Skald

Skald signifies in old Norse a poet. The name was given specially to that class of poets who exercised their art as a vocation requiring a learned education—i.e. a knowledge of the construction of verse, and of the enigmatical imagery, roughly shaped out of obscure tradition, to which Scandinavian poets were prone. The principal aim of the Skaldic poetry was to celebrate the deeds of living warriors or of their ancestors. Very few complete Skaldic poems are extant; but there are a great number of fragments preserved, partly in the younger Edda (q.v.), partly in the Sagas (q.v.) and the Heimskringla. See SNORRI STUR-LASON.