Skald, << skawld or skahld, >> the Icelandic word for poet, refers to the Scandinavian poets of the Middle Ages. From the 900’s through the 1200’s, most court poets in Scandinavia came from Iceland. Most skaldic poetry honored the rulers whom the skalds served. Many of these poems, or parts of them, are preserved in the Icelandic sagas of the 1100’s and 1200’s. Skaldic poetry was very complex in form. It had regulated patterns of alliteration (linking words by repetition of their first sound) and consonance (a kind of rhyme between syllables containing different vowels but ending in the same consonant). Skaldic poetry also used a type of extended metaphor called a kenning.
