I came across this passage while idly discussing Norse myth with my wife.
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 Christianity, 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.[60]
…I personally feel that Anne Holtsmark was cheating a little, there.
Loki had a bit more edge to him then most trickster gods did. (If a bit less than Lucifer.) But he was a trickster, of that, there is no doubt.
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His capriciousness and destructiveness ties in nicely with the fire motif. Some of the stories about him don’t really fit it, but many fit it perfectly.
Of course, many also fit the ice motif. It’s just as fickle, and just as deadly.
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Of course, the surviving myths were generated over an unknown number of generations by an unknown number of skalds and priests. Unitary consistency would make me strongly suspect a hoax.
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I’m not really buying the spider concept. Patience is not Loki’s virtue. He is not a craftsman. Nor is he the type of trickster who preys on the predispositions of his target while he sets then up to trick themselves. Further, I don’t know of any Indo-European religions that even have a male spider god. (And the female spider gods are, at best, demigods. Mortals cursed by the gods.)
I just don’t see it.
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Anne is accurate. We don’t even know how much we don’t know. But that’s no reason to be a spoilsport and not speculate!
I picked the Spider bit mostly so that Loki will show up in the occasional Spider-Man flick, honestly.