Background
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).
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 a sister of King Harthacnut. She was a paternal half-sister of King Svein of Norway and King Harold I of England. She was also a maternal half-sister of Alfred Aetheling and Edward the Confessor.
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.
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. Upon her wedding, she took the German name Kunigunde.
In December 1038, Emperor Conrad went on a campaign to Italy, while Empress Gisela together with Henry and Gunhilda celebrated Christmas in Regensburg.
In Italy, Gunhilda gave birth to the couple"s only daughter, Beatrice (d 1061), who later became Abbess of Quedlinburg and Gandersheim. While the siege of Milan proved unsuccessful, Emperor Conrad in 1038 was asked to intervene in a territorial dispute between Guaimar IV of Salerno and Pandulf IV of Capua. He campaigned in the Mezzogiorno in support of Guaimar, took Capua and had Pandulf deposed.
Their victory found most of the Mezzogiorno loyal to the Holy Roman Empire.
During the return journey to Germany, an epidemic (possibly Malaria) broke out among the Imperial troops, which claimed many victims. Duke Herman IV of Swabia and Gunhilda were among the casualties.
Gunhilda"s body was transferred to Germany and buried in the Limburg Abbey church.