Emma of Normandy

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Emma (c. 985 – March 6, 1052 in Winchester, Hampshire), was a daughter of Richard the Fearless, Duke of Normandy, by his second wife Gunnora. She was Queen consort of the Kingdom of England twice, by successive marriages: first as the second wife to Æthelred the Unready of England (1002–1016); and then as a second wife to Cnut the Great of Denmark (1017–1035). Two of her sons, one by each husband, and two stepsons, also by each husband, became kings of England, as did her great-nephew, William the Conqueror, Duke of Normandy.

Life

Reign of Æthelred

Upon the Danish invasion of England in 1013, Emma's sons and daughter by Æthelred--Edward the Confessor, Goda and Alfred Atheling--went to Normandy as exiles, where they were to remain. Cnut, King of England, after the deaths of Ethelred and his son, (Emma's stepson), Edmund II Ironside, married her himself. He was to pledge that Harthacnut, Emma's son by him, would be the heir to his Danish sovereignty, which meant that, through this marriage, the Normans were content and deterred from intervening.

Æthelred's marriage to Emma was an English strategy to avert the aggression of dangerous Normandy, and the Danish strategy was much the same. With Normandy in feudal subordination to the kings of France, who kept it as their dukedom, England was the Norman dukes' main target, after baronic feuds and rampaging pillages through Brittany had run their course. English kings could not afford to underestimate the Norman threat.

Reign of Cnut

Harthacnut was intended to rule England, along with most of Scandinavia, which, if he had succeeded, could have made a very different history. It is thought though, due not least to the extolling of her in the Encomium Emmae reginae, that in addition to political machinations, Cnut was fond of Emma. In this, an affectionate marriage and the ability to keep the threat from over the channel at bay, was seen as a happy coincidence. Unfortunately, events did not go as well as they might have done.

Cnut and Emma of Normandy, from the Liber Vitae of the New Minster, Winchester (1031).

Reigns of Harold I, Harthacnut and Edward the Confessor

After Cnut's death, Edward and Alfred returned to England from their exile in 1036, to see their mother, and under their half-brother, Harthacnut's, protection. This was seen as a move against Harold Harefoot, Cnut's son by Ælfgifu of Northampton, who put himself forward as Harold I with the support of many of the English nobility. In contempt of Harthacnut, and at war with his enemies in Scandinavia, Alfred was captured, blinded, and shortly after, died from his wounds. Edward escaped to Normandy and Emma herself soon left for Bruges and the court of the Count of Flanders. It was at this court that the Encomium Emmae was written.

Twice the Queen of the English kingdom, Emma of Normandy sits here in receipt of the Encomium Emmae, with her sons Harthacnut and Edward the Confessor in the frame.

The death of Harold I in 1040 and the accession of the more conciliatory Harthacnut, who had lost his Norwegian and Swedish lands, although he had made his Danish realm secure, meant Edward was officially made welcome in England the next year. Harthacnut told the Norman court that Edward should be made king if he himself had no sons. Edward was subsequently King of England on the death of Harthacnut, who, like Harold I, met his end in the throes of a fit. Emma was also to return to England, yet was cast aside, as she supported Magnus the Noble, not Edward, her son—she is not thought to have had any love for her children from her first marriage.

Psychological speculation

Emma of Normandy might well have seen herself as coming second to the first wife, in both of her marriages. In England, with respect to Æthelred's first wife Ælfgifu, who possibly died in childbirth or from complications during labour^[1], she was known as Ælfgifu^[1], a mere replacement. With her marriage to Cnut, set in the shade of his first wife, Ælfgifu of Northampton, she, at the time was known as Ælfgifu of Normandy. Each of her marriages, then, in some way left her as a second Ælfgifu, which she was clearly inclined to abandon, preferring Emma. Despite her being a second wife, her noble marriages created a strong connection between England and Normandy, which was to find its culmination under her great-nephew William the Conqueror in 1066.

Goda

Goda is the hugely ignored daughter of Emma. She fled with her mother and brothers after her father was killed when the Vikings invaded. Goda is no longer mentioned in the story after that but it is thought that she lived peacefully thereafter.

Emma's progeny

Emma's issue with Æthelred the Unready were:

• Goda
• Edward the Confessor
• Alfred Ætheling

Her issue with Cnut the Great were

• Harthacnut
• Gunhilda of Denmark

Family tree

+Said to have been a great-granddaughter of Canute's grandfather Harald Bluetooth, but this was probably a fiction intended to give her a royal bloodline.

References

Bibliography

History

See also Encomium Emmae (for the Encomium Emmae Reginae or Gesta Cnutonis Regis in honour of Queen Emma)

• Monk of St Omer (1949) Encomium Emmae Reginae; ed. Alistair Campbell. (Camden 3rd series; no. 72.) London: Royal Historical Society (Reissued by Cambridge U. P. 1998 with suppl. introd. by Simon Keynes ISBN 0521626552)
• O'Brien, Harriet (2005) Queen Emma and the Vikings. Bloomsbury U.S.A.
• Stafford, Pauline (2001) Queen Emma and Queen Edith: queenship and women's power in eleventh-century England. Oxford: Blackwell.
• Strachan, Isabella (2005) Emma: the twice-crowned Queen of England in the Viking Age. London: Peter Owen

Fiction

• Gordon, Noah (1986) The Physician. Basingstoke: Macmillan ISBN 067147748X (Novel set in the early 11th century.)
• Hollick, Helen (2004) The Hollow Crown. (August 2004) William Heinemann, Random House. ISBN 0-434-00491-X; Arrow paperback ISBN 0-09-927234-2. This is a historical novel about Queen Emma of Normandy, intended to explain why she was so indifferent to the children of her first marriage.