Courtly Bards Defined Northern Europe's Cultural Past

This book focuses on the militarily victorious English, French, Flemish and Dutch courts during the time between 1200 and 1350.  It does not cover the courts in the oppressed Celtic and mid-European lands, nor the later post-Viking courts in Christian ruled and oppressed Norse lands. It shows how the court evolved around the household of the lord and lady. It goes into courtly  patronage of various arts, rituals, ceremonies. It also shows how the various courts of the region were connected culturally and socially so that changes in style or attitude could spread from one court to the next.

European Bardic/Minstrel Culture 800-1350 CE

(July 2, 2023, updated December 26, 2024) Most European culture and the standard writing style of their native languages was created by the stories composed and written down by court bards of medieval times. They all drew on past traditions to comment on the present time in the form of entertaining stories. These commentaries ranged from propaganda for their employing lord to subtle nationalist resistances against the the existing order. Various names have been applied to them. These are some (Dyfn Pencerdd April 2014)  : 

  1. Ireland: file (higher status than a bard; poet and seer. Pronounced ‘feel-uh) seanchaí/shanachie (storyteller; later-period successor to the fili) - 800's to 1300's (started by Viking raiding, amplified by Norman conquest, ended by Black Death) 
  2. Anglo-Saxon: scop (pronounced shawp), glēoman (socially inferior to the scop) - c 800's onward (started by Viking raiding and conquest, never ended as it led to Chaucer's Canterbury Tales written around 1390 and then developed into theater companies epitomized by Shakespeare)
  3. Wales: pencerdd (chief bard, pronounced pen-kerth), bardd teulu (poet of a warband or lord’s household), cerddor (wandering bard) - 800's to 1300's (started by Viking raiding, amplified by Norman conquest, ended by Black Death. This led to the King Arthur tales) 
  4. Scotland: makar (sparce examples from later period because bards were considered troublemaker by the lords)
  5. German: minnesinger - 1100's to 1300's (started by Northern Crusades, ended by Black Death)
  6. Scandinavia: skald - 800's to 1300's (started by Viking raiding, amplified by Northern crusades, ended by Black Death) 
  7. France: Minstrel (originally a court singer; later a wandering musician, female version is a trobairitz), jongleur (sometimes used to denote performer who didn’t compose), trouvères (northern France equivalent of troubadour), troubadour  - 1100's to 1300's (started by English-French wars instigated by Norman conquest of England, ended by Black Death) 

The more nationalistic bards commenting against the existing orders began using complex language forms based upon old Druid Akkadian phrases which they hid within epic romance and adventure stories. These are like using Latin or Greek derived phrases for names which moderns use to form new scientific labels instead of names for people, deities, and monsters in epic tales). Such even is the case for the word "Bard." It probably derives from the Akkadian phrase BaRu.Du meaning "Seer of life." via Gaulish which also was the source for the Greek bardos and Latin bardus,  https://www.etymonline.com/word/bard

The most popular stories were commissioned by medieval wealthy nobles to be written down on vellum in the local native language. These written tales essentially defined the standard literary forms of the native local spoken languages of that era in a way similar to how Shakespeare and the King James Bible defined modern English. More general writing for the public only began after the invention of the printing press and cheap paper in 1450.

Bards had great respect among the Welsh but were generally held in contempt by the Scots who considered them itinerant troublemakers. Ironically, they were subsequently idealized by the early Scottish novelist and poet Sir Walter Scott (1771 – 1832) as being the first modern poets and singer. Scott is best known for his novel Ivanhoe (1820). 

References

Dyfn Pencerdd (April 2014) The Role of the Bard in the Early Middle Ages, 3rd version. Online at: https://nebula.wsimg.com/f6efc7abb5663b38f8741c2aac20ca1f?AccessKeyId=1C471931B3C94F6BBDFA&disposition=0&alloworigin=1

Culture is Primarily a Linguistic Phenomena

(October 6, 2023, Updated December 25, 2025) Language defines cultural groups. Language defines who can easily interact with who. Material traditions traceable by archaeologist tend to be more transient, more local, and tend to subdivide cultural groups. When the Indo-European invaders settled down in Europe around 2000 BCE five major mixed and rather imprecise proto-cultures emerged from different mixings of the native Druidic with the Indo-European cultures. The purely Druid cultures (Minoan, Etruscan, Phoenician, Israelite) survived temporarily on the periphery. These new mixed cultures were:

  1. Celtic (red) 
  2. Nordic (blue)
  3. Slavic (yellow)
  4. Mycenean (orange).
  5. Latin (green)

The mixed cultures developed along major riverine trading networks. Trade naturally linked people together. The Celts originated around the Danube/Rhine corridor and the English and Irish channels, The Nordic (Norse/Germans) originated around the Scandinavian coastline and rivers of the Elbe, Oder, and Vistula. The Slavonic people originated along the Dnieper and Don rivers and the Black Sea coastline. The Myceneans (Hellenes/Greeks) originated along the Greek rivers and the Aegean sea. 

Yet on top of the developing native cultures and their spoken languages were the written languages of empire (ultimately Latin and Greek), long distance trade (initially Akkadian using the Phoenician letter style), and religion (Akkadian using a variety of letter styles because it was initially European wide).  

Yet on top of the core Druid religion and culture was developing new local personified deities as Indo-European traditions were gradually merged into Druid. Druidry and the original Indo-European religion were perceptheistic meaning divine powers could be clustered and perceived in any way, including being perceived as humans and with the personification of deities now common this was being done often. Often these new deities were describe by short phrases of Druid Akkadian which eventually became words in the newly emerging local spoken languages. These new deities were given their final form by the bardic tales which emerged during the middle ages. These became the Celtic, Norse/Germanic, and Slavic deities.