Scops were professional poets that brought the epic poems to life. Playing harp, the scop would chant in a clear voice that carried over the shouts and laughter of the crowd, captivating them for hours on end with tales of courage, high drama, and tragedy. These epic poems were an oral art form: memorized and performed, not written down. Later, literacy spread through Britain, and poems were more likely to be recorded. Thus, only a fraction of Anglo-Saxon poetry has survived, in manuscripts produced centuries after the poems were originally composed.
