Talk:Sophus Bugge

Untitled
Sophus Bugge born Jan. 5, 1833, Lurvik, Nor. died July 8, 1907, Kristiania

philologist who pioneered in the collection and study of Norwegian folk songs, gathered a massive quantity of ancient Norwegian inscriptions, and prepared what is considered to be one of the most outstanding critical editions of the Poetic Edda, the 13th-century Icelandic collection of heroic and mythological poetry. His edition of Old Norse folk songs appeared in 1858.

Professor of comparative philology and Old Norse at the University of Christiania (Oslo) from 1866, he published Norraen fornkvaedi, his edition of the Edda, in 1867. He maintained that the songs of the Edda and the earlier sagas were largely founded on Christian and Latin tradition imported to Scandinavia by way of England. Publication of his monumental edition of inscriptions began in 1891. His writings also include Helgedigtene i den aeldre Edda (1896; The Home of the Eddic Poems).

Rosy but Misleading
This article currently paints a very rosy picture of Bugge's legacy in Germanic philology. The reality is a little different. While Bugge certainly made some important contributions, he also promoted a lot of, well, indefensible linguistic speculation about theonyms, seeming to claim that just about every element of Norse mythology as we know it is some kind of warped version of Greek mythology or Christianity-via-English. Nowadays this stuff is generally ridiculed or plainly ignored but this article needs to talk about it nonetheless. I believe Simek has an entry on it. &#58;bloodofox: (talk) 19:12, 24 May 2016 (UTC)