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. 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. * * * * *