Cnut had put aside his first wife Ælfgifu of Northampton in order to marry Emma, and according to the Encomium Emmae Reginae, a book she inspired many years later, Cnut agreed that any sons of their marriage should take precedence over the sons of his first marriage.

Cnut had left Norway under the rule of Håkon Eiriksson but he was drowned in 1029, and Cnut appointed his son Svein to rule Norway with the assistance of Ælfgifu, Cnut's first wife and Svein's mother.

He was the younger son of Cnut the Great, king of England, Denmark, and Norway by his first wife, Ælfgifu of Northampton.

She suspects that the tale started out as a popular myth, or intentional defamation presumably tailored by Emma of Normandy, the other wife of Cnut and rival to Ælfgifu.

Harold may have had a wife, Ælfgifu and a son, Ælfwine, who became a monk on the continent when he was older.

He was the third of the six sons of King Æthelred the Unready and his first wife, Ælfgifu, who was probably the daughter of Earl Thored of Northumbria.

Ælfgifu leaves a bequest to an Æthelflaed, who is either Æthelweard ’ s wife or his sister-in-law.

In early 958 Oda annulled the marriage of Eadwig and his wife Ælfgifu, who were too closely related.

Ælfgifu of Northampton ( c. 990 – after 1040 ) was the first wife of King Cnut of England and Denmark, and mother of King Harold I of England ( 1035 – 40 ).

The first recorded reference to Chesham is under the Old English name Cæstæleshamm meaning " the river-meadow at the pile of stones around 970 in the will of Lady Ælfgifu, who has been identified with the former wife of King Eadwig.

She remained an important figure, being responsible for the care of Æthelred's children by his first wife, Ælfgifu.

* Ælfgifu of Shaftesbury, wife of King Edmund I of England

* Ælfgifu of York, first wife of Æthelred the Unready

* Emma of Normandy, second wife of Æthelred the Unready and second wife of Cnut the Great, called Ælfgifu in Old English sources

* Ælfgifu of Northampton, first wife of King Cnut the Great.

* Ælfgifu, wife of Ælfgar, Earl of Mercia

* Ælfgifu, daughter of Æthelred the Unready and wife of Uhtred, Earl of Northumbria

He may have had some connection by marriage with Ælfgifu of Northampton, the first wife of Cnut.

Uhtred's wife was Ælfgifu, the youngest daughter of King Æthelred the Unready.

Some historians have suggested that he was the Æthelhelm who was Ealdorman of Wiltshire, the probable father of Edward the Elder's second wife Ælfflæd, but Barbara Yorke rejected the idea, arguing that it does not appear to have been the practice for Æthelings ( princes of the royal dynasty who were eligible to be king ) to become ealdormen, that in a grant from Alfred to Ealdorman Æthelhelm there is no reference to kinship between them, and that the hostile reception to King Eadwig's marriage to Ælfgifu, his third cousin once removed, shows that a marriage between Edward and his first cousin once removed would have been forbidden as incestuous.

Cnut already had a wife known as Ælfgifu of Northampton who bore him two sons, Svein and Harold Harefoot.

However it seems that the church regarded Ælfgifu as Cnut's concubine rather than his wife.

The eldest son of King Edmund and Ælfgifu of Shaftesbury, Eadwig was chosen by the nobility to succeed his uncle Eadred as King.

The " cavorting " in question consisted of Eadwig ( then only 16 ) being away from the feast with Ælfgifu and her mother Æthelgifu.

Æthelweard describes himself as the " grandson's grandson " of King Æthelred I. Eadwig was the son of King Edmund the Magnificent, grandson of King Edward the Elder, great-grandson of King Alfred the Great, and therefore great-great-nephew of King Æthelred I. Eadwig and Ælfgifu were therefore third cousins once removed.

The annulment of the marriage of Eadwig and Ælfgifu is unusual in that it took place against their will, clearly politically motivated by the supporters of Dunstan.

Æthelweard first witnesses charters as a minister after the accession of Eadwig in 955, and this is likely to be connected with the king's marriage to Ælfgifu.

In 957 King Eadwig, the great-grandson of King Æthelred I's brother, Alfred the Great, was obliged to divorce Æthelweard's sister Ælfgifu on grounds of consanguinity, and in the introduction to his Latin Chronicle Æthelweard claims to be the " grandson's grandson " of King Æthelred.

Assuming that the identification of Æthelweard as the brother of Ælfgifu is correct, his mother was the Æthelgifu whose company Eadwig enjoyed along with her daughter whilst escaping his coronation.

This act was likely a political move connected to the division between Eadwig and Edgar, as it is unlikely that the close kinship between Eadwig and Ælfgifu had not been known before their marriage.

Ælfgifu was the consort of King Eadwig of England ( r. 955 – 59 ) for a brief period of time until 957 or 958.

In this light, Ælfgifu would have been Eadwig ’ s third cousin once removed.

At an unknown date around the time of his accession, the young King Eadwig married Ælfgifu.

If Hart's suggestion that Ælfgifu was of royal Mercian descent and related to the latter family is correct, it might have been hoped that the marriage would give Eadwig some political advantage in exercising West-Saxon control over Mercia.

It is known that in 958 Archbishop Oda of Canterbury, a supporter of Dunstan, annulled the marriage of Eadwig and Ælfgifu on the basis of their consanguinity.

No less important than the circumstances of her married life is the way Ælfgifu may have pushed on since the break-up of her marriage and more especially since the autumn of 959, when Eadwig died ( 1 October 959 ) and was succeeded by his brother Edgar as king of all England.

While Eadwig, like Alfred and Edward, was buried in the New Minster, Ælfgifu intended her body to be buried in the nearby Old Minster.

Claiming that Ælfgifu wanted to have a son by the king but was unable to, she secretly adopted the newborn children of strangers and pretended to have given birth to them.

In any event, on Cnut's death, Ælfgifu was determined that her second son Harold should be the next English king.

However, the Anglo-Danish king instead made his son Sveinn a viceroy, in effect placing his mother Ælfgifu in charge of his recent conquest.

Harold Harefoot, Cnut's illegitimate son with Ælfgifu of Northampton, seized the throne of England.

It included information on the situation in England, with messengers from there reporting that Ælfgifu was gaining the support of the leading aristocrats through pleas and bribery, binding them to herself and Harold by oaths of loyalty.

Harold himself is somewhat obscure ; the historian Frank Stenton considered it probable that his mother Ælfgifu was " the real ruler of England " for part or all of his reign.

He makes Ælfgifu an accomplice in the murder of Emma's youngest son, Alfred, by suggesting that she was responsible for sending a forged letter to Normandy inviting Alfred to England.

*' Ælfgifu 1 ', ' Ælfhelm 17 ', ' Wulfrun ', ' Wulfric 52 ', Prosopography of Anglo-Saxon England.

* Ælfgifu, daughter of Godwin, Earl of Wessex, and sister of King Harold II of England

This picture is based on her identification with the Ælfgifu who was a wealthy landowner in Southeast England and a relative of King Edgar.

He was the son of Roger FitzGerold ( de Roumare ), 1st Baron of Kendall, Lord of Bolingbroke and Lucy, widow of Ivo de Taillebois ( granddaughter of the Earl of Marcia and Ælfgifu Princess of England, daughter of King Ethelred II of England ).