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The German king Heinrich of Bavaria recognizes Benedict VIII as the rightful pope and is crowned at Rome February 14. He will reign until 1024 as the Holy Roman Emperor Heinrich II; Pope Benedict will reign just as long.
The Danish king Sweyn Forkbeard (Svend I Tveskaeg) dies suddenly at Gainsborough, Lincolnshire, February 3 at age 48 (approximate), having fallen off his horse after just 5 weeks after occupying the English throne; his Polish princess wife Gunhild Swietoslava has died the day before, and he is succeeded after a reign of about 27 years by their 20-year-old son Knut Sveinsson (Canute), who flees to Denmark as Ethelred (Aethelred) II returns from Normandy.
The Battle of Contarf April 23 at a small fishing village outside Dublin begins the end of Viking expansion in Ireland (see 1013), but one of the retreating Dublin Viking leaders murders the 74-year-old Irish king Brian Boru after the bloody Good Friday encounter (Brian has remained at the rear, praying for victory; his murderer, Brodir of Man, will be tied to a tree by his own intestines and thereby executed). Some of Brian's sons fall in battle, his younger brother Malachy resumes his position as high king, but although they have crushed the Vikings' military power the strength of the Dal Cais remains only in Munster.
The Byzantine armies of Basil II overrun Bulgaria and win the Battle of Belasitsa July 29, taking some 15,000 prisoners; they are blinded on Basil's orders and led back in groups of 100 each by one-eyed men to the Bulgarian czar Samuel, who faints from shock and dies at Prilep in Macedonia October 6 after a 34-year reign in which he has conquered independent Serbia and extended his sway into northern Bulgaria, Albania, and northern Greece, ruling from Ochrida (later Ohrid) in Macedonia. Basil confiscates Bulgaria's treasures and retains Constantinople's monopoly in the silk trade (see 553). Samuel is succeeded by his son Gavril, who will be murdered next year (see 1018).
England's king Ethelred and the Danish king Olaf burn down the wooden bridge across the Thames at London to divide Danish invaders. A London Bridge has been in place since Roman times, earlier London Bridges have been knocked down or fallen down, and new ones will be built (see 1091).
Fiction: The Tale of Genji (Genji Monogatari) by the Japanese baroness Shikibu Murasaki is probably the world's first full novel and will be read for centuries to come. Widowed at age 21 by the death of her husband, Nobutaka Fujiwara, the baroness (whose real name will remain a mystery) became a lady-in-waiting to the empress Akiko and probably wrote her long novel about life among the nobility to be read as entertainment for the empress, but Lady Murasaki dies at her native Kyoto at age 36 (year and age approximate), leaving what will survive as a classic in world literature.
A great sea-flood inundates much of England September 28 (St. Michael's Eve), drowning thousands as it engulfs settlements farther inland than any flood has come heretofore.
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