About the book: year / In this publication, for the first time, an attempt was made to translate the poems of the Skalds in the size of the original, i.e., with the reproduction of all that complex and strict pattern of alliteration and internal rhymes that constitutes the essence of skaldic versification. The translation also reflects other characteristic features of the skaldic form: intricate and riddle-like poetic figures (so-called kennings), bizarre interweaving of individual sentences, pretentious, archaic vocabulary. Naturally, however, the translator still had to simplify the skadic form in some ways: in his translation, kennings are usually two-membered (whereas among skalds they are often three-, four-, five-, six- and even seven-membered), the sentences are intertwined only occasionally and there are much fewer archaisms than in the original. Nevertheless, the reader will probably not fail to notice that even the poems of the skalds, somewhat modernized by translation, do not resemble poetry in the modern sense of the word. Let, however, having discovered this, the reader should not hastily conclude that the verses of the skalds are not poetry at all, but try to realize the fact that in the early stages of the development of literature, poetry was indeed not at all like poetry in the modern sense of the word. An attempt to explain what skald poetry is is made in the appendix.