Now perhaps we are in a better position to understand why the Heroic Age ends when it does. The latest person mentioned in the heroic poems is Alboin who died about 572. The last Roman author who mentions Teutonic court-minstrelsy is Venantius Fortunatus, who wrote apparently about ten years later. Is there a connection between these two facts? It should be remembered that we have felt some hesitation in including Alboin among the characters of the Heroic Age, for though his praises were sung among the Saxons and Bavarians, as well as in England, he does not figure in any widely known story. We may reasonably expect that such stories would as a rule—not necessarily—require a certain time in which to be elaborated. Is it possible that in Alboin's time the conditions favourable to such elaboration were no longer in existence—that court-minstrelsy was dying out or had lost its creative power?
It will perhaps be urged that the absence of reference to court-minstrelsy after Venantius' time may be due to mere accident. But a short consideration of the political position will show that there is good reason for thinking otherwise. During the period which had elapsed since the time of Priscus and Sidonius—we may say roughly about a century and a quarter—the Teutonic world had undergone great changes. Many kingdoms had disappeared, among them those of the Huns, Rugii, Heruli, Alamanni, Thuringians, Burgundians, Vandals and Ostrogoths, and probably also the Warni and Gepidae. Of the nations which survived the Visigoths and Langobardi, and to a large extent the Franks also, were settled among alien peoples and thus exposed to denationalising influences. This is partly true also of the Bavarians, and they moreover had become subject to the Franks before the middle of the sixth century. Probably the only other Teutonic kingdoms which remained on the Continent were those of the Frisians and the Danes, for there is no evidence that the Old Saxons were under kingly government at this time[138]. Moreover the Danes were almost cut off from the western peoples by the irruption of the Slavs who now occupied the greater part of ancient Germany. Hence we may conclude that even if court-minstrelsy survived in a few places the poems had now no longer any chance of obtaining a wide international circulation.
The change of faith is of course another consideration which must be taken into account. One of its effects was to cut off the Christian kingdoms from those of the Frisians and Danes. Probably also it had an adverse influence on the cultivation of court-minstrelsy, for there can be little doubt that this was originally permeated by heathen ideas. At all events we find in later times surprisingly few traces of heroic poetry in the territories of the Franks, Visigoths and Langobardi.
Of the purely Teutonic kingdoms, excluding Denmark, that of the Frisians was the last to retain both its independence and its religion. It can hardly be due to accident therefore that some of the most important of the heroic poems, such as Kûdrûn (cf. p. [34]) and probably also the Norse version of the story of Sigurðr (cf. p. [59]), appear to be derived from Frisian sources, though this region was not their original home. Further, we have noticed that in Frisian law a special compensation was fixed for injury done to the hand of a harpist. Still more significant is the fact that in the passage quoted above (p. [80]) from the Vita Liudgeri, describing Bernlef's skill in reciting heroic poetry, one text adds the words more gentis suae. It would seem then that minstrelsy of this type was regarded as a distinctive characteristic of the Frisians and that heroic poetry retained its hold upon them at a time when it was little known elsewhere.
In England the conditions appear to have been quite different from those with which we have been dealing, for at the end of the sixth century this country probably contained more Teutonic kingdoms than did the whole of western and central Europe. We have seen reason for believing that Beowulf was composed within about half a century of Venantius' time and that the other heroic poems may date from the same period. From the evidence which we have discussed above we should naturally conclude that court-minstrelsy lasted somewhat longer in England than elsewhere, although it dealt entirely with stories derived from abroad. It is true that there is no external evidence for such minstrelsy; but that is fully explained by the fact that we have practically no literature of any kind before the last decades of the seventh century. Most probably its extinction was due to that wave of religious fervour which was started by the Kentish king Erconberht and which in the course of the following half century seems to have succeeded in enforcing conformity to the new faith throughout the whole country.
It will be convenient now to consider briefly the court-poetry of the Viking Age. The history of heroic poetry in the North unfortunately cannot be traced in its entire course. We have seen that there is a long gap, extending over some two centuries and a half, in Danish tradition, and also that the poems which have come down to us are probably all of Norse (Norwegian-Icelandic) origin. Yet the social conditions of the Viking Age were very different from those which prevailed on the Continent during the same period and unquestionably nearer than the latter to those of the Heroic Age. It is not unreasonable therefore to expect that the court-poetry of the Viking Age may throw light on the earlier period.
We saw in an earlier chapter (p. [15] f.) that, apart from the Edda, Old Norse literature is rich in narrative poems of the ninth and tenth centuries. These are usually the work of known authors and deal for the most part with contemporary persons and events, though they contain frequent references to characters of the Heroic Age, as well as to the ancestors of reigning princes. Many of the authors, such as Thióðolfr of Hvín, Thórbiörn Hornklofi and Goððormr Sindri, were what we may call court-minstrels—or rather court-poets, for the harp seems not to have been used by such persons, at least in the latter part of the Viking Age. But they can scarcely be regarded as professionals in any strict sense of the term. As a rule they appear to have been men of good family. Thióðolfr was a familiar friend of Harold the Fair-haired, who entrusted him with the education of one of his sons. Goððormr Sindri, who composed poems for the same king, refused to receive any reward and had sufficient influence with Harold to insist on his being reconciled with his son Halfdan Svarti. Another poet of the same period, Einarr[139], commonly called Torf-Einarr, was earl of Orkney and practically an independent prince. Eyvindr Skaldaspillir, who was attached to the service of Haakon I and Haakon, earl of Lade, was himself a descendant of Harold the Fair-haired.
It has been mentioned that from the middle of the tenth century onwards most of the poems quoted in the sagas are of Icelandic authorship. A considerable number of them may be regarded as court-poems, since they were composed in honour of princes whom the authors were visiting at the time. As an example we may take a verse quoted by Gunnlaugs Saga Ormstungu (cap. 7) from the poem composed by the hero, when he visited London in 1001: "The whole nation reveres England's generous ruler as a god; all ranks, warrior prince and people alike, bow down to Aethelred." Such poems were often handsomely rewarded. Aethelred presented Gunnlaugr with a scarlet cloak, lined with fur and embroidered with lace, while Sigtryggr, king of Dublin, gave him a fur-lined cloak, a lace-embroidered tunic and a gold ring which weighed a mark. It happened very frequently that men like Gunnlaugr would enter a king's retinue and remain with him for months and even years. But they would seldom consent to recognise any lordship permanently, since as a rule they had lands of their own in Iceland, to which they eventually returned.
It is hardly probable that any class of persons exactly corresponding to this existed in the Heroic Age itself, for with the somewhat doubtful exception of the Old Saxons we have no evidence for independent commonwealths during that period. In Widsith, it is true, we have the case of a minstrel who claims to have wandered far and wide and to have visited many princes by whom, like Gunnlaugr, he was handsomely rewarded. But Widsith had a lord at home to whom he subsequently returned. Indeed the introduction, if we may use it as an authority, seems to make him set out at first on a definite commission from that prince. The permanent lordless state was probably altogether foreign to the conditions of the Heroic Age. The lordless man in the poems is either one who has lost his lord, as in the Wanderer, or one who has been dismissed from his lord's service, like Deor. Until he finds another lord he has neither home nor security, and his condition is pitiable in the extreme.