Georges Dumézils position i religionsforskningen siden 1994

Abstract

The following article is an attempt to reflect on the changes that have taken place within the History of Religions, concerning the theories of the French Historian of Religion, Georges Dumézil, since Hans Jørgen Lundager Jensen and I wrote a book with the title: Suveræniteten, kampen og frugtbarheden: Georges Dumézil og den indoeuropæiske ideologi in 1994. After briefly introducing the most important part of Dumézil’s theory, the tripartite ideology, it is stated that the importance of Dumézil appears to have decreased, at least within the study of pre-Christian Scandinavian religion. The reasons for that seem to me to be a decreasing interest within this field in three notions that were crucial to the project of Dumézil, namely continuity, comparativism, and structure, all of which regretfully appear less interesting today, not only within the field of Nordic religion, but probably also within the general humanistic field.