Gunhilda of Denmark

Gunhilda of Denmark ( 1020 – 18 July 1038), was Queen consort of Germany by her marriage with King Henry III from 1036 until her death. Biography Gunhilda was a daughter of King Cnut the Great (985/95 – 1035), ruler over the Anglo-Scandinavian North Sea Empire, and his second wife Emma of Normandy (c. 985 – 1052). She was thus a member of the House of Knýtlinga and a sister of King Harthacnut, a half-sister of King Svein Knutsson of Norway and King Harold Harefoot of England, and Alfred Aetheling , Edward the Confessor and Godgifu (daughter of Æthelred the Unready). About 1025, Gunhilda came to Germany as a child. Her engagement with Henry III, the son and heir of Emperor Conrad II and his consort Gisela of Swabia, was part of a pact of her father Cnut over peaceful borders of the Danish Duchy of Schleswig with Imperial Holstein in the area of Kiel. The agreement had occurred prior to the death of Canute in 1035. Queen During the Easter celebration in 1028, Henry received regality from the hands of his father with consent of the princes and was vested with the duchies of Bavaria and Swabia. Conrad temporarily had evolved plans to marry his son with Zoe Porphyrogenita, a daughter of the Byzantine Emperor Constantine VIII. Nevertheless, after these ambitions had failed, Gunhilda and Henry were finally betrothed at Pentecost 1035 in Bamberg and married one year later in Nijmegen. Upon her wedding, she took the German name Kunigunde.