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Updated: May 10, 2025
The Cardinal Legate no sooner became aware of this gathering storm, than he sought to avert its outbreak; and repaired to King Sweno, with whom he remonstrated against the projected war, not only on religious, but prudential grounds; depicting to him the many serious obstacles by sea and land which must be surmounted before any advantage could be won; and reminding him, "that if the spider, by disembowelling herself, as least, caught the flies she gave chace to, yet the Danes could only expect to run the certain peril of their lives in their proposed campaign."
Edmund. We read, however, that after this the Danes, under King Sweno, over-running this part of the country, destroyed this monastery and burnt it to the ground, with the church and town.
During the stay of Nicholas Breakspere in Denmark, it happened that John, a younger son of Swercus, King of Sweden and Gothland, and a prince whose radically bad character had been totally ruined by a neglected education, carried off by violence, and dishonored the wife of his eldest brother Charles, together with her widowed sister, princesses of unsullied fame, and nearly related to Sweno III., at that time, king of Denmark.
This atrocity naturally excited a deep resentment against its author, at home and abroad: and roused Sweno to resolve on invading Sweden and Gothland with all his forces, in revenge of so insulting an outrage; a resolution in which he grew all the more fixed, by the recollection that Swercus himself had formerly injured Nicholas, a predecessor of Sweno on the throne, by perfidiously seducing, and marrying his intended bride an injury all the bitterer, as Nicholas never could retaliate it, by reason of domestic broils with his own people.
Not long afterwards, Sweno was murdered in his bed by two of his chief nobles, who had long cherished disloyal feelings towards their king; and, at last, entered into a treasonable correspondence with Swercus. The end of the latter proved eventually not less tragical. In the mean time, Nicholas Breakspere had quitted the country, and returned to Rome.
The events of the war which followed brought condign punishment to each party: for Prince John, on being directed by his father to levy troops for the defence of the state, was massacred in a popular riot as the odious cause of the public dangers; and Sweno, on his invasion of Sweden, having been inveigled by the wily tactics of Swercus who feigned to retire before him to push his expedition beyond its original destination as far as Finland, was there surprised by a rising of the natives, who destroyed the flower of his army; while he himself escaped with difficulty into Denmark, covered with shame, at so ignoble and fatal a defeat.
But Harold's sons went to their father's cousin; to Sweyn Swend Sweno Ulfsson, and called on him to come and reconquer England in the name of his uncle Canute the Great; and many an Englishman went with them.
The cardinal's interference in this instance in behalf of peace, seems not to have been crowned with the same success, as in Norway. King Sweno, a proud and obstinate man, lent a respectful, but callous ear to his arguments; and was equally impervious to the efforts of the ambassadors, whom Swercus also sent to prevent hostilities.
The authenticity of the Icelandic accounts of the discovery and settlement of Vinland were recognized in Denmark shortly after this period by King Svend Estrithson, or Sweno II, in a conversation which Adam of Bremen had with this monarch.
He flourished in the year of our redemption, 1020, under Canute the Dane. Hakluyt, II. 39. The Voyage of Swanus to Jerusalem in 1052 . Swanus or Sweno, one of the sons of Earl Godwin, being of a perverse disposition, and faithless to the king, often quarrelled with his father and his brother Harold; and, becoming a pirate, he disgraced the virtues of his ancestors, by his robberies on the seas.
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