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The helmingr (Anon Oddm) is preserved only in Ágr (ms. Ágr), where it is offered as evidence for an account of the conquest of Norway by Haraldr hárfagri ‘Fair-hair’ Hálfdanarson (r. c. 860-c.932; see ‘Ruler biographies’ in Introduction to this volume). It is introduced with the words, sem segir í kvæði því, er heitir Oddmjór, er gǫrt er umb konungatal, með þessum orðum ‘as it says in the poem that is called Oddmjór (‘Narrow-pointed’), which is made about a series of kings, with these words’. Bjarni Einarsson (ÍF 29, xlvii), noting that a stick that tapers considerably at the ends is called endaslepp[ur], suggests that the poem from which these lines derive was called Oddmjór because it was thought endasleppt, that is, abrupt in its ending. Skj assigns the poem to the tenth century, and it is placed as the first of the anonymous poems in this volume because of its association with Haraldr hárfagri, and because its date and circumstances of composition are unknown. However, it cannot plausibly be dated earlier than the eleventh century or later than the twelfth (since Ágr dates from the late twelfth): see the Notes to [All] and l. 3 below.