But it is by no means so clear how the court-minstrels of the Heroic Age differed from the Norwegian poets of the Viking Age. In Kûdrûn the minstrel Hôrant (Heorrenda) seems to hold a position quite comparable with that of Thióðolfr or Goððormr Sindri; indeed he is even described as a relative (mâc) of the king[140]. Again, we may take the case of Starkaðr. He is commonly regarded as the type of a roving poet-warrior of the Viking Age. But in reality he seems to belong to the Heroic Age; for however late the poems attributed to him may be in their final form, they had their counterparts in England probably as early as the sixth century. There is no conclusive evidence for denying either that he was the foster-father of Ingialdr (Ingeld) or that he entered the service of a number of different kings.
The story of Starkaðr is bound up with the history of heroic poetry in the Viking Age—a difficult problem, to which we shall have to refer again shortly. We may note here however that the poems of Thióðolfr and Hornklofi must have been preserved for some three centuries by oral tradition before they were committed to writing. There seems to be no reason therefore for denying in principle the possibility that poems may have survived even from the Heroic Age. It is to be observed that court-poets were expected to be able to recite old poems, as well as works of their own composition. Thus on the morning of the battle of Stiklestad (A.D. 1030) St Olaf ordered the Icelander Thórmóðr Kolbrúnarskald to recite the old Biarkamál. This story is interesting as it shows that the love of the heroic poems was strong enough to assert itself in an hour of supreme danger and under a most religious king.
In the course of this chapter we have seen that one of the characteristics of the Heroic Age was the prevalence of court-minstrelsy of a certain type, namely the recitation of metrical speeches accompanied by the harp. The cultivation of such minstrelsy seems to have been more or less general, and it is certain that princes had their praises and exploits celebrated in poems of this kind during their lifetime and even in their presence. But with the close of the Heroic Age the evidence for minstrelsy of this type apparently ceases altogether. In the eighth century we hear only of wandering minstrels who are invited into houses or perform in the streets. The minstrelsy of this period seems not to have been creative. At all events it deals only with characters belonging to former times, Ingeld or Alboin or ancient kings in general. Between these two periods we have to set the composition of the English heroic poems and probably also those German poems which were regarded as ancient in Charlemagne's time. Lastly, we find in Germany a series of poems dating from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries in which the old stories are treated again but in a new form.
It appears then that the history of heroic poetry falls naturally into four stages. To Stage I belong the court-poems of the Heroic Age itself; to Stage II the epic and narrative poems based on these; to Stage III the popular poetry of the eighth and following centuries; to Stage IV the German poems of the twelfth and following centuries, composed at a time when heroic subjects had again come into favour with the higher classes.
To Stage I we may assign not only laudatory poems dealing with the victories and valour of living princes, but also such compositions as Gelimer's dirge and choric songs like the funeral chant over Attila[141]. From this stage probably nothing has come down to us—though it would be difficult to point out any essential difference between Gelimer's dirge and the Elegy of Deor. We can form an idea however of these earliest poems from the poetry of the Viking Age, which seems to have been composed under very similar conditions. As instances we may cite Gunnlaugr's poem on Aethelred II (cf. p. [91] f.) and Eyvindr's poem on the death of Haakon I, which we shall have to discuss later.
Stage II is represented by the Anglo-Saxon poems, which are clearly products of court-life, as we have seen (p. [81] ff.). From its general resemblance to these it seems probable that the Hildebrandslied belongs to the same class. Some writers draw a distinction between Beowulf and Waldhere on the one hand and Finn and the Hildebrandslied on the other, classifying the former as epics and the latter as lays (Lieder). It may be granted that the style of the two latter poems appears to be more rapid and less diffuse than that of the others. Still I should prefer to speak of short and long epics, or rather perhaps of short and long narrative poems. Very probably the earliest narrative poems were comparatively short. It may be that poems on the scale of Beowulf were first composed in England—though this can hardly be proved. But the difference between the two classes seems to me to be one of degree and not of kind. At all events no one will suggest that the Hildebrandslied is even approximately contemporaneous with the events which it professes to describe. One would expect it to be at least as remote from them as is the case with Beowulf.
Stage III is directly represented only by certain ballads such as the Seyfridslied, which in their present form date from a time considerably later than the poems belonging to Stage IV. Much indirect evidence however can be obtained from various sources of earlier date, e.g. from Thiðreks Saga af Bern, which is largely based on the popular heroic poetry of northern Germany, and from parts of Saxo's History which seem to be derived from Danish ballads. So far as we can judge from our authorities the popular poems seem to have differed in many ways from those which we have been discussing. They tended to simplify complex stories by the loss of minor characters and to amalgamate stories which were originally quite unconnected. Again, they appear to have had a preference for biographical sketches, whereas the court poems are usually occupied with accounts of adventures which lasted only a few days. We may add also the absence of any detailed acquaintance with court-life and a general approximation to the characteristics of folk-tales, e.g. in the introduction of nameless characters and persons of humble station.
It must be remembered of course that our authorities knew the popular poems only as they existed in the twelfth century[142]. We cannot say with any confidence that Bernlef's poems possessed the same characteristics. There is nothing to show that the Hildebrandslied was written down before his time, and it may be to persons of his type that we owe its preservation. The Anglo-Saxon poems may not have been committed to writing till a still later period. All that we can say is that they show no obvious signs of popular corruption and that their diction is much more archaic than that of poems which were composed in the eighth century. We have seen that in Iceland poems of a rather elaborate type could be preserved by oral tradition for over three centuries. This however was in a community which was largely given up to the cultivation of poetry. A knowledge of the old poems would be a necessary part of the training of those who hoped to win rewards for their art in foreign courts. Such favourable conditions can hardly have existed either in England or Germany. The process of disintegration which the poems underwent in the latter country points to their being preserved only by village minstrels, who as time went on became less and less expert in their profession.
Stage IV is represented by the Middle High German epic poems, which both in form and spirit show all the characteristics of the age in which they were composed. In England this stage was never reached. There may have been a revival of interest in heroic poetry during the ninth and tenth centuries, but we have no evidence for the composition of new poems on these subjects.