Therefore my friend Wislac, the English priest, will be the penman,
having skill thereto. I would have it known that I can well trust him to
write even as I speak, though he has full leave to set aside all hard
words and unseemly, such as a sailor is apt to use unawares; and where
my Danish way of speaking goeth not altogether with the English, he may
alter the wording as he will, so long as the sense is always the same.
Then, also, will he read over to me what he has written, and therefore
all may be sure that this is indeed my true story.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Now, as it is needful that one begins at the beginning, it happens that
the first thing to be told is how I came to be Havelok's foster-brother,
and that seems like beginning with myself after all. But all the story
hangs on this, and so there is no help for it.

If it is asked when this beginning might be, I would say, for an
Englishman who knows not the names of Danish kings, that it was before
the first days of the greatness of Ethelbert of Kent, the overlord of
all England, the Bretwalda, and therefore, as Father Wislac counts,
about the year of grace 580. But King Ethelbert does not come into the
story, nor does the overlord of all Denmark; for the kings of whom I
must speak were under-kings, though none the less kingly for all that.
One must ever be the mightiest of many; and, as in England, there were
at that time many kings in Denmark, some over wide lands and others over
but small realms, with that one who was strong enough to make the rest
pay tribute to him as overlord, and only keeping that place by the power
of the strong hand, not for any greater worth.