The pervasive nature and conventionality of skaldic diction have prompted a number of modern analyses to treat it as a self-contained semiotic system, an understanding already implied in the concept of skáldskaparmál ‘language of poetry’. One of the limitations of an exclusively systemic analysis, however, is the risk of treating skaldic diction as ‘semiotic machinery’, disregarding the fact that it was a historically established and gradually evolving poetic convention, in which authorial agency and change played a significant role. Two prime indicators of agency and change are the focus of attention in this article: namely, stylistic innovations and intertextual connections. In skaldic practice, innovation was often achieved by means of intertextual dynamics, such as imitation and allusion. The phenomenon referred to as nýgerving ‘new creation’ in several medieval treatises will offer the starting point for a synoptic study of how tradition-bound intertextuality informed skaldic innovation, revealing some of the dynamics through which the ‘system’ evolved.