Skapti Þóroddsson was an Icelandic lawspeaker

Lawspeaker

A lawspeaker is a unique Scandinavian legal office. It has its basis in a common Germanic oral tradition, where wise men were asked to recite the law, but it was only in Scandinavia that the function evolved into an office...

 and skald

Skald

The skald was a member of a group of poets, whose courtly poetry is associated with the courts of Scandinavian and Icelandic leaders during the Viking Age, who composed and performed renditions of aspects of what we now characterise as Old Norse poetry .The most prevalent metre of skaldic poetry is...

. He became lawspeaker in 1004, succeeding his uncle Grímr when the latter's voice failed him. He held office till his death in 1030, longer than anyone else. According to Íslendingabók

Íslendingabók

Íslendingabók, Libellus Islandorum or The Book of Icelanders is an historical work dealing with early Icelandic history. The author was an Icelandic priest, Ari Þorgilsson, working in the early 12th century. The work originally existed in two different versions but only the younger one has come...

he instituted judicial reform by establishing the "fifth court", a national court of appeals.

According to Skáldatal

Skáldatal

Skáldatal is a short prose work in Old Norse. It is preserved in two manuscripts: DG 11, or Codex Uppsaliensis, which is one of the four main manuscripts of the Prose Edda , and AM 761 a 4to , which also contains Skaldic poems...

, Skapti was a court poet of Hákon Sigurðarson but no details on that career are known. According to Heimskringla

Heimskringla

Heimskringla is the best known of the Old Norse kings' sagas. It was written in Old Norse in Iceland by the poet and historian Snorri Sturluson ca. 1230...

, he composed a poem on king Óláfr Haraldsson and sent his son Steinn to perform it for the king.

The only piece of poetry by Skapti which has come down to us is decidedly Christian and can not have been composed at Hákon's court. Snorri Sturluson

Snorri Sturluson

Snorri Sturluson was an Icelandic historian, poet, and politician. He was twice elected lawspeaker at the Icelandic parliament, the Althing...

 cites the following half-stanza by Skapti in a discussion of Christian kenning

Kenning

A kenning is a type of literary trope, specifically circumlocution, in the form of a compound that employs figurative language in place of a more concrete single-word noun. Kennings are strongly associated with Old Norse and later Icelandic and Anglo-Saxon poetry...

s in Skáldskaparmál

Skáldskaparmál

The second part of Snorri Sturluson's Prose Edda the Skáldskaparmál or "language of poetry" is effectively a dialogue between the Norse god of the sea, Ægir and Bragi, the god of poetry, in which both Norse mythology and discourse on the nature of poetry are intertwined...

.

Máttr es munka dróttins mestr ; aflar goð flestu ; Kristr skóp ríkr ok reisti Róms höll veröld alla. Finnur Jónsson's edition

The King of Monks is greatest Of might, for God all governs; Christ's power wrought this earth all, And raised the Hall of Rome. Brodeur's translation

Skapti is mentioned in some of the Icelanders' sagas

Icelanders' sagas

The Sagas of Icelanders —many of which are also known as family sagas—are prose histories mostly describing events that took place in Iceland in the 10th and early 11th centuries, during the so-called Saga Age. They are the best-known specimens of Icelandic literature.The Icelanders'...

, for example Njáls saga where he has a minor role.