Finnur Jónsson described Hallvarðr's poetic expressions as strong but not very original and the surviving verses as formally quite good but not very individual in character. Despite this, he noted that one of Hallvarðr's poems has an apparently new kenning for the breast (as seat of emotion and thought), based on the new religion; "the ship of prayer". Roberta Frank is more positive, describing Hallvarðr's poetry as "skaldic verse at its richest and most allusive, a startling blend of Christian and pagan imagery like that carved on the Gosforth cross."Frank 1994:121.
