"1002 was a seminal year in the life of the king and his kingdom. The first significant event that took place was the marriage to Aethelred to Emma of Normandy.
In 1002 Emma was about seventeen years of age. She was the daughter of Richard I, Duke of Normandy, the place where the Vikings had taken up permanent residence under Duke Rollo not so many years before. Emma was herself the great-granddaughter of Rollo and the blood of her Viking ancestors still coursed through her veins.
The blood relationship was cemented still further by the fact that her mother was Gunnar, a woman of Danish descent. Gunnar was originally Richard’s concubine, though she eventually became his wife in a probable attempt to legitimize their children.
The attribution of concubinage to Emma’s mother gives an interesting insight into the mores of the age. It was not uncommon at the time for marriages to be undertaken in traditional (opponents would say pagan) fashion without Christian blessing; they may not then always have been regarded as legitimate from a Christian perspective. Revealing in the light of our subject, such relationships were called more danico- in the Danish way- though the practice was also common in earlier Anglo-Saxon times in England and indeed appeared to have remained so into the more recent Christian epoch in the country. [...]
Emma’s life was written in the book known as Encomium Emmae Reginae. This is an incredible survival from the times, giving us an insight into the role played by a formidable woman in what was very much a man’s world. [...] The very word ‘Encomium’, now a rather archaic one, is Latin and means a work written in praise of a person or thing. [...]
The marriage to Aethelred was a step up for Emma. Allowing for any perceived personal faults and the extent of the challenges facing him, he was still a king, a man who owed allegiances to no other, unlike the dukes of Normandy, who were vassals to the King of France. This presumably also helped compensate to some extent for the substantial age difference between the young bride and her husband, who already had a large number of children from previous relationships. Their existence made life potentially complicated in terms of succession planning. It seems that right from the off it was decided that any offspring from this match with Emma were to take precedence over those of previous relationships in matters of succession. It is likely that this formed a key part in negotiations leading up to the marriage.
[...] Other later chronicles commented on the match, not always favourably. With the precious gift of hindsight and writing from the safe distance of the middle of the twelfth century, the chronicler Henry of Huntingdon saw the marriage as a turning point in English History:
I mean that on one side the persecution by the Danes was raging, and on the other the connection with the Normans were growing, so that even if they were to escape the obvious lightning fire of the Danes, valour would not help them to escape the insidious danger from the Normans. This became apparent from subsequent events, since from this union of the English king with the daughter of the Norman duke, the Normans were justified according to the law of peoples, in both claiming and gaining possession of England.
[...] It gave him [Aethelred] the opportunity to cement an alliance with a powerful warlord from across the Channel who was potentially a crucial supporter of Viking raiders. The deal was duly struck and some of Aethelred’s senior advisers made the crossing to Normandy to escort Emma back to their country, which was to be home for most of the rest of her days.
She was crowned Queen of England soon after arriving, a coronation of a queen in those days being a rare event (though Elfrida, the king’s mother, had also had one). [...] Emma was given the Saxon name Aelfgifu (which means ‘noble gift’) on her arrival to England [...]. She was granted properties in Oxfordshire, Rutland, Suffolk and Devon as well as ownership of Exeter and Winchester.”
From: “King Cnut and the Viking Conquest of England”, by W.B. Bartlett.
