And now we had been well to do, till this foe came and ended all.
They were not Norsemen either.

The Orkney jarls were our friends, and for us Harald cared not.

Norsemen on the Viking path we knew and welcomed, and being of that brotherhood ourselves, we had nothing to fear from them.

It is true that we owned no king or overlord, but if the Scots king asked for scatt we paid it, grumbling, for the sake of peace.

My father was wont to call it rent for the hillsides we tilled.
Yet it would have been better to be swept out of the land by the Scots we won it from, than to be ruined thus for no reason but that of wanton savagery and lust of plunder, as it seemed.