This man (Erik) won the fortune of a throne by losing his kindred; it was luckier for him to have his relations dead than alive.  He forsook the example of all the rest, and hastened to tread in the steps of his grandfather; for he suddenly came out as a most zealous practitioner of roving.  And would that he had not shown himself rashly to inherit the spirit of Ragnar, by his abolition of Christian worship!  For he continually tortured all the most religious men, or stripped them of their property and banished them.  But it were idle for me to blame the man’s beginnings when I am to praise his end.  For that life is more laudable of which the foul beginning is checked by a glorious close, than that which begins commendably but declines into faults and infamies.  For Erik, upon the healthy admonitions of Ansgarius, laid aside the errors of his impious heart, and atoned for whatsoever he had done amiss in the insolence thereof; showing himself as strong in the observance of religion as he had been in slighting it.  Thus he not only took a draught of more wholesome teaching with obedient mind, but wiped off early stains by his purity at the end.  He had a son Kanute by the daughter of Gudorm, who was also the granddaughter of Harald; and him he left to survive his death.

While this child remained in infancy a guardian was required for the pupil and for the realm.  But inasmuch it seemed to most people either invidious or difficult to give the aid that this office needed, it was resolved that a man should be chosen by lot.  For the wisest of the Danes, fearing much to make a choice by their own will in so lofty a matter, allowed more voice to external chance than to their own opinions, and entrusted the issue of the selection rather to luck than to sound counsel.  The issue was that a certain Enni-gnup (Steep-brow), a man of the highest and most entire virtue, was forced to put his shoulder to this heavy burden; and when he entered on the administration which chalice had decreed, he oversaw, not only the early rearing of the king, but the affairs of the whole people.  For which reason some who are little versed in our history give this man a central place in its annals.  But when Kanute had passed through the period of boyhood, and had in time grown to be a man, he left those who had done him the service of bringing him up, and turned from an almost hopeless youth to the practice of unhoped-for virtue; being deplorable for this reason only, that he passed from life to death without the tokens of the Christian faith.

But soon the sovereignty passed to his son Frode.  This man’s fortune, increased by arms and warfare, rose to such a height of prosperity that he brought back to the ancient yoke the provinces which had once revolted from the Danes, and bound them in their old obedience.  He also came forward to be baptised with holy water in England, which had for some while past been versed in Christianity.  But he desired