Knútr inn helgi (Canute the Holy)

Canute the Holy is the king of Denmark and Olaf Kyrre's friend and brother-in-law — and the man whose proposed war the peace-king gently declines. He presses Olaf to join a great joint expedition west to England, to take the revenge the two kingdoms feel they are owed — the very kind of enterprise Olaf's father Harald Hardrada had died attempting at Stamford Bridge. Olaf gives Canute ships and men but will not lead the venture himself, choosing his long peace over the glory and danger of the English war. Canute (later venerated as a saint and martyr in Denmark) is the saga's image of the ally pulling toward war — the brother-king whose grand plan for England the quiet Olaf has the harder courage to refuse, the foil against whom the peace-king's deliberate, unglamorous choice not to fight is measured. The friend whose war Olaf would help pay for but would not go to.