Halldórr skvaldri


Halldórr skvaldri was an Icelandic skald who lived in the first half of the twelfth century.
He composed the poem Útfarardrápa about the feats of Sigurðr Jórsalafari during his voyage to the Holy Land. After Sigurðr's death, he probably served Magnus Barefoot. He is also known to have composed for nine powerful men, including the Swedish jarls Sone Ivarsson, Karl Sonesson and for the Swedish kings Sverker I of Sweden and Jon Jarl.
In the assessment of Jan de Vries, Halldórr was an able craftsman but lacked poetic genius.

Biography and works

Halldor was born early enough to compose an elegy for Magnus Barefoot of Norway, who died in 1103, but he also composed one for Inge I of Norway, who died in 1161.
According to Snorri Sturluson's Skáldatal, Halldór wrote elegies for:
These poems do not, however, survive.
The surviving parts of Halldórr’s corpus are, like most skaldic verse, preserved only as quotations in prose Kings' sagas. These are:
Halldórr's poems are reconstructed as accurately as possible from the surviving quotations in Poetry from the Kings’ Sagas 2: From c. 1035 to c. 1300, ed. by Kari Ellen Gade, Skaldic poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages, 2, pp. 482–96. A text and translation bades on Gade's edition is available at http://www.abdn.ac.uk/skaldic/m.php?p=skald&i=117.