1100s, and in the short saga Af Upplendinga konungum (About the upplander-kings). Ynglingtal is also indirectly preserved as a list of names in Íslendingabók from the early 1100s. A few of the characters in Ynglingatal are also mentioned in the Old English poem Beowulf. About the author According to Snorri, Ynglingatal was composed by the scald Þjóðólfr of Hvinir, who was from Kvinesdal in what is now Vest-Agder, Norway. In the preamble to the Heimskringla, Snorri writes that Thjodolf, in addition to composing the poem Ynglingatal, was poet at Harald Fairhair's hird (royal retinue). Thjodolf also appears in the Saga of Harald Fairhair, in the mythical story of Harald and the Sami girl Snæfrithr Svásadottir, who cursed Harald to marry her. According to the saga, Harald and Snøfrid had four sons but Harald sent them away when he woke up from the curse. Thjodolf raised one of these sons, Gudrod Ljome. When Thjodolf learned Harald had disowned his sons, he sided with the boys and said to Harald, "They probably would have liked better ancestry, if you had given them that". The saga contains no information about Thjodolf being Harald's scald; that is only mentioned in Snorri's preamble. In the saga he is only referred to as a friend of Harald and as the son whom Godred fostered. Snorri also quotes several other poems of Thjodolf in Harald Fairhair's saga. The historian Claus Krag proposes that the connection between Harald Fairhair and Thjodolf was constructed by Snorri, probably because Thjodolf would have been an important person in the development of scaldic art, while according to tradition, Harald was Norway's first national king. To create a connection between them would thus enhance both their reputations. According to Finnur Jonsson, Thjodolf was Harald's scald without dwelling much on the subject. Finnur said Thjodolf was not a hird scald, but a scald who mostly stayed home on the farm, where in another saga we meet Thjodolf's grandson. Snorri mentions a man named Torgrim from Kvine, "son" to Thjodolf in the Olav Tryggvasson saga. Beyond this there are no more references to Thjodolf in the sagas in Heimskringla. Snorri wrote the preamble and the saga in the 1220s, over 300 years after Thjodolf should have lived, so any information about him is uncertain. Author myth and royal ideology According to Yngling Saga, Fjolne, the first king described in Ynglingatal, was the son of the