Theories
Loki's origins and role in Norse mythology have been much debated by scholars. In 1835, Jacob Grimm was first to produce a major theory about Loki, in which he advanced the notion of Loki as a "god of fire". In 1889, Sophus Bugge theorized Loki to be variant of Lucifer of Christian mythology, an element of Bugge's larger effort to find a basis of Christianity in Norse mythology. After World War II, four scholarly theories dominated. The first of the four theories is that of Folke Ström, who in 1956 concluded that Loki is a hypostasis of the god Odin. In 1959, Jan de Vries theorized that Loki is a typical example of a trickster figure. In 1961, by way of excluding all non-Scandinavian mythological parallels in her analysis, Anna Birgitta Rooth concluded that Loki was originally a spider. Anne Holtsmark, writing in 1962, concluded that no conclusion could be made about Loki.
Regarding scholarship on Loki, scholar Gabriel Turville-Petre comments (1964) that "more ink has been spilled on Loki than on any other figure in Norse myth. This, in itself, is enough to show how little scholars agree, and how far we are from understanding him."
In her review of scholarly discourse involving Loki, scholar Stefanie von Schnurbein (2000) comments that "Loki, the outsider in the Northern Germanic pantheon, confounds not only his fellow deities and chronicler Snorri Sturluson but has occasioned as much quarrel among his interpreters. Hardly a monography, article, or encyclopedic entry does not begin with the reference to Loki as a staggeringly complex, confusing, and ambivalent figure who has been the catalyst of countless unresolved scholarly controversies and has elicited more problems than solutions".
Read more about this topic: Loki? (album)
Famous quotes containing the word theories:
“We do not talk—we bludgeon one another with facts and theories gleaned from cursory readings of newspapers, magazines and digests.”
—Henry Miller (1891–1980)
“The real trouble about women is that they must always go on trying to adapt themselves to men’s theories of women, as they always have done. When a woman is thoroughly herself, she is being what her type of man wants her to be. When a woman is hysterical it’s because she doesn’t quite know what to be, which pattern to follow, which man’s picture of woman to live up to.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)
“The theories and speculations of men concern us more than their puny accomplishment. It is with a certain coldness and languor that we loiter about the actual and so-called practical.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)