north. His letter not only tells his countrymen of his achievements in Rome, but also of his ambitions within the Scandinavian world at his arrival home: Cnut was to return to Denmark from Rome, arrange for its security, and afterwards sail to England. King of Norway and part of Sweden In his 1027 letter, Cnut refers to himself as king of "the Norwegians, and of some of the Swedes" – his victory over Swedes suggests Helgeå to be the river in Uppland and not the one in eastern Scania — while the king of Sweden appears to have been made a renegade. Cnut also stated his intention of proceeding to Denmark to secure peace between the kingdoms of Scandinavia, which fits the account of John of Worcester that in 1027 Cnut heard some Norwegians were discontented and sent them sums of gold and silver to gain their support for his claim to the throne. In 1028, Cnut set off from England to Norway, and the city of Trondheim, with a fleet of fifty ships. King Olaf Haraldsson was unable to put up a serious fight, both as his nobles had been bribed by Cnut and (according to Adam of Bremen) because he tended to apprehend their wives for sorcery. Cnut was crowned king, now of England, Denmark and Norway as well as part of Sweden. He entrusted the Earldom of Lade to the former line of earls, in Håkon Eiriksson, with Eiríkr Hákonarson probably dead by this time. Hakon was possibly the Earl of Northumbria after Erik as well. Hakon, a member of a family with a long tradition of hostility towards the independent Norwegian kings, and a relative of Cnut's, was already in lordship over the Isles with the earldom of Worcester, possibly from 1016 to 1017. The sea-lanes through the Irish Sea and the Hebrides led to Orkney and Norway, and were central to Cnut's ambitions for dominance of Scandinavia and the British Isles. Hakon was meant to be Cnut's lieutenant in this strategic chain, and the final component was his installation as the king's deputy in Norway, after the expulsion of Olaf Haraldsson in 1028. Unfortunately, he was drowned in a shipwreck in the Pentland Firth (between the Orkney Islands and the mainland coast) either late 1029 or early 1030. Upon the death of Hakon, Olaf Haraldsson returned to Norway, with Swedes in his army. He died