King of Denmark (1134–1137) who overthrew King Niels to avenge his half-brother Canute Lavard, then ruled harshly for three years before being murdered at a public assembly.
Eric II, called Emune — "the Memorable" or "the Unforgettable" — was king of Denmark from 1134 to 1137. A son of Eric Evergood and half-brother of the murdered Canute Lavard, he led the war of vengeance against King Niels and his son Magnus, and won the crown by their defeat and deaths.
His victory at the Battle of Fotevik in 1134 broke the old king's power, but Eric's own reign proved short and brutal. Harsh, vengeful, and feared, he crushed rivals and rebellions without mercy, until in 1137 he was struck down at a public assembly by a magnate he had wronged.
Eric was born about 1090, a son of Eric I Evergood, and thus half-brother to Canute Lavard, the popular Duke of Schleswig. When Canute was murdered in 1131 by Magnus, the son of King Niels, Eric became the leader of the vengeance faction and the chief claimant against the reigning house.
He raised a rebellion in the name of the murdered duke, drawing to his cause the many enemies of Niels and Magnus.
Eric Emune was a hard and violent man even by the standards of a violent age. The sources present a ruthless avenger and a harsh king — brave and effective in war, but cruel, suspicious, and merciless toward those he suspected of disloyalty, including members of his own kin.
His byname "Emune", the Memorable, carries an edge of dread as much as admiration. He won and held the throne by force and fear, mutilating and killing rivals, and the same ferocity that made him a formidable war-leader made him a hated ruler. That he was cut down in the open, at a peace-assembly, by a wronged subject who then walked away, suggests how far his cruelty had stripped him of the loyalty a king needed.
Eric's bid for the throne turned on avenging Canute Lavard. His war against Niels and Magnus reached its climax at the Battle of Fotevik in Scania in 1134, where the royal army was destroyed, Magnus fell, and the aged Niels fled to his death at Schleswig. Eric took the crown as Eric II.
As king he ruled with the same hard hand that had won him power, suppressing rivals — among them his own nephews and kin — with executions, blindings, and mutilation. His brief reign kept the realm in fear rather than peace.
On 18 September 1137, at a public assembly at Urnehoved in Jutland, Eric II was speared to death by a magnate named Sorte Plov, whom the king had provoked. He was buried at Ribe, and the crown passed to his nephew Eric, called the Lamb.
Eric Emune is remembered as the fierce avenger of Canute Lavard and one of the harshest of Denmark's medieval kings, whose short reign deepened rather than healed the divisions of the civil wars. His violence and murder illustrate how far the royal house had turned upon itself; the ultimate beneficiary of the long conflict he helped drive would be Canute Lavard's posthumous son, the future Valdemar I.