Knútr inn ríki (Canute the Great)

Canute the Great is the most powerful king of the northern world in his age — ruler of Denmark and of England, and the great external force bearing down on Norway in the saga of St Olaf. Where the Norwegian kings fight with sword and ship, Canute reaches into Norway with the one weapon they cannot match: silver. His agents move among Olaf's chieftains with heaps of money and great promises, buying their loyalty away from their own king until the ground goes soft beneath Olaf and he is driven into exile. Canute is the saga's image of a new kind of power — empire bought as much as won, the rich king who corrodes a poorer one's support from within rather than meeting him in open war. He sets his young son Svein, with the hated Alfifa, to rule the Norway he has bought — and the cruelty of that rule is what turns the country back toward St Olaf's line. The great gold-handed overlord whose money did what armies could not.