The poem’s anonymous singer in Heorot is called a scop.
In Old English, a scop was a court poet or singer who performed traditional stories, heroic legends, and praise poetry for a lord and his retainers. Beowulf describes Hrothgar’s scop entertaining the assembled Danes in the mead hall, likely with vocal performance accompanied by a harp or similar instrument.
The word is often translated as “bard,” but bard is a broader modern label rather than the poem’s specific Old English term. A skald was a comparable Scandinavian poet, especially in later Norse tradition, while a griot belongs to West African oral-history traditions. Those figures may be useful comparisons, but they are not the title used in Beowulf.
The scop’s role also helps explain how heroic stories could circulate before being written down. The surviving Beowulf manuscript is anonymous, and the poem’s depiction of performance gives readers a glimpse of the cultural setting in which such material was remembered, shaped, and recited.