Viking assault on England.

[edit] Ruler of England

According to the chronicles of John of Wallingford, Sweyn was involved in raids against England in 1003-1005, 1006-1007, and 1009-1012, to revenge the St. Brice's Day massacre of England's Danish inhabitants in November 1002.^[7] Sweyn is thought ^{[citation needed]} to have had a personal interest in these raids due to his sister, Gunhilde, being amongst the victims. The massacre was seen as large-scale ethnic cleansing of the Danish in England by Ethelred the Unready. However, other scholars have argued that Sweyn was impoverished after having been forced to pay a hefty ransom and needed the income from more raids.^[6] He acquired massive sums of Danegeld, and in 1013 personally led the Scandinavian forces in a full-scale invasion.^[8]

The contemporary Peterborough Chronicle (also called the Laud Manuscript), one of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles, states that "before the month of August came king Sweyn with his fleet to Sandwich. He went very quickly about East Anglia into the Humber's mouth, and so upward along the Trent till he came to Gainsborough. Earl Uhtred and all Northumbria quickly bowed to him, as did all the people of Lindsey, then the people of the Five Boroughs. He was given hostages from each shire. When he understood that all the people had submitted to him, he bade that his force should be provisioned and horsed; he went south with the main part of the invasion force, while some of the invasion force, as well as the hostages, were with his son Canute. After he came over Watling Street, they went to Oxford, and the town-dwellers soon bowed to him, and gave hostages. From there they went to Winchester, and the people did the same, then eastward to London."^[9]

But the Londoners are said to have destroyed the bridges that spanned the river Thames ("London Bridge is falling down"), and Sweyn suffered heavy losses and had to withdraw. The chronicles tells that "king Sweyn went from there to Wallingford, over the Thames to Bath, and stayed there with his troops; Ealdorman Aethelmaer came, and the western Thegns with him. They all bowed to Sweyn and gave hostages."

London had withstood the assault of the Danish army, but the city was now alone, isolated within a country which had completely surrendered. Sweyn Forkbeard was accepted as King of England following the flight to Normandy of King Ethelred the Unready in late 1013. With the acceptance of the Witan, London had finally surrendered to him, and he was declared "king" on Christmas day.

Sweyn was based in Gainsborough, Lincolnshire, and began to organize his vast new kingdom, but he died there on February 3, 1014, having ruled England unopposed for only five weeks. His embalmed body was subsequently returned to Denmark, to be buried in the church he built in Roskilde.^[10] He was succeeded as King of Denmark by his elder son, Harald II, but the Danish fleet proclaimed his younger son Canute king. In England, the councillors had sent for Æthelred, who upon his return from exile in Normandy in the spring of 1014 managed to drive Canute out of England. However, Canute returned to become King of England in 1016, while also ruling Denmark, Norway, parts of Sweden, Pomerania, and Schleswig.

[edit] Religion

Adam of Bremen's writings regarding Sweyn and his father may have been compromised by Adam's desire to emphasize Sweyn's father, Harald, as a candidate for sainthood, and he claims that Sweyn, who was baptized along with his father, was a heathen. This may have been true, much of Scandinavia was pagan at the time, though there is no data, the German and French records support that Harald Bluetooth was baptized.

According to Adam, Sweyn was punished by God for supposedly leading the uprising which led to king Harald's death, and had to spend "fourteen years" abroad, perhaps a Biblical reference from an ecclesiastical writer. Adam purports that Sweyn was shunned by all those with whom he sought refuge, but was finally allowed to live for a while in Scotland. The Scottish king at the time was apparently known in Europe as a heathen and a murderer, and Adam's intention is obviously to show that Sweyn belonged with heathens and murderers and couldn't rule a Christian country. He only achieves success as a ruler once he accepts Christ as his saviour.

Whether King Sweyn was a heathen or not, he did enlist priests and bishops from England rather than from Hamburg^{[citation needed]}, and this must have given Adam of Bremen further cause to dislike him. It also may have been because there were ample converted priests of a Danish origin from the Danelaw in England, while Sweyn really had few connections to Germany or its priests.

Sweyn must have known that once the Archbishop of Hamburg-Bremen gained influence in Denmark, the German Emperor Otto II would not be far behind; his Slavic neighbours to the south-east (Balkans) had all but been under an annex of Germany once Otto's father Otto I had divided their lands into Bishoprics and put them under the "care" of the Holy Roman emperor. Sweyn may have envisaged the same happening to his own territory.

[edit] Notes and references

1. ^ Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark (2006). Coinage in Denmark. Official web site. Retrieved 12 Oct. 2006
2. ^ Adam of Bremen. Gesta II.3. Ed. Schmeidler, trans. Tschan, p. 56.
3. ^ ^{a b c d} Howard, Ian (2003). Swein Forkbeard’s Invasions and the Danish Conquest of England, 991– 1017. Woodbridge: Boydell, 2003. ISBN 0-851-15928-1.
4. ^ ^{a b c} "Sweyn I" (2006). In Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved October 12, 2006, from Encyclopædia Britannica Online.
5. ^ Sørensen, M. P. (2001). "Religions Old and New". The Oxford Illustrated History of the Vikings. Ed. P. H. Sawyer. Oxford University Press, 2001, p. 202.
6. ^ ^{a b} Lund, Niels (2001). "The Danish Empire and the End of the Viking Age". The Oxford Illustrated History of the Vikings. Ed. P. H. Sawyer. Oxford University Press, 2001, p. 167-181. ISBN 0-19285-434-8.
7. ^ According to Michael Lapidge in "Swein Forkbeard" (The Blackwell Encyclopaedia of Anglo-Saxon England), Sweyn was active in Wessex and East Anglia in 1003-1004, but a 1005 famine forced him to return home. Lapidge considers it uncertain whether Sweyn actually supported the raid of 1006-1007 and the raid led by Thorkell the Tall in 1009-1012, commenting that "whatever the case, he was quick to exploit the disruption caused by Thorkell's army." (p.467).
8. ^ Hunter Blair, Peter (2003). An Introduction to Anglo-Saxon England. Cambridge University Press, 2003. ISBN 0-52153-777-0.
9. ^ The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Everyman Press: London, 1912. Translation by James Ingram (London, 1823) and J.A. Giles (London, 1847). Online Medieval and Classical Library Release #17. Retrieved 12 Oct. 2006.
10. ^ Lapidge, Michael (2001). "Swein Forkbeard". In The Blackwell Encyclopaedia of Anglo-Saxon England. Ed. Michael Lapidge, John Blair, et. al. Blackwell Publishing: London, 2001, p.437. ISBN 0-631-15565-1.

[edit] See also

English monarchs

[edit] Further reading

• Lund, Niels (1997). Harald Blåtands Død (The Death of Harold Bluetooth). Roskilde Museum's publishing house, Denmark 1997.
• Ashley, Mike (1998). British Monarchs. Robinson Publishing, 1998.

v • d • e

Monarchs of England

Alfred • Edward the Elder • Ælfweard • Athelstan • Edmund I • Edred • Edwy • Edgar I • Edward the Martyr • Ethelred • Sweyn I*^† • Edmund II • Canute*^† • Harthacanute* • Harold I • Edward the Confessor • Harold II • Edgar II • William I • William II • Henry I • Stephen • Matilda • Henry II • Richard I • John • Henry III • Edward I • Edward II • Edward III • Richard II • Henry IV • Henry V • Henry VI • Edward IV • Edward V • Richard III • Henry VII • Henry VIII^‡ • Edward VI^‡ • Lady Jane Grey ^‡ • Mary I^‡ • Elizabeth I^‡ • James I^‡§ • Charles I^‡§ • Interregnum • Charles II^‡§ • James II^‡§ • William III^‡§¶ and Mary II^‡§ (as co-monarchs William & Mary) • William III^‡§¶ (own reign) • Anne^‡§

* also Monarch of Denmark • ^† also Monarch of Norway • ^‡ also Monarch of Ireland • ^§ also Monarch of Scotland • ^¶ also Stadtholder of Holland, Zeeland, Utrecht, Gelderland, Overijssel and Drenthe