Old Norse poetry in the context of "Poetic Edda"

Baldr (Old Norse also Balder, Baldur) is a god in Germanic mythology. In Norse mythology, he is a son of the god Odin and the goddess Frigg, and has numerous brothers, such as Thor and Váli. In wider Germanic mythology, the god was known in Old English as Bældæġ, and in Old High German as Balder, all ultimately stemming from the Proto-Germanic theonym *Balðraz ('hero' or 'prince').

During the 12th century, Danish accounts by Saxo Grammaticus and other Danish Latin chroniclers recorded a euhemerized account of his story. Compiled in Iceland during the 13th century, but based on older Old Norse poetry, the Poetic Edda and the Prose Edda contain numerous references to the death of Baldr as both a great tragedy to the Æsir and a harbinger of Ragnarök.

A skald, or skáld (Old Norse: [ˈskɔːld]; Icelandic: [ˈskault], meaning "poet"), is one of the often named poets who composed skaldic poetry, one of the two kinds of Old Norse poetry in alliterative verse, the other being Eddic poetry. Skaldic poems were traditionally composed to honor kings, but were sometimes ex tempore. They include both extended works and single verses (lausavísur). They are characteristically more ornate in form and diction than eddic poems, employing many kennings, which require some knowledge of Norse mythology, and heiti, which are formal nouns used in place of more prosaic synonyms. Dróttkvætt metre is a type of skaldic verse form that most often use internal rhyme and alliteration.

More than 5,500 skaldic verses have survived, preserved in more than 700 manuscripts, including in several sagas and in Snorri Sturluson's Prose Edda, a handbook of skaldic composition that led to a revival of the art. Many of these verses are fragments of originally longer works, and the authorship of many is unknown. The earliest known skald from whom verses survive is Bragi Boddason, known as Bragi the Old, a Norwegian skald of the first half of the 9th century. Most known skalds were attached to the courts of Norwegian kings during the Viking Age, and increasingly were Icelanders. The subject matter of their extended poems was sometimes mythical before the conversion to Christianity, thereafter usually historical and encomiastic, detailing the deeds of the skald's patron. The tradition continued into the Late Middle Ages.

A heiti (Old Norse heiti [hɛitɪ], Modern Icelandic [heiːtɪ], pl. heiti "name, appellation, designation, term") is a synonym used in Old Norse poetry in place of the normal word for something. For instance, Old Norse poets might use jór "steed" instead of the prosaic hestr "horse".

The Germanic god Freyr is referred to by many names in Old Norse poetry and literature. Multiple of these are attested only once in the extant record and are found principally in Skáldskaparmál. Some names have been further proposed by scholars to have referred to the god in the Medieval period, including one from Old English literature.

Ragnvald Heidumhære (or Rognvald) was a semi-historical petty king or chieftain of Vestfold in what is today Norway in the 9th century, according to Ynglingatal and to Ynglinga saga in Heimskringla. He was apparently a member of the Yngling clan (mentioned in later Norse and Anglo-Saxon literature, such as Beowulf). His name Heiðumhæri could be translated as highly honoured

His greatest contribution to posterity was that he asked the skald Þjóðólfr of Hvinir to compose a poem about his ancestry. This poem is known as Ynglingatal and is not only one of the oldest, but also one of the most famous and debated of the Old Norse poems.

Grottasǫngr (or Gróttasǫngr; Old Norse: 'The Mill's Songs', or 'Song of Grótti') is an Old Norse poem, sometimes counted among the poems of the Poetic Edda as it appears in manuscripts that are later than the Codex Regius. The tradition is also preserved in one of the manuscripts of Snorri Sturluson's Prose Edda along with some explanation of its context.

The myth has also survived independently in modified forms in northern European folklore. Gróttasǫngr had social and political impact in Sweden during the 20th century as it was modernized in the form of Den nya Grottesången by Viktor Rydberg, which described conditions in factories using the mill of Grottasǫngr as a literary backdrop.