(Old Eng.; Old Norse skop: ‘mocking’; Old Swedish skiup: ‘contumely’).
A poet or singer. The word may be derived from the proto-Germanic skopon (‘dance’), suggesting that the scop originally danced as well as sang. Late Latin sources record that the Germanic tribes had professional singers who accompanied themselves on the harp; the singers served as tribal historians, entertainers and teachers, and also composed satirical verses. Old English and Anglo-Latin literature provides further information about the scop. Widsith mentions that kings rewarded scops' performances, and the scop in Beowulf is a nobleman.
Fragments of lap harps or lyres have been discovered in burial mounds at Sutton Hoo and Taplow Barrow in England, but it is unclear whether they were used to accompany all poetic recitation. In Beowulf the sound of the harp and the clear song of the scop are heard in Hrothgar's hall; however, the use of parallelism in Old English poetry makes it possible to interpret the lines as saying either that the harp accompanied the scop's performance or that the performance of harp music was separate. Bede's Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum states that Caedmon left the table when he was supposed to perform verses accompanied by the harp, but that he composed poetry without musical accompaniment for the angel who came to him in a vision. Both the Scop's method of playing the harp and the nature of the accompaniment (if any) are disputed. Some sources refer to playing with the hand, and some indicate that a plectrum (sceacol) was used. Since extant Old English poetry is formulaic, it may have had a somewhat monotonous melodic accompaniment such as that provided by the gusle in contemporary south Slavic poetry. Other theories hold that the harp provided a rhythmic base without melody, or that the harp was plucked only during ‘rests’ in the poem.
L.F. Anderson: The Anglo-Saxon Scop (diss., U. of Toronto, 1902)
J.B. Bessinger: ‘Beowulf and the Harp at Sutton Hoo’, University of Toronto Quarterly, xxvii (1957), 148–68
C.L. Wrenn: ‘Two Anglo-Saxon Harps’, Comparative Literature, xiv (1962), 118–28
E. Werlich: Der westgermanische Skop: der Aufbau seiner Dichtung und sein Vortrag (diss., U. of Münster, 1964)
J.B. Bessinger: ‘The Sutton Hoo Harp Replica and Old English Musical Verse’, Old English Poetry: Fifteen Essays, ed. R.P. Creed (Providence, RI, 1967), 3–26
I.M. Hollowell: ‘Scop and Woðbora in OE Poetry’, Journal of English and Germanic Philology, lxxvii (1978), 317–29
ALEXANDRA H. OLSEN