Customer Reviews

Cnut: The Danes in England in the Early Eleventh Century (The Medieval World)

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Lawson's coverage of the reign of Cnut and of the Danish conquest of England in the 11th century, is a thorough examination of a subject rarely covered in most histories of the island. About 50 years before the famous Norman Conquest of 1066, the Danish conquest was accomplished on the battle field by Cnut's father Svegn and cemented in Cnut's law codes. The England they conquered was one tired of wars and eager for a chance at peace. Lawson's study examines the ways in which Cnut engineered an aura of legitimacy to his reign, by using personal loyalty, legal codes, close relations with the church and, finally, by marrying the widowed queen of the Anglo-Saxon king, Aethelred the Unready. This is a very carefully researched work, shedding light on a compelling period in English history.

This book is not for the historically uninitiated or for those who like their history on the light side. However, for those who enjoy an in-depth study of primary sources, this work fills an important gap in scholarship.

I found this book frustrating to read since Lawson constantly refers to the source material assuming that every reader is a professional historian. The main things I learned from this book was what we do not know about Cnut and his times. The source material is scanty but overwelming the reader with ambiguities does not help. I was not very familiar with late Anglo-Saxon England but the book should have been more accessable for an important figure in English and Scandinavian history.

This book is good. Unfortunately, it is the exact same book written by M.K. Lawson under a different title. If I had known that, I wouldn't have spent another $20 on a book I already have. M.K. Lawson has the SAME book on Cnut out by two different titles.

Anyway, it is a good, thorough, scholarly work.

Of all the early English kings, data on Cnut may be the scarcest of all. Large sections of his reign have almost no documentation. Lawson, a careful and scholarly writer, is handicapped from the beginning by this fact. However, the book suffers in the way it is written. After an introductory chapter leading up to Cnut, Lawson has a 27 page chapter called "The Sources." In there he does a thorough job of explaining the sources available and their limitations. The problem is that the rest of the book could also be called "the sources." The book is filled throughout with phrases like "although much is uncertain," "one hesitates," "may have," "questionable," "if....is correct, then..." It is a book written in the subjunctive. Of course this is historically precise but the reader already knows the sources and their limitations. The result of all the hesitations and hypotheticals is constantly to stop any flow the narrative has. Just as the reader begins to feel some sense of who Cnut was, we are stopped in our tracks by a claim that the data is questionable. This inserts the author into the flow of the narrative far too much and makes the book as much about the sources as Cnut.

One could ask what other alternative Lawson had in this case. After all, the data is sparse. But other books of kings at that time do not do this. Barlow's Edward the Confessor or Williams' Aethelred manage to keep the flow of the narrative strong despite the limitations of data. Part of it is to trust the reader to know the limitations, especially when a separate chapter points that out. The reader is aware of the tentative nature of the historical claims without constantly being reminded of it. Second is the phraseology and timing of the conditionals. For example, the section on Cnut's foreign relations in his later years, of which Lawson says we know more, STARTS with "Obscure as they often are,..." The result of all the hypotheticals is a dull read. Perhaps no other type of biography of Cnut is possible. But, while this is unquestionably a scholarly biography as well as one of the very few available, it does not engage the reader.

This book does a really good job of covering King Cnut's reign in detail. I didn't like the way it ended, though. We are told what a skillful king Cnut was, both politically and militarily, and then we are told that he has been all but forgotten. Kind of ruined the mood!