The atmosphere of a small cathedral city such as Trollope describes is so peculiarly English that no one would expect to find it reproduced in a foreign land. The association of nearly all Continental cathedrals with houses and market-place makes the impression produced wholly different from that of the grey towers and long roofs that appear over the trees of an English Close.
But at least in the fact that the cathedral is almost the only object of great interest, the centre of the whole district, the ancient Danish capital resembles a small English city. The atmosphere of farming and of pleasant country life, the general sense of repose, the way in which the cathedral rises among gardens and flowers a short distance away from the market-place, all do something to recall that most typical cathedral city, the ancient capital of Sussex—while the beautiful fretted fjord, bordered by low, sloping meadows, and the port almost destitute of shipping save for the fishing boats, bear very considerable resemblance to Chichester Harbour and Dell Quay. Knut the Rich is associated with that English district too, his daughter is buried in Bosham Church. He must have been frequently reminded while there of the peaceful country round his Danish capital.
The story of Roskilde takes us pretty near the dawn of strictly Danish history, when the country was closely linked in politics with the British Isles.
At the present time, however, it is not so picturesque a city as Copenhagen; there are but few old houses and only a single mediæval church, that of St. Mary, has survived, in addition to the great Cathedral of St. Lucius. Even the Raadhus, or Town Hall, in the very ample market place, was rebuilt not long ago.
The founder of the Danish monarchy was Gorm the Old (p. [12]); he first united all the land. About 935 he was succeeded by Harald of the Blue Tooth (Blaatand). Him the Holy Roman Emperor was to some extent able to control and insisted on his becoming a Christian. Traditionally at any rate he was the founder of Roskilde Cathedral, erecting a church of staves where before no church had been. Men say, the Heimskringla informs us, that Keisar Otto II. was the gossip of his son, Svein Twibeard. So lightly, however, did Twibeard regard the solemn ceremony of his baptism that, heading the pagan party, he flung his father from the throne and began to reign himself about the year 985. More than once he changed his creed, but it seems that he happened to be trowing in the faith of the White Christ at the time of his unlamented death. He it was who fought against Olaf Tryggvison in the famous Long Worm at Svoldr, but he left when the fighting was of the sharpest and much folk fell. Nevertheless his Norwegian ally, Earl Eric, who had a beaked ship wondrous great, captured the Long Worm itself, when Olaf Tryggvison leapt into the deep sea and was never heard of more.
While at war with Ethelred the Redeless in "England it betid there that King Svein, the son of Harald, died suddenly anight in his bed; and it is the say of Englishmen that Edmund the Holy did slay him after the manner in which the holy Mercury slew Julian the Apostate."[50] He is buried according to tradition under the Castle Hills at Gainsborough on the Trent.
He had won a firm position on English soil, and notwithstanding the victory of Ethelred the Redeless and St. Olaf at London Bridge, his son, Knut the Rich, the Mighty, the Great—for so he is variously called—eventually established his power both in England and Denmark.
Many a man has been improved by adversity, many spoiled by great success. But, as Dr. Hodgkin points out,[51] two great characters in history, Cæsar Augustus and Knut the Rich, vastly improved their behaviour after realising their very highest flights of ambition. Each was in a sense the founder of an empire, one of them the mightiest and in influence the most enduring dominion that the earth has ever known, the other was of the flimsiest and most ephemeral. Indeed it began to crumble before the founder died. English communications were in those early centuries mainly with the Scandinavian lands, by whose people many parts of the British Isles had been settled, and that Knut's dream of a great northern empire was never realised we have some cause for regret. Far more promising schemes, however, would have been destroyed by the two savages by whom he was succeeded. By Northmen speaking French, under the great William, descendant of Rolf Wend-afoot, whom no horse could bear, English foreign relations were suddenly changed in 1066. Hitherto it had seemed likely England might form the focus of a great dominion of the North, henceforth she was closely bound to the central lands of Europe.
Had the empire of Knut the Rich been maintained its capital would probably have been Roskilde from the convenience of its position, or if the wealth and importance of England had made it desirable that the chief city should be there, it would most likely have been drawn to some place much nearer to Denmark than Winchester.