When Erik the Saint was killed in Uppsala in 1160, Knut was defeated and forced to flee, while his fiancée hid in a monastery for reasons of safety.

According to late medieval sources he lived in exile in Norway for three years, a piece of information that is highly unreliable.

The killer of his father, Magnus Henriksen, was slain in 1161 by another pretender, Karl Sverkersson, who took the throne and resided in Näs Castle at the southern point of Visingsö, an island in Lake Vättern.

The deed did not immediately secure the throne for Knut, who started fighting for power against Sverker the Elder's sons or grandsons Kol and Burislev.

The power of the king was consolidated, concomitantly with an emerging central bureaucracy where the written word was increasingly important.

[4] The issuing of royal written documents began at this time; nine such are preserved, mostly dealing with the affairs of the monastery of Viby at Sigtuna.

The pretender Erling Steinvegg, who was the enemy of Sverre, was arrested by Knut on behalf of his brother-in-law and imprisoned on Visingsö.

It seems that Knut built a defensive tower on the island of Stockholm after this event, one of many such fortifications made necessary by heathen incursions from the Baltic lands.

[6] Birger Brosa seems to have led another fleet of Germans and men from Gotland across the Baltic Sea in the 1190s - either before or after Knut's death.

The expedition was aimed for Curland but was driven to the coast of eastern Estonia whose inhabitants were defeated and forced to pay tribute.

[8] On balance he was the first successful ruler of Sweden for a long time, being the first king since Philip (d. 1118) to die a natural death.

The House of Sverker had sufficient support among the church and grandees to regain power, apparently without shedding blood.

She is also proposed by old romantical-looking genealogies as mother of a Duke's daughter Cecilia Knutsdotter (by necessity born near 1208 at earliest), whose parentage however is fully shrouded in mists of history.