 | | | |  | | Begins Tuesday 18 October 2005 , 3.00-3.30 p.m | | | Sue Cook and the team answer listeners' historical queries and celebrate the way in which we all 'make' history. | | | | Series 12 | Programme 6
22 November 2005 |
| | |  | | | | King Canute (994-1035)
Making History listener Peter Hall is more than a little fed up with regular references to Canute trying to turn back the waves to demonstrate his powers. He contacted the programme to say that the story is wrong and that the character of this much maligned English king should be reassessed.
Making History consulted Dr Victoria Thompson at Trinity and All Saints College in Leeds. She told us how the story of the waves might have come about. Canute had no contemporary biographer. Even the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which is voluble about the character of his predecessor Æthelred, reverts to brief notes on Canute's comings and goings and his administrative innovations, and gives little idea of his personality beyond a general impression of piety and ruthlessness.
The anecdote about the waves in the chronicles of Henry of Huntingdon is a rare glimpse of a human being, even if it is a literary invention rather than a true event. The anecdote illustrates conventional piety and humility. However, the version as it has entered popular mythology, with the vain and stubborn king deluded into believing he can master the waves, is a more powerful story which may explain why it has such wide currency. One possible origin of the story is in the praise poetry of Canute's court. As a Scandinavian king from a Viking background, coming from a dynasty only recently converted to Christianity, he patronised court poets who practised the ancient art of skaldic verse. Their songs in praise of Canute's heroics include lines such as:
"Cnut, you commanded the mail-clad ships ... the famous lord of swords like lightning, you sailed bold in battle over the sea"
It seems likely that such poems, with their imagery of a Viking king with mastery over the waves, might lie behind Henry of Huntingdon's story.
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Vanessa has presented science and current affairs programmes for BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5 and Discovery and has presented for BBC Radio 4 & Five Live and a regular contributor to the Daily Telegraph and the Mail on Sunday, Scotsman and Sunday Herald. 