Daily Medieval

It may well have been news of the wholesale slaughter of Danes  in 1002 that was ordered by King Æthelred that motivated Sweyn Forkbeard t...

One site of the  St. Brice's Day Massacre  in 1002 seems to have been Oxford. Æthelred called it in a 1004 charter "a most just ext...

Clashes with Danes in England resulted in establishing the Danelaw, originally just the set of Danish laws agreed upon with Alfred the Great...

It must have been a shock when Thorkell the Tall , a leader and warrior of the early 12th-century Danish invasion of England, changed his st...

The Danish raid on Canterbury in 1011 included a leader named Thorkell the Tall. He was an important enough man that his name was recorded o...

Eadric, the son of Ethelric, started as a relative unknown. His father was at the court of Æthelred the Unready , but was not distinguished....

Edmund, son of Æthelred the Unready  and his first wife Ælfgifu of York, was likely born between 990 and 993, one of several siblings. He wa...

Imagine being a toddler, being raised by your mother in a convent, and then discovering that you are a royal princess. I cannot imagine how ...

Ælfthryth was the first wife of a king of England ( Edgar the Peaceable ) to be crowned queen herself. She was the third woman (that we know...

Richard II, Duke of Normandy, was the eldest surviving son of Richard I and Gunnor . We don't know his birth date, but when his father d...

In 1037, Harold Harefoot was declared king in England. The next year he expelled Emma of Normandy , mother of his half-brother Harthacnut wh...

Æthelred the Unready had several children by two wives. His seventh son (and first by his second wife, Emma of Normandy ), was named Edward...

Olaf Haraldsson was the son of a petty king of Vestfold (a district in eastern Norway), Harald Grenske, and Åsta Gudbrandsdatter, who we le...

Svein Forkbeard was King of Denmark and King of England, but when he died in 1014, his son Cnut (c.990 - 1035) was denied succeeding him in...

The Danish Prince Cnut (also spelled Canute) put together what was called the North Sea Empire: England, Denmark, and Norway. This was a rem...

So...Sandwich. Most people just think about the food item that shares its name, but it has had more history than that, and not just as a Cin...

Statue of Olaf in Trondheim King Olaf Tryggvason is the subject of far more stories than we have facts to support them. (He was implica...

Ælfgifu on the Bayeaux Tapestry Ælfgifu of Northampton was once mentioned here as the wife of King Cnut. When King Svein Forkbeard of ...

From a 14th century manuscript Since Æthelred keeps getting mentioned here (most notably the past two days, due to the contested inherit...

Edward's murder at Corfe Castle The death of the 16-year-old Edward the Martyr in 978 was not one of England's finest moments. T...