Emma (c. 985–March 6, 1052
in Winchester, Hampshire), called Ælfgifu, was
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: initially as the second wife to Ethelred the Unready of England (1002-1016); and then to Canute the Great of Denmark (1017-1035). Two of her sons, one by each husband, and two step-sons, also by each
husband, were to be kings of England, as was her great-nephew, William the
Conqueror, Duke of Normandy.
Upon the Danish invasion of England in 1013, Emma's sons by Ethelred - Edward the
Confessor and Alfred Atheling - went to Normandy as exiles, where they were to remain. Canute, the King of England, after the deaths of Ethelred and
his son, and Emma's step-son, Edmund II Ironside, married her himself. He was to pledge
that Harthacanute, Emma's son by him, should be the heir to his Danish sovereignty, which meant, through this wedding, the
Normans were kept at arms length, contentedly quiet and quietly content.
Ethelred's marriage to Emma was an English strategy to avert the aggression of the dangerous Normandy, and the Danish strategy
was much the same. With a Normandy in feudal subordination to the kings of France, who kept it as their dukedom, England was the 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. Harthacanute, his name after the first head of Canute's royal house, was
certainly intended to rule by the Danish ruler of England, along with most of Scandinavia,, which may have made for a very
different history. It is, thought though, due not least to the extolling of her encomium, that
Canute was fond of Emma. In this, any fact of such an affectionate wedlock's capacity to keep the threat from over the channel at
bay was seen as a happy coincidence, and the Normans probably happier with it as such. Unfortunately, events did not go as well
as they might.
With Canute's death, Edward and Alfred were to return to England out of exile in 1036, under their half-brother Harthacanute's
protection, in an expedition to see their mother. It was taken as a move against Harold
Harefoot, Canute's son by Aelfgifu of Northampton, who now put himself
forward as Harold I with the support of many of the English noblity. In contempt of Harthacanute, at war with his enemies in
Scandinavia, the younger Alfred was captured, blinded, and shortly after he was dead from his wounds, and the older Edward
escaped to Normandy. Emma herself was soon to leave for Bruges and the court of the Count of Flanders. It was at this court that
the Encomium Emmae was written.
The death of Harold I in 1040 and the accession of the more conciliatory Harthacanute, 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.
Harthacanute 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 Harthacanute, 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 was in support of Magnus the Noble, not Edward, her son -
she is not thought to have had any love for her children from her first marriage.
Emma of Normandy might well have seen herself as one coming second to the first wife, in two marriages. In England, with
respect to Ethelred's first wife Aelfgifu, who possibly died in childbirth, or with a complication after labour[1], she, was known as Aelfgifu[1], a mere replacement. With her marriage to Canute, set in the shade of
his 'handfast' wife, Aelfgifu of Northampton, she, at the time was known as Aelfgifu of Normandy. Each of her marriages, then, in
some way leaves her as a second Aelfgifu, which she was clearly inclined to abandon, preferring her other name, Emma. Her
marriages, as a noblewoman, no matter if they were as a second wife, created the England and Normandy connection, which was to
find its culmination under her great-nephew William the Conqueror, and 1066.
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.
Bibliography
- Pauline Stafford. [Queen Emma and Queen Edith: Queenship and Women's Power in Eleventh-century England] 2001 Blackwell's
- Isabella Strachan. [Emma: The Twice-crowned Queen of England in the Viking Age] 2005 Peter Owen
- Harriet O'Brien. [Queen Emma and the Vikings] 2005 Bloomsbury U.S.A.
- Helen Hollick. 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, explaining why she was so indifferent to the children of her first marriage.
- Noah Gordon. [The Physician] 1986 Macmillan ISBN 067147748X . Novel set in the early 11th century.
References
- ^ a b Trow, M.J., Cnut: Emperor of the North, first edn., Sutton (2005), pg.
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