Ælfgifu of Northampton
| Ælfgifu | |
|---|---|
| Queen consort of England, Denmark and Norway Queen regent of Norway |
|
| Queen regent of Norway | |
| Reign | 1030–35 |
| Born | c. 990 |
| Died | After 1040 |
| Spouse | Cnut the Great |
| Issue |
Sweyn Knutsson, King of Norway Harold Harefoot, King of England |
| Father | Ælfhelm, Ealdorman of York |
Ælfgifu of Northampton (c. 990 – after 1036) was the first wife of King Cnut of England and Denmark, and mother of King Harold I of England (1035–40). She served as Queen regent of Norway from 1030 to 1035.
Ælfgifu was born into an important noble family based in the Midlands (Mercia). She was a daughter of Ælfhelm, ealdorman of southern Northumbria, and his wife Wulfrune. Ælfhelm was killed in 1006, probably at the command of King Æthelred the Unready, and Ælfgifu's brothers, Ufegeat and Wulfheah, were blinded. Wulfric Spot, a wealthy nobleman and patron of Burton Abbey, was the brother of Ælfhelm or Wulfrune. The family again came under suspicion during the invasion of England by Swein Forkbeard, King of Denmark, in 1013–14, and further members were charged with treachery and killed.
When Sweyn invaded, northern peoples, many of them of Scandinavian descent, immediately submitted to him. He then married his young son Cnut to Ælfgifu to seal their loyalty. Swein went on to conquer the whole of England and was accepted as King, but he died in February 1014 after a reign of only five weeks. Æthelred then sent an army which forced Cnut to flee back to Denmark, and in the opinion of historian Ian Howard, he left his wife and their baby son, Svein, the future King of Norway, behind with her family. They were anxious to make their peace with Æthelred, but unwilling to hand Ælfgifu and her son over to Æthelred to be murdered, so they sent the mother and child with King Swein's body to Denmark. There she became pregnant again and in 1015 or 1016 she gave birth to Harold Harefoot.
In the period immediately following, she may have been given authority over some region of Denmark, perhaps that of a Danish controlled area of the Baltic coastline.
Her two sons were to figure prominently in the empire which their father built in northern Europe, though not without opposition. After his conquest of England in 1016, Cnut married Emma of Normandy, the widow of King Æthelred. It was then regarded as acceptable to put aside one wife and take another, a practice which might be described as "serial monogamy". The status of Cnut's two 'marriages' and their social context in England and Scandinavia has been discussed recently by Timothy Bolton. Emma's sons, Edward and Ælfred by Æthelred and Harthacnut by Cnut, were also claimants to the throne of her husband. Exactly how the second marriage affected Ælfgifu's status as Cnut's first consort is unknown, but there is no evidence to suggest that she was repudiated.
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