Ynglingatal

Ynglingatal is a skaldic poem listing the kings of the House of Ynglings, dated by most scholars to the late 9th century.

The original version is attributed to Þjóðólfr af Hvini who was the skald of a Norwegian petty king named Ragnvald the Mountain-High, described in later sagas as cousin of Harald Fairhair. It describes the lives of a long line of legendary and semi-legendary Swedish kings, the Yngling dynasty, as well as the foundation of the Norwegian petty kingdom of Vestfold by an Ingling scion and its expansion through conquest and marriage alliance over the succeeding six generations, ending with Ragnvald.

Ynglingatal survives in three versions of which the best known is the Ynglinga saga in Snorri Sturluson's Heimskringla, written ca. 1230. Of the two other versions, one is found in Historia Norwegiae, a translation into Latin which contains essentially the same information, recorded in the late 12th or the early 13th century, and as the other in Íslendingabók, consisting just of a listing of the names, recorded in the early 12th century.

The historicity of the matter Yngling dynasty has been a contention among scholars since the 19th century. Krag (1991) also questioned the dating of the poem, suggesting that it may have originally been composed only in the early 12th century.