A Bibliography of Danish and Swedish Dictionaries, together with a Brief Account of Danish Lexicography

Abstract

As a science develops, the necessity for some methodical record of its literature becomes more and more felt. The annual book-lists published by scientific journals and societies as well as the more extensive bibliographies in all departments of learning, give ample proof of this fact. In the Scandinavian group of languages, Theodore Möbius has performed an admirable task in cataloguing the works relating to the Icelandic language and literature, while Chr. Bruun, the Librarian of the Royal Library, at Copenhagen, is at present engaged on a far more extensive treatment of the Danish side. The latter work, however, by reason of its very completeness, including as it will the whole range of Danish investigation, will not supply exactly the need met by Möbius’ less pretentious but more accessible list. The subjects of the language and literature, too, have not yet been reached and several years will elapse before the completion of the book. The object of the present paper is to give such information respecting the development and the present state of Danish lexicography as may be of practical use, especially to the foreign student of the Danish language. Keeping the practical always in view, I shall give only a very slight description of the earlier dictionaries, confining myself chiefly to such works as are of general use. Before beginning the account, a few words of explanation respecting the bibliographical lists may not be considered inappropriate. In the classification I have striven after consistency, but in some few cases this was found to be impossible, as with the first class of Danish dictionaries, to which Wandal's ‘Catalogus’ does not properly belong. Technical dictionaries, of which there are comparatively few in either Danish or Swedish, are, for sake of convenience, classified with the Fremmedordböger (Dictionaries of foreign words.) This classification is the more defensible in that the same work occasionally combines the characteristics of both. Of international dictionaries I have given only those in the principal languages, French, German and English, and the two former have been grouped together. In every doubtful case the preference has been given to Danish, so that Danish-Swedish and Swedish-Danish dictionaries will be found in the Danish list, as also Danish-Swedish-German, etc