Canute II of Denmark (The Danish North Sea)

Canute II of Denmark (also spelt Cnut, also known as Canute the Great of Cnut the Great) ruled over Denmark, Norway and East Anglia from 1018 to his death in 1035. His realms are best known as the first North Sea Empire.

After ascending to the thrones of both Denmark and East Anglia following the death of his brother, Canute sought to keep this power-base by uniting Danes and English under cultural bonds of wealth and custom, as well as through sheer brutality. After a decade of conflict with opponents in Scandinavia, Canute claimed the crown of Norway in Trondheim in 1028. The Swedish city Sigtuna was held by Canute (he had coins struck there that called him king, but there is no narrative record of his occupation).

Dominion of East Anglia lent the Danes an important link to the maritime zone between the islands of Great Britain and Ireland, where Canute, like his father before him, had a strong interest and wielded much influence among the Norse–Gaels. Canute's possession of East Anglia's dioceses and the continental Diocese of Denmark—with a claim laid upon it by the Holy Roman Empire's Archdiocese of Hamburg-Bremen—was a source of great prestige and leverage within the Catholic Church and among the magnates of Christendom (gaining notable concessions such as one on the price of the pallium of his bishops, though they still had to travel to obtain the pallium, as well as on the tolls his people had to pay on the way to Rome). After his 1026 victory against Norway and Sweden, and on his way back from Rome where he attended the coronation of the Holy Roman Emperor, Canute, in a letter written for the benefit of his subjects deemed himself "King of East Anglia and Denmark and the Norwegians and of some of the Swedes".