Scop

[1] Old English scop and its cognate Old High German scoph, scopf, scof (glossing poeta and vates; also poema) may be related to the verb scapan "to create, form" (Old Norse skapa, Old High German scaffan; Modern English shape), from Proto-Germanic *skapiz "form, order" (from a PIE *(s)kep- "cut, hack"), perfectly parallel to the notion of craftsmanship expressed by the Greek poetēs itself;[3] Köbler (1993, p. 220) suggests that the West Germanic word may indeed be a calque of Latin poeta.

The scholar of literature Seth Lerer suggests that "What we have come to think of as the inherently 'oral' quality of Old English Poetry ... [may] be a literary fiction of its own.

If, as some critics believe, the idea of the Anglo-Saxon oral poet is based on the Old Norse Skald, it can be seen as a link to the heroic past of the Germanic peoples.

There is no proof that the "scop" existed, and it could be a literary device allowing poetry to give an impression of orality and performance.

He writes that since all the material is traditional, the oral poet achieves mastery of alliterative verse when the use of descriptive half-line formulae has become "instinctive"; at that point he can compose "with and through the form rather than simply in it".

He discusses the poem's lines 867–874, which describe, in his prose gloss, "a man ... mindful of songs, who remembered a multitude of stories from the whole range of ancient traditions, found new words, properly bound together".