A scop is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as "an Old English poet or minstrel." However, scops were simply so much more than that to the medieval world. They were the only means of entertainment for the people of the time. There was no television or Internet to escape to, and books were not readily available. Most medieval people in the eighth through twelfth centuries could not read or write,so the scops would tell amusing stories or tales of heroic deeds to the music of their harps. The stories would be chanted, giving great honor to those mentioned in the oral recitations, and the scop's song also provided a memory of the culture for those who would come after.

According to Kemp Malone, �At an early date Germanic kings began to keep professional poets.� (p.75) These scops would travel the kingdom, telling their stories and singing their songs. They would have a harp or later a lute; these were the tools of their trade. Creating worlds and places many Anglo- Saxons never saw because few people ever left the place they were born, scops were important fixtures to the medieval world. The scops opened up the outside world to medieval people and engaged the imagination too.

In Beowulf, scops are mentioned in recounting Beowulf�s deeds and amusing the men in the mead- halls. Like courtly fools, they would make their audience laugh. However, unlike the fools or court jesters, a scop was not there merely to entertain. They were a living history of the times and places of the past and present. Their ability to memorize many lines of poetry or stories has kept them alive throughout the ages so that we still have them today. The stories were sometimes embellished and altered to be more interesting to the listeners. For example, in Beowulf, there is the story of our hero fighting sea monsters as he swims across an ocean and spending seven days and night in the cold sea.

�The Wanderer� is a tale that mostly likely would have been recited by a scop. The stories that the scops would tell often were elegies for the heroic dead. There would also be a moral or message about the future or how a good person or warrior should act or behave in Anglo- Saxon society. They celebrated the hardships of the hero, knowing that his heroic life and death would secure his place in Valhalla. In �The Wanderer,� an old thane must wander the earth in search of a new lord after his lord dies. The story speaks of the stoic attitude that all Anglo- Saxons warriors must possess to be brave and honored by their peers:

In a time when books were scarce and survival was not a certainty, these scops provided an outlet of entertainment and knowledge. They enlightened and lightened the otherwise gloomy �Dark Ages.� The scops continued a beautiful tradition started by the earliest civilizations of passing on legends and the history of many different people, orally. Without them, much medieval history we know today would have been destroyed or forgotten.