The A to Z of the Vikings 10 doc

for a Scandinavian audience, emphasizes both his right to the English
throne and his godliness (see, for example, Hallvar
ðr háreksblesi’s
Knútsdrápa). In one of the few surviving images of Cnut, he and
Emma are famously pictured presenting a gold cross to the New Min-
ster in Winchester (Liber Vitae: New Minster Register, British Library,
MS Stowe 944 f6r).
Cnut did not become king of Denmark until 1018/19, following the
death of his older brother, Harald. While in Denmark at this time,
Cnut composed the first of two known letters to his English subjects,
in which he announced his intention to support the rights of the
Church and to uphold just laws in his kingdom. He also explained
that the purpose of his visit was to protect his English subjects from
some unspecified danger. He returned to Denmark just a few years
later, in 1022–1023, to deal with what was probably a challenge to his
rule there. Certainly, in 1026, he faced and defeated a Danish-
Swedish alliance in the Battle of Holy River. In 1027, Cnut attended
the coronation of the Emperor Conrad II in Rome, and on his return
journey, he sent a second letter to his English subjects, in which he
claimed to be rex totius Angliae et Denemarciae et Norreganorum et
parties Suanorum (“king of all England and Denmark, and the Nor-
wegians and some of the Swedes”). Cnut’s claim to be king of some
of the Swedes is difficult to explain: coins minted in Sigtuna, with
the legend CNUT REX SW, should be interpreted as copies of Eng-
lish coins rather than a genuine coinage recording Cnut’s rule over
the Svear (see Svealand)—for example, there are also dies from Sig-
tuna with the name of the English king, Æthelred II (ETHELRED
REX ANGLORUM). However, a number of rune-stones (see rune)
from central eastern Sweden do commemorate men who received
Cnut’s geld or payment in England, and the sort of overlordship Cnut
was claiming would therefore seem to be a personal rather than a ter-

ritorial one.
The letter of 1027 clearly demonstrates Cnut’s belief that he was
the rightful heir to the Norwegian throne, a claim presumably based
on his grandfather’s (Harald Blue-Tooth) overlordship, even though
he as yet could not claim the kingdom was his. In the following year,
however, Cnut won control of Norway, driving its king, Olaf Har-
aldsson, into exile. After Olaf Haraldsson’s failed attempt to reclaim
his throne at Stiklestad, Cnut appointed Ælfgifu and their son, Svein,
68 • CNUT I THE GREAT (
c
. 995?–1035)
as regents of Norway. Their rule was harsh and unpopular, and Cnut’s
rule of Norway probably came to an end before his death, when
Ælfgifu and Svein were expelled by Olaf Haraldsson’s son, Magnus
the Good.
Cnut died at Shaftesbury, Dorset, in England on 12 November
1035, triggering a battle for power between his sons Harthacnut and
Harold Harefoot in England and the disintegration of his North Sea
empire. He was buried in the Old Minster at Winchester.
CODEX REGIUS. Manuscript copied by an unknown writer c. 1270 in
Iceland. It was formerly kept in the Danish Royal Library, Copen-
hagen, but is now housed in the Árni Magnússon Institute, Reyk-
javik, Iceland. The fullest version of the Elder or Poetic Edda is
preserved in this manuscript, although some leaves are missing from
the cycle of Sigurd the Dragon-Slayer.
COGADH GAEDHEL RE GALLAIBH. See WAR OF THE IRISH
WITH THE FOREIGNERS.
CONCERNING THE CUSTOMS AND DEEDS OF THE FIRST
DUKES OF NORMANDY. See DUDO OF ST-QUENTIN.
CONSTANTINE VII PORPHYROGENITOS (905–959). Emperor

of Byzantium and author of the Administration of the Empire. Con-
stantine Porphyrogenitos (“born in the purple” = chamber of the Im-
perial Palace) was the son of Emperor Leo VI (d. 912) by Zoe Kar-
vounospína (“coal-eyes”), who became Leo’s wife in 906. Although
Constantine was crowned coemperor with his father, probably in 908,
he was unable to exert any real authority until 944. This was partly
due to a religious conflict between Patriarch Efthy´mios and Patriach
Nikólaos, the latter of whom refused to recognize Leo’s marriage to
Zoe and thus Constantine’s legitimacy. After this dispute was re-
solved in 920, through the offices of the Admiral of the Imperial
Fleet, Rhomanós Lekapênós, Constantine was politically marginal-
ized by Rhomanós, who installed members of his family in the Im-
perial Palace, married his daughter, Elénê, to Constantine, and had
himself crowned as emperor in December 920. Rhomanós was over-
thrown by two of his sons, Stephanós and Constantine Lekapênoí in
CONSTANTINE VII PORPHYROGENITOS (905–959) •69
944, but they in turn were deposed by Constantine, apparently at
Elénê’s prompting. Constantine Porphyrogenitos and Elénê had one
son, Rhomanós II. Rhomanós and his second wife, Theophanó, made
an unsuccessful attempt to poison Constantine, and it is possible that
Constantine’s death in 959 was the result of a second dose of poison
administered by his son and daughter-in-law.
As well as the Administration of the Empire, Constantine Porphy-
rogenitos wrote a number of other works relating to, among other
things, the provincial administration of the East Roman Empire (De
Thematibus), and the protocol and ceremony of the East Roman
Court (De Caerimoniis Aulae Byzantinae). He also wrote a biography
of his grandfather, Emperor Basil I (d. 886), and commissioned 53
books of extracts from Hellenic literature, organized according to
topics (two books survive, dealing with “embassies” and “virtues and

vices” respectively).
CONSTANTINOPLE. See BYZANTIUM.
COPPERGATE. See YORK.
CORK. Town and port in southwest Ireland, at the mouth of the River
Lee. Cork was the site of a monastery in the seventh century, and the
Annals of Ulster record Viking raids there in 822 and 839. In 848, a
Viking longphort was established, and we know the name of one of
its leaders—Gnímbeolu—who was killed in 867. There were sepa-
rate kings of Cork until 1174, but these kings acknowledged Irish
overlordship as early as the eleventh century.
CRONICA REGUM MANNIAE ET INSULARUM. See CHRONICLE
OF THE KINGS OF MAN AND THE ISLES.
CUERDALE HOARD. The largest Viking silver hoard known from
Scandinavian settlements in the West. It was discovered on 15 May
1840 in the south bank of the River Ribble at Cuerdale, near Preston
in Lancashire, England. Some of the hoard is now lost, but estimates
suggest that it originally consisted of approximately 7,500 coins and
1,000 pieces of bullion (including ingots, jewelry, and hacksilver)
and must have weighed around 44 kilograms. Of the coins, some
70 • CONSTANTINOPLE
5,000 are contemporary Viking coins from Northumbria, including
many from York, and East Anglia; about 1,000 are Anglo-Saxon
coins from the reigns of Alfred the Great and his son, Edward the
Elder; and the remaining 1,000 or so coins are predominantly conti-
nental, although there are about fifty Arabic coins, one Byzantine
(see Byzantium), and four from Hedeby. Over fifty different mints
are represented by the coins, ranging from Al-Andalus in the west to
Al Banjhir in the east and from York in the north to Madinat al-Salam
in the south. The date of the coins suggests that they were deposited
c. 905, leading to speculation that it may be linked to the expulsion

of the Dublin Norse in c. 902.
CUMBRIA, VIKINGS IN. Territory in northwestern England that had
been partly and precariously brought under Northumbrian (see
Northumbria) control before the Viking Age. This control was chal-
lenged in the Viking Age, not only by the Vikings, but also by the
English kings to the south, the British kingdom of Strathclyde to its
immediate north, and by the Scots, who absorbed Strathclyde at the
beginning of the 11th century.
The Scandinavian settlement of Cumbria is not mentioned in any
written sources. Indeed, contemporary written sources are almost
entirely lacking for the area before the conquest of Carlisle by
William Rufus in 1092. Although the raiding recorded in the Irish
Sea region and the conquest of York in 876 probably impinged upon
the northwest in some degree, for example, Halfdan is said to have
made frequent raids against the Picts and Strathclyde Britons in the
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle for 875, the fact that the community of
St. Cuthbert left Lindisfarne in 875 for a refuge to the west of the
Pennines suggests that northwest England was comparatively unaf-
fected by Viking raids at this date. However, the expulsion of the
Dublin Norse in 902 changed this. The Irish Three Fragmentary An-
nals records that Æthelflæd, Lady of the Mercians, granted land near
Chester to a Scandinavian called Ingimundr in the first decade of the
10th century, and although the settlers appear to have started in a
more or less peaceful manner, they attacked Chester shortly after-
ward. This episode is followed by indications of unrest in the north-
west, such as the reference to Alfred son of Brihtwulf who fled east
from piratas c. 915.
CUMBRIA, VIKINGS IN •71
The establishment of a joint Norse kingdom of York and Dublin
by Ragnald in the 920s enhanced the importance of the east–west

routes in northern England and southern Britain, focusing attention
on Cumbria. The English king, Athelstan, appears to have
reconquered southern Lancashire in 934, purchasing land in
Amounderness (north of the Ribble) from “the pagans” and granting
it to Wulfstan, archbishop of York, apparently in an attempt to con-
trol one route to York. However, the English kings and English earls
of Northumbria were not only concerned with Norse activities in the
northwest: first the Cumbrians of Strathclyde and then the Scots
started to expand south into the strategically important northwest,
which controlled the York–Dublin axis c. 900. In 937, Athelstan and
his brother, Edmund, fought and defeated a combined Norse, Scot-
tish, and British army at Brunanburh, but the difficulties of control
by a southern power were recognized by Edmund’s grant of the
kingdom of Strathclyde to the Scottish king, Malcolm, in 945.
The northwest remained in a state of unrest: Erik Blood-Ax was
killed at Stainmore, at the head of the Vale of Eden and gateway to
the east-west pass over the Pennines to York, in 954;
þ
ored Gunneres
sunu ravaged Westmoreland in the south of Cumbria in 966; in 972,
Kenneth II of Scotland ravaged Strathclyde to its southern bound-
ary, said to be the River Dee in Cheshire; and Æthelred II of Eng-
land harried Cumbria in 1000. However, the Gospatric Writ suggests
that Earl Siward of Northumbria regained some control of Cumbria
in the period 1041–1055. William the Conqueror’s northern expedi-
tion certainly left the Normans in control of land below the River
Ribble, for Inter Ripaem aet Mersham (“between the Ribble and
Mersey”) is appended to the Cheshire folios of Domesday Book.
However, the lands north of the Ribble are not included in the sur-
vey, and the centuries following the Norman Conquest saw a con-

tinual tug-of-war between England and Scotland over this territory.
Although the documentary evidence paints a picture of disruption
and raiding, place-name and sculptural evidence demonstrate that
there was a substantial Scandinavian settlement in Cumbria and
that there was sufficient wealth and stability in the region for people
to commission stone sculpture from the middle of the 10th century
onward. There are some 116 surviving pieces of Viking-Age sculp-
ture distributed across 38 sites centered on Cumbria south of a line
72 • CUMBRIA, VIKINGS IN
from Addingham to the River Ellen. Although the very act of com-
missioning stone sculpture was based upon English custom, there
seems to have been a greater enthusiasm for such sculpture among a
wider population than in the pre-Viking period. Some sculpture, such
as the Gosforth cross, bears Scandinavian art styles or motifs, while
ring-headed crosses and the hogback monuments testify to influence
from Ireland on the new patrons of stone sculpture. Similarly, the
forms of the Scandinavian place-names suggest that Danes, Norwe-
gians, and Norsemen from Ireland and Scotland were involved in the
settlement of Cumbria.
However, archaeological evidence for large-scale Scandinavian
settlement in northwest England is lacking. Four certain pagan buri-
als and a further five probable burials have been found in the region,
along with 12 Viking-type hoards, including the large hoard from
Cuerdale. A possible settlement site has been identified at Ribble-
head, just outside the southeast boundary of Cumbria, in North York-
shire. Bryant’s Gill, Kentmere, in south Cumbria, appears to fit into
the same class of settlement, but the archaeological evidence has not
yet been fully examined and the cultural significance of the site is un-
clear.
– D –

DANEGELD. Name generally given to the payments made in England
to the Viking armies during the reign of Æthelred II at the end of the
10th and the beginning of the 11th century. The Anglo-Saxon Chron-
icle records a series of such payments in the years 991, 994, 1002,
1007, 1008, and 1012, which ranged in value from 10,000 (991) to
48,000 pounds (1012) of silver. An extraordinary Danegeld was also
levied by Cnut I the Great in 1018 to pay off his campaign army:
72,000 pounds was paid by England, excluding London, while Lon-
don paid 10,500 pounds. Several thousand coins of Æthelred II have
been found in Scandinavia and many more must have been melted
down or spent.
However, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle calls these payments gafol
“tribute, tax”; the first occurrence of the term Danegeld is from the
post-Conquest period, when it is used to describe the annual land tax
DANEGELD •73
known as the heregeld that Æthelred introduced in order to pay for
the mercenary army of Thorkell the Tall, and which was revived by
Anglo-Norman kings. The modern usage of the term is thus rather
different from the original sense of Danegeld, and sometimes the
term is used even more generally to mean money or provisions given
to Viking armies in order for them to leave a town or region in peace,
a practice that seems to have been fairly common in western Europe.
DANELAW. The term Danelaw first occurs in two legal compilations
made by Archbishop Wulfstan of York during the reign of Æthelred
II. The so-called Laws of Edward and Guthrum, dated to between
1002 and 1008, refer to the compensation to be paid “on Deone lag”
if a slave was compelled to work on a church, while the law-code
known as VI Æthelred distinguishes between the legal penalties in
force in the districts under English law and those under Danish law.
The penalties in areas under Danish law were described simply as “in

accordance with their constitution.” However, the earliest evidence
for the use of the term Danelaw clearly indicates that it was a legal
province of the kingdom of England, in spite of the emphasis on
“Danishness” in the term itself. Indeed, Æthelred II had apparently
extended English customs to the Dena lage in his law-codes, and
while his so-called Wantage Code, intended for circulation in the
Five Boroughs, allowed for differences of procedure, it did not per-
mit different principles.
The first extant reference to the geographical extent of the
Danelaw was apparently recorded almost 40 years after the term first
occurs in Æthelred’s laws. Later Anglo-Norman writers, such as
Simeon of Durham, also attempted to define the boundaries of the
Danelaw. The Danelaw of Anglo-Norman England was an extensive
region, consisting of some 15 shires (as opposed to the 9 shires of
West-Saxon (see Wessex) law and the 8 of Mercian (see Mercia)
law): Yorkshire, Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire, Leicestershire, Lin-
colnshire, Northamptonshire, Huntingdonshire, Cambridgeshire,
Bedfordshire, Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, Hertfordshire, Middlesex, and
Buckinghamshire. This huge territory constituted approximately one-
third of the total area of the English kingdom at that time, and many
scholars are skeptical about the accuracy of these boundaries, espe-
cially given that evidence for Danish influence in this region varies
74 • DANELAW
dramatically. Geographical definition of the Danelaw thus runs into
problems from the very beginning, and these problems have been
compounded by linking the term Danelaw with other aspects of Scan-
dinavian influence in England. Often the Danelaw is simply and mis-
leadingly identified with those areas of northern and eastern England
that were settled by Scandinavians in the ninth century.
A further point of confusion is found in the treaty between Alfred

the Great and Guthrum made at Wedmore in 886. This is some-
times regarded as formally establishing the Danelaw, by defining
Danish and English spheres of control, along the following bound-
aries: “First as to the boundaries between us: up the Thames, and then
up the Lea, and along the Lea to its source, then in a straight line to
Bedford, then up the Ouse to Watling Street.” However, while the old
Roman road, Watling Street, is generally used by historians as a
convenient border for delimiting the extent of ninth-century Danish
settlement in England, and indeed, as the border between Danelaw
and the rest of England, the treaty itself does not actually specify that
the boundary ran along the whole length of Watling Street to Chester.
Moreover, the Treaty of Wedmore itself was not, as is often implied,
a treaty between the Danes and the English, it was simply one of a
number of treaties made between the English and the Viking armies.
In summary, it seems extremely likely that the boundaries of the
Danelaw were neither fixed nor clear-cut when referred to in
Æthelred’s law of 1008. Moreover, there is no straightforward rela-
tionship between the area described as the Danelaw by Anglo-Nor-
man writers and the fluctuating area under Scandinavian control in
the Viking Age. A final reminder is also needed about the status of
northwest England, which is sometimes included in the Danelaw, as
it lies north of Watling Street: Cheshire, Lancashire, and Cumbria,
settled by Norwegians from Ireland and Scotland in the 10th cen-
tury, were never included in the Danelaw, and formed a contested
border zone between England and Scotland well into the post-Con-
quest period.
DANEVIRKE. A complex series of ramparts that together form a for-
tification which runs for some 30 kilometers along the base of the
Jutland Peninsula, protecting Denmark’s southern border (which ran
along the River Eider, about 20 kilometers to the south). The earliest

DANEVIRKE •75
portions of the Danevirke were built around 737 and consisted of a
10-meter wide earth rampart, fronted by a ditch, that ran for 7 kilo-
meters from the western end of the Schleifjörd in a southwesterly di-
rection (constituting the so-called North Wall and part of the Main
Wall). There were two principle phases of fortification during the
Viking Age: the first under the rule of Godfred at the beginning
of the 9th century and the second under King Harald Blue-Tooth in
the middle of the 10th century. The Royal Frankish Annals record
that Godfred extended the fortification in 808, although as yet this
phase of work has not been identified archaeologically. The undated
section of rampart known as Kovirke, broken only by the Army
Road, might perhaps have been constructed by Godfred. A den-
drochronological date of 968 suggests that Harald Blue-Tooth in-
corporated the defensive ramparts (the Semicircular and Fore Walls)
around the town of Hedeby into the Danevirke, constructing a so-
called Connecting Wall, and in the west, Harald also built an exten-
sion to the Danevirke, consisting of a 13-meter wide rampart known
as the Crooked Wall. The fortification was subsequently maintained
and extended well into the early 12th century when the Danish king
Valdemar the Great (1157–1182) rebuilt some sections in brick. It
was also refortified and used by the Danes in the 1864 war with Prus-
sia and by the occupying German army in World War Two.
DE ADMINISTRANDO IMPERIO. See ADMINISTRATION OF
THE EMPIRE.
DE MORIBUS ETACTIS PRIMORUM NORMANNIAE DUCUM.
See DUDO OF ST-QUENTIN.
DENDROCHRONOLOGY. Method of dating wooden objects
based upon the growth rings of a tree. Trees have two growth rings
per year and the width of these rings reflects the weather during the

growing season—a narrow ring indicates poor weather and little
growth, while a wide ring reflects considerable growth during fa-
vorable climatic conditions. Counting these rings reveals the age
of the tree at the time it was felled, and the sequence of growth
rings forms a pattern like a bar code. Another older sample of
wood may have a sequence of growth rings that matches that of a
76 • DE ADMINISTRANDO IMPERIO
younger tree, thus enabling archaeologists to move back their dat-
ing further into the past. Unfortunately, wood perishes very easily
and is generally only preserved in either extremely arid or anaero-
bic archaeological environments. Within northern Europe and
Scandinavia, bogs provide ideal conditions for the preservation of
wood. Work on wood, such as oak, found in northern Europe has
resulted in a dendrochronology that stretches back more than 7,000
years. Some of the most important Viking-Age artifacts that have
been dated by dendrochronology include the Oseberg ship from
Norway and the Skuldelev ships found in Roskilde Fjord, Den-
mark.
DICUIL. See BOOK OF THE MEASUREMENT OF THE EARTH.
DÍSIR. Female deities, whose qualities are difficult to define upon the
extant written evidence. The Poetic Edda describes them both as
dead women (Atlamál) and guardians of the dead (Gu
ð
rúnarkvi
ð
a),
and they are mentioned in numerous prose sagas too, most fre-
quently appearing as ghost- or dream-like apparitions, but the word
also seems to have been used in a more general sense to mean
“woman.” Viga-Glum’s Saga and Egil’s Saga mention a late autumn

sacrifice, the dísablót, that took place in Norway, and Snorri
Sturluson associates this with the pagan rituals performed at Gamla
Uppsala in his Ynglinga Saga on the basis of the skaldic poem,
Ynglingatal. There are a number of Swedish and Norwegian place-
names that include the word dísir, which may provide some
support for the ritual worship of these deities.
DNEPR. See DNIEPER, RIVER.
DNIEPER, RIVER. Russian river linking the Rus settlement of Gnez-
dovo with the Black Sea. The Dnieper was the most important route
for Scandinavians traveling east to Byzantium and could be reached
either via Lake Ladoga (see Staraja Ladoga) and the rivers Lovat
and Volkhov in the north or via the Baltic Sea in the east. The most
important Scandinavian trading stations and settlements in Russia
lay along the northern route: Staraja Ladoga, Novgorod, Gorodis˘c˘e,
Gnezdovo, and Kiev. The journey south to Byzantium, over the
DNIEPER, RIVER •77