The sundial, which has a central inscription declaring its function as marking time, has inscribed panels to its left and right and also below; it is placed near-centrally above the church doors.   The word divisions in this inscription are sometimes marked by a medial dot; there is a typical disregard for splitting words over line endings. The last letters of the left and first letters of the right panels are part of a single, divided word TOBROCEN meaning entirely broken (translated as “ruined”).  Insular script includes of some originally runic forms: those for Ð and Ƿ (for the sounds of ‘th’ and ‘w’),  and the forms Æ  and 7 that were used in Old English writings for the ‘ash’ rune (standing for the vowel sound in ‘hat’) and for the word ‘and,’ respectively.  The word  solmerca is not encountered anywhere else in English, and is possibly  a word taken from Old Norse solmerki ‘sign of the zodiac’. Fitting the context and translation better, though, the word could be a blend of Old Norse sol ( ‘sun’) and merca, a form of  Old English mear(c) (‘mark’), to make a word meaing ‘sunmarker’. A second Anglicization of Old Norse words is found in the dropping of the –r ending (the nominative masculine case ending) from Scandinavian names, an another instance of Anglicization is the use of the patronymic formula Gamal svna, which is common in Scandinavia and rare, though not unattested, in Old English outside of Scandinavian influenced regions. A summary of the differences between earlier and this late form of Old English from the Danelaw is provided in the following: 1., Unstressed vowels are no longer distinguished from each other, indicating a weak pronunciation, so we find suna for earlier Old English sunu, tobrocan for earlier Old English tobrocen, and tofalan for earlier Old English tofeallen. 2. The endings of the infinitives of different types of verb are collapsed into –an,   leading to macan for earlier Old English macian. 3. Some endings  on nouns are lost, leading to loss of genitive case endings in the phrases Gamal svna, Eadward...cng, and Tosti...eorl. The earlier Old English forms would have been Gamales sunu, Eadwardes ... cyninges, and Tostiges ... eorles. 4. the masculine, neuter and plural dative case ending -um is used in place of the specifically feminine -e in the phrase aet ilcum tide (which would be aet ilce tide in  earlier Old English). Within the insciption there are references to Edward the Confessor and Earl Tostig, Edward's brother-in-law. who was responsible for the murder of Gamal, Orm’s father.  Tostig, with his ally Harald Hardrada and the Norwegian army,  were defeated at the Battle of Stamford Bridge  in 1066 by his brother, the famous Harold who, in the same year, fought against and was killed by William of Normandy less than one month later in the Battle of Hastings.