There were no full-time Vikings back then. Everybody had another job. Sea-raiding was something the men did for fun, or to get things they couldn't find in the village. They even got their wives that way. Odd's mother, who was as dark as Odd's father had been fair, had been brought to the fjord on a longship from Scotland. When Odd was small, she would sing him the ballads that she had learned as a girl, back before Odd's father had taken her knife away and thrown her over his shoulder and carried her back to the longboat.