By Gerard McCulloch

King Canute was a vain, medieval braggart who thought he was all-powerful and that stopping the onrush of the ocean waves would affirm his omnipotence. Right? Wrong.

There was a king who was called Canute and he did live in the 10th/11th century AD. However, omnipotent? Vainglorious? Nautically challenged? Afraid not.

Cnut the Great was born around 995, the son of King Sweyn Forkbeard of Denmark, his mother most probably a Polish princess. Norse poetry portrays him as a formidable Viking warrior – "exceptionally tall and strong, and the handsomest of men, all except for his nose, that was thin, high set, and rather hooked. He had a fair complexion none the less, and a fine, thick head of hair".

The first Viking to become a Christian king, Canute would become the ruler of an empire which, at its zenith, included England, Norway, Denmark, and part of Sweden. He died relatively early at the age of 40.

The legendary story of him being so vain that he allowed himself to be convinced by flattering courtiers that he could hold back the tide is one of the chief events of the reign for which he appears to be remembered. But the story is just that ... legend, and now generally accepted as such by most historians.

Far from attempting to prove his power over everything in the universe, if anything, good King Canute was proving the very opposite. He was actually demonstrating to his sycophantic hangers-on that, as he saw it, only the Almighty in Heaven was possessed of such powers as could command the very elements and that mere mankind should heed Him in all His ways.

Of course, history is not a science. Its legitimacy lies, perhaps, not in its logical verifiability but in the psychological energy of its interpreted messages, coursing down the eons, of times long ago.

“Never let the truth get in the way of a good story,” might be Mark Twain’s modern analogy. And King Canute’s day at the seaside is a "good story".

What is probably nearer fact than legend, just the same, is that power or position often gives those who possess it the illusory idea that they are able to control events. Is that, perhaps, the true reason why "the story" of King Canute retains its relevance today?