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Ormr Barreyjarskáld (or Barreyjaskáld) ‘Poet of Barra’ (ON Barrey, island in the Outer Hebrides) is known only from a single helmingr and a couplet preserved in mss of SnE (SnE 1998, I, 34 and 37) and from a reference in Þorgils saga ok Hafliða to a saga about Ormr recited by a priest, Ingimundr, at a wedding at Reykjahólar in 1119 (Stu 1946, I, 27; Brown 1952, 18). This saga is there said to have included vísur margar ‘many verses’ and to have had a good flokkr towards the end. It is not certain when Ormr lived; Skj B places him in the second half of the tenth century, while Faulkes suggests the tenth or eleventh centuries (SnE 1998, II, 498). It has been suggested (e. g. Skj, SnE 1998, II, 498) that he may have come from Orkney, although his nickname indicates the Hebrides, in which case a date in the eleventh century seems most likely. Frag 1 may indicate that Ormr was a Christian. The form of the first element of his nickname is often given in mss of SnE in the genitive plural Barreyja-, but he has conventionally been referred to by the singular form Barreyjar- ‘of Barra’.

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