KNUTSFORD Heritage Centre has recently entertained a special guest and strengthened its links with the town’s past.

Christian Wewer, the Honorary Danish Consul for Manchester and the north west, visited the Heritage Centre to learn more about Knutsford’s history.

Accompanied by the deputy mayor, Councillor Jan Nicholson, Christian toured the Canute ‘Conquest of England’ exhibition and saw the Millennium Tapestry.

Christian said: “My conscious aim is to learn at least one new thing every day. I am delighted to say that during my visit I have learned not one, but an overwhelming number of new and interesting things.

“As a town, Knutsford has a distinctive look – and that doesn’t deceive. Its social and cultural history is extremely interesting and is impressively conveyed by the Heritage Centre.”

The Canute exhibition tells the story of the Viking invasion led by Canute in 1015 before he came King of England in 1016.

Canute led 10,000 Vikings from Demark and elsewhere in Scandinavia. He sailed with a fleet of 200 ships, landing on the East Coast and by the following year controlled Mercia and the rest of the country.

Like Canute, Danish-born Christian is a naturalised Englishman since moving to the UK as a child with his parents in 1955. He has lived in the North West since the late 1960s and became Honorary Danish Consul in 1988.

Val Bryant, Heritage Centre trustee, said: “We were delighted to receive so distinguished a visitor. With the Canute Millennial exhibition and other activities planned for next year, with Mr Wewer’s help, we hope the visit may lead to establishing enduring links between the town and Denmark.”

“The town is recorded as Cunetesford in the Doomsday Book. Whatever the spelling – Canute is Knud in Danish, Knutr in Old Norse and Knut in German – nowhere else in Cheshire has a link recorded down the centuries to an important turning point in England’s history.”