Harald II, elder son of Sweyn Forkbeard, held the Danish kingdom (1014–1018) while his brother Cnut conquered England, and by refusing to divide Denmark pushed Cnut toward that greater prize.
Harald II is the necessary, nearly invisible king of the Danish conquest of England. When Sweyn Forkbeard died at Gainsborough in February 1014, the empire split along the lines he had prepared: Harald, the elder son, took the homeland kingdom; Cnut, with the fleet in England, took the war.
When Cnut came home defeated later that year, the Encomium Emmae reports, he proposed sharing Denmark and was refused — Harald instead helped equip the great fleet of 1015 that won England at Assandun. Harald's early death in 1018 handed Cnut Denmark as well, assembling the North Sea empire under one crown.
Harald was born around 995, the elder of Sweyn Forkbeard's sons, and was named for his grandfather Harald Bluetooth. When Sweyn sailed on the great invasion of England in 1013 he left Harald as regent of Denmark — the arrangement contemporaries understood as marking the elder son for the home kingdom.
Danish kingship still required election and the support of the fleet-levies; Harald's smooth assumption of the crown in 1014, while his brother was being chased out of England, shows the homeland establishment stood behind the designated heir.
No saga or chronicle drew Harald's character; he must be read from two recorded decisions, and honesty about that thinness is part of his record. The first: he refused to divide Denmark with Cnut in 1014 — firmness toward a brother fresh from defeat, and exactly what a kingdom's stability required. The second: having refused, he backed Cnut's English war with Danish ships and men rather than rivalry.
Those two choices — keep the kingdom whole, point the ambitious brother outward — are the acts of a ruler who understood both his rights and his situation. The Encomium, written for Cnut's widow, remembers the refusal without rancour, which suggests the brothers' settlement held on both sides.
Harald's four years were, so far as the record runs, quiet ones: Denmark supplied rather than suffered the wars of the age. The great fleet that carried Cnut, Thorkell the Tall, and Eric of Lade to England in 1015 was gathered in Harald's harbours, and Denmark's stability underwrote the campaign that ended at Assandun.
He died in 1018, aged perhaps twenty-three, of causes no source records. Cnut came from England that year to secure the succession, and thereafter wore both crowns; whatever family of Harald's existed left no trace in the record.
Harald's reign made the conquest of England financially and logistically possible while guaranteeing that failure abroad would not cost the dynasty its base. His death then completed the design accidentally: Denmark and England joined under Cnut into the North Sea empire that framed the next forty years of northern politics.
He is among the clearest examples in the period of a king remembered almost solely through his relationships — son of Sweyn, brother of Cnut — and of how much such "minor" reigns could determine.