The Ecology of 'Eddic' and 'Skaldic' Poetry

Scholars have traditionally reflected on the Old Norse cultural area’s poetic output on the basis of a binary
classification of the poetry into two types: the categories are labelled as ‘eddic’ and ‘skaldic’. This paper explores the
formation of the dichotomy and how the application of these categories in scholarship may obscure rather than clarify
the nature of Old Norse poetry.