St. Canute's Church in one form or another has stood on Abbey Hill in Odense (Danish: Klosterbakken) for over 900 years.

Odense passed to the jurisdiction of Roskilde in 1072 for a short period of time before falling to the Archdiocese of Lund.

After the death of his older brother, the national assembly (Ting) met on Zealand to proclaim Canute king of Denmark.

Canute was a devout Christian and believed that a strong central church in Denmark would give him more power.

He was instrumental in improving the nationwide system of bishops by using his own local officials (fogeder) to collect tithes, a new tax, which were used to build the churches, hospitals and monasteries which were just beginning to be introduced into Denmark.

Canute brought about the wrath of some of his chiefs when he hanged Jarl Egil Ragnarsen, his hand-picked governor of Bornholm, and most of his household for piracy.

Canute's headaches came to a head in 1085-86, when he decided to invade England and try to take the throne from William I who was old and by some reports failing.

They told themselves that the weather would turn bad before they could complete a successful raid, and that such a late start would spell disaster.

Canute blamed the wives of several leading chiefs from Jutland of causing bad weather and ordered his officers to collect such heavy fines from their families that it would have bankrupted all of them.

He was convinced instead however to sail over to Funen and then on to the royal farm (gård) at Odense by his trusted adviser, Asbjørn Blak, who also persuaded the king that he could be reconciled with the great landowners and peasants.

Prince Benedict shouted, "It would be better that you go home to thresh your grain than stand here and exchange blows with the king's men!"

The remaining defenders retreated to the choir door which separated the altar area from the nave of the church.

Forensic evidence suggests he was speared from the front and had his skull smashed, perhaps by a stone thrown through an opening that had been torn through the wall of the choir.

The Benedictine monks buried Canute and Prince Benedict in front of the main altar of the priory church.

The story of Canute's death at the altar and his well-known devoutness quickly caught the popular imagination.

The queen left her husband where he was, and the faithful streamed to the church which housed the remains of their saintly king.

His brother and successor, Olaf I, was given the nickname Hunger because he was unable to do anything about the famine that ravaged Denmark for years after Canute's death.

The unique circumstances of Canute's death was seized upon by the Roman Catholic Church as an example of saintliness for the newly converted peoples of Scandinavia.

The shroud of Saint Canute was set alight, and the fire indeed left no mark upon the body of the king.

The new cathedral was built in Gothic style with its typical pointed arches and high vaulted ceilings.

The building material of choice for the time was oversized red brick which was cheaper and easier to work with than the porous stone available.

The ancient crypt was expanded in such a way that pilgrims could visit the reliquary of Saint Canute beneath the raised choir without interfering with the canons' hourly services above.

The canons also claimed they had relics of Saint Alban which Canute supposedly stole on his 1075 attack on Ely, England.

His wife, Christina of Saxony, who lived the latter part of her life in a nunnery in Odense, commissioned the famous German sculptor Claus Berg to create a magnificent burial chapel in the church of the Franciscan friary in Odense, where both she and her husband were laid to rest after her death in 1521.

In 1807 the former Franciscan church was demolished, and Claus Berg's magnificent late Gothic altarpiece and the bodies of the four royals were transferred to St. Canute's Cathedral.

During restoration work in the 1870s, the crypt which had been closed since the Reformation was refurbished and opened as a chapel, and Saint Canute once more went on display.