I'm also not enamored with the morality of raiding and from what we've seen neither is Halla.
I have been thinking about the raiding. I was wondering if it mightn't make more sense to change how it's done in the beginning rather than try to move away from it all together.
For instance there's a lot of stories of the Norse gods taking on challenges, Thor noticeably lowered ocean levels trying to drain a drinking horn for instance, picked up a length of jormungand And other stuff l can't remember. Now, he lost those because they were tricks but it got me thinking.
That knight on the last raid said vikingr don't really talk first so what if Halla did? What if someone had gone up to his place knocked on the door and said something along the lines of hey, we want your stuff, but rather than wreck everything how about you come out to the field and we'll fight you for it, or half of it or something, not to the death or anything, if you give us a hiding we piss off, if we knock you out we make a pile of your stuff that's not like, mothers engagement ring or something but silver candle sticks and shit, and when you wake up we go pick for pick til we have divvied it up on whatever split we agree on.
The best way would be to start making it not about fighting, sack one of those monasteries that brew beer by having Abjorn challenge the Abbot to a drinking contest, plunder half a towns wealth by challenging the inhabitants to a riddle contest, a church with poetry, a village by plowing more field than their best team of oxen, anything you can think of.
Be modest in the stakes and if anyone makes a point of it say it leaves those places in a better position to lose again later.
Those are some awesome stories if you can make it happen, way better than "and then they killed everyone and half of them were killed in return."
This also gives more, well, honour l guess isn't really the word but maybe prestige to other skills than fighting, like wordplay, poetry, farming etc.
I don't know, it's a half formed thought but it seems like something Halla could do to at Least start changing the way raiding is done or the way prestige is earned around it.
It wouldn't work every time of course but it's something to try and would be a cool story.
