This thesis examines the political functions of the performance of skaldic poetry during the Viking Age. It aims to establish the vital role that skaldic verse plays in the establishment and maintenance of power, as well as the importance of skaldic performance in the negotiation of that power in the inter-community relations between various courts both within and outside of Viking Age Scandinavia. The first chapter provides a contextual understanding of Viking Age power structures by considering the central ideological constructs surrounding the concept of óðal (ancestral property). Óðal-derived power, it will be shown, is based on ruler-presence (which extends to ancestral presence) in the landscape, which is perceived as a crucial element in the legitimisation of authority and power. My second chapter will consider the political significance of skaldic performance within the context of ruler itinerancy, which develops in response to political practices based on the importance of óðal-derived legitimacy. Of particular importance in this respect, will be the use of ‘presencing’ proper- and praise-names in skaldic poetry that effect both spatial and temporal itinerancies in a highly distributable format. My third chapter will establish the representational features of skaldic performance and elaborate on the definition of Performance not only as action (in the Austinian sense), but also as a type of action that is defined by its artifice, its temporal continuity and its emergent dialogism. This will provide the theoretical context for my fourth and final chapter which will aim to examine the employment of skaldic Performance in Viking Age diplomatic praxes. Here the phenomenologically perceived ‘binding’ of the Self through the dialogic rhythmicity that arises out of skaldic ambiguity and crypticism will be of central importance.