Æthelred's order to build ships in 1008…

The Fatimid-era Egyptian sea captain Domiyat travels to a Buddhist site of pilgrimage in Shandong in 1008, where he presents the Chinese Emperor Zhenzong of Song with gifts from his ruling Imam Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah, establishing diplomatic relations between Egypt and China that had been lost during the collapse of the Tang Dynasty in 907 (the Fatimid state had been established a few years later, in 910).

The Guangyun (literally "Broad Rimes") is a Chinese rhyme dictionary that is compiled from 1007 to 1008 under the auspices of Emperor Zhenzong.

Chen Pengnian (961–1017) and Qiu Yong are the chief editors.

It is a revision and expansion of the influential Qieyun rhyme dictionary of 601, and will itself later be revised as the Jiyun.

Until the discovery of an almost complete early eighth century edition of the Qieyun in 1947, the Guangyun will be the most accurate available account of the Qieyun phonology, and is heavily used in early work on the reconstruction of Middle Chinese.

It is still used as a major source.

The Guangyun has a similar layered organization to the Qieyun: The dictionary is split into four tones in five volumes, two for the Middle Chinese level tone and one each for the three oblique tones, rising, departing and entering.

Each tone is split into rhymes, with a total of two hundred and six final rhymes, increased from one hundred and ninety-three in the Qieyun.

Each rhyme is divided into groups of homophonous characters, with the pronunciation of each group given by a fanqie formula.

The dictionary has a total of 26,194 character entries, each containing a brief explanation of the character's meaning.

Legend says that Estrid of the Obrotrites was taken back to Sweden from a war in the West Slavic area of Mecklenburg as a war-prize.

She was most likely given by her father, a tribal chief of the Polabian Obotrites, as a peace offering in a marriage to seal the peace with King Olof Skötkonung, and she is thought to have brought with her a great dowry, as a great Slavic influence is represented in Sweden from her time, mainly among craftsmen.

Her husband also has a mistress, Edla, who comes from the same area in Europe as herself, and who was possibly taken to Sweden at the same time.

The king treats Edla and Estrid the same way and has given his son and his two daughters with Edla the same privileges as the children he has with Estrid, though it was Estrid he had married and made Queen.

Queen Estrid is baptized with her husband, their children and large numbers of the Swedish royal court in 1008, when the Swedish royal family converts to Christianity, although the king promises to respect the freedom of religion—Sweden is not to be Christian until the last religious war between Inge the Elder and Blot-Sweyn of 1084-1088.

Olof Skötkonung, King of Sweden, is baptised in Husaby, probably by the missionary Sigfrid, around 1008. (At Husaby church, there is sign at Husaby honoring his baptism and what is thought to be the well at the Holy spring where Olaf was baptized.)

He is the first Swedish king to remain Christian until his death.

However, according to Adam of Bremen, the fact that the vast majority of the Swedes are still pagan forces him to limit Christian activities to the already Christian border province of Västergötland.

Black Hungarians are mentioned, sometimes in opposition to White Hungarians, in just a few contemporary sources; none of the sources expands upon the exact nature of the relationship between the Black Magyars and the "mainstream" Hungarian population, nor is the origin and meaning of their name clear.

The Black Hungarians are known to have participated in some military campaign in Kiev; after the conquest, they resisted the Christian mission even after the coronation of King Stephen I of Hungary in 1000 or 1001.

Bruno of Querfurt had tried in 1003 to convert the Black Hungarians; then Azzo, the legate of the pope led the missionary work among them, but they insisted on their faith; therefore, some of them had been blinded.

King Stephen I launches a campaign against them in around 1008, and conquers their territories ("Black Hungary").

The possessions of David III of Tao after his murder by his nobles in 1000, had passed to Emperor Basil II according to the previous agreement.

Gurgen, now reigning as King of Kings of the Georgians in parts of the southwestern Kartlian lands, had met with Basil but, unable to prevent the annexation of David’s realm, had been forced to recognize the new borders.

On this occasion, Gurgen’s son Bagrat had been bestowed with the imperial title of kouropalates, and Gurgen with that of magistros, actually competing titles since the dignity conferred upon the son is more esteemed than that granted to the father.

This was done by the emperor, as the Georgian chronicles relate, to turn Gurgen against Bagrat, but he seriously miscalculated.

Later the same year, Gurgen had attempted to take David Kuropalates’ succession by force, but he had to retreat in the face of the Byzantine commander Nikephoros Ouranos, dux of Antioch.

Gurgen dies in 1008, and Bagrat succeeds him as King of Kings of the Georgians, becoming thus the first king of a unified realm of Abkhazia and Kartli (in their broadest sense these two include Abkhazia proper/Abasgia, Egrisi/Samegrelo, Imereti, Svaneti, Racha-Lechkhumi, Guria, Ajaria, Kartli proper, Hither Tao, Klarjeti, Shavsheti, Meskheti, and Javakheti) what is to be henceforth known as Sakartvelo—"all-Georgia".

A revived Punjabi force of thirty-thousand charges the Ghaznavids, again near Peshawar, in 1008, and causes them to retreat, but the Indians’ elephants panic, allowing the Ghaznavids to regroup and defeat the Indians to annex the Punjab.

The Egyptian Fatimid Empire under Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah, seeking to reestablish trade relations between Egypt and China, sends the sea captain Domiyat on a tributary mission to the Song emperor Zhenzong.

Abd al-Malik Al-Muzaffar had come to power after his father Al-Mansur's death in 1002, and secured his position in the Caliphate with successful campaigns against Navarre and Barcelona before being poisoned, allegedly, by his younger brother Abd al-Rahman, commonly known as Sanchuelo, whose mother is Abda (born Urraca), daughter of King Sancho II Garcés of Pamplona.

Sanchuelo seizes the dictatorship, coercing the weak caliph, Hisham II, to name him as heir; this precipitates a rebellion at Córdoba, the seat of Moorish Spain’s government, whose citizenry already disliked the rule of Almanzor because he had recruited for his safety many Berbers as mercenaries.

Sweyn Haakonsson, after the battle of Svolder in the year 999 or 1000, becomes, with his half-brother, Eric Haakonsson, governor of Norway under Sweyn Forkbeard of Denmark.

The son of earl Hákon Sigurðarson, Sweyn is first mentioned in connection with the battle of Hjörungavágr, where the Heimskringla says he commanded sixty ships.

The written sources mentioning Sweyn are all written over one hundred and fifty years after his death.

The Swedish historian Staffan Hellberg in 1972 will claim to be able to show that Sweyn was a fictitious person, and that he had never lived.

The debate about this will form part of the wider debate about the value of the twelfth and thirteenth century sagas for eleventh century history and earlier, and is an example of the saga skepticism, particularly widespread in Swedish academia.

Hellberg's conclusions remain speculative.