Case in point, read the Old English poem "The Wanderer" (ideally in Old English but if necessary in translation) and remember that the relationship the narrator is lamenting is this sort of relationship.
The point is that gifts tie us together. As one person said, "obligations unite us, debts drive us apart." The idea that you give money and there is some sort of a moral obligation to reciprocate in some way (but not a quantified debt) creates the bond.
The way gift economies work is that you give gifts out and therefore obtain communal esteem, and people reciprocate to get that esteem by giving you gifts.
In general, if you can, reading a work in the language it was composed in is better than reading it in translation. It is generally hard to disagree with that.
The fact is that translation into contemporary English from Old English and Old Norse is deceptively difficult.
[1] wyrd bið ful aræd is probably the best example. It's usually translated as "Fate is wholely inexorable" which is not a good translation. "The turn of events is fully complete" is better, as would be "My fate has now been decreed" depending on how you want to look at wyrd (fate, but literally "that which has turned" and often personified as a woman) and araed (decreed, established, spoken).
Edit Changed the above OE to proper characters, and adding this:
While I am bragging, as you put it, about my understanding of languages I will point out that the structure there of wyrd becoming established through the spoken word is also found in parallel Old Norse traditions, where we have the description of the Norns in Voluspa ending with:
þær lög lögðu,
þær líf kuru
alda börnum,
örlög seggja.
This is again difficult to translate because of the variety of things lög could mean. "They laid laws" or They laid layers" or "They allotted lots" are all viable translations. My overall translation would be:
They allotted lots,
They chose lives
for the sons of men,
They uttered fate.
Back then, these things were evidence that the other guy wasn't going to knife you in your sleep.
It's the earliest form of debt-as-community-glue, really. It only survives today in the habit of bringing a bottle of wine to a dinner party, and in the handshake. We mostly rely on codified laws of hospitality instead (which govern restaurants and hotels).