Serenius, Bertelsen och Bay. Förlagor och förebilder i den tidiga engelskspråkiga lexikografin i Skandinavien

Abstract

The Scandinavian languages, Danish, Norwegian and Swedish, have a lot in common and emerge from the same roots. The cultural and historical backgrounds of the three countries are very much the same, and it should not come as a surprise that early lexicography in the Scandinavian countries also have a great deal in common. Nevertheless, the history of lexicography is often treated separately for each country, even though you would probably get a very interesting picture of the growth of lexicography in Scandinavia by examining it across the borders.
This paper is a small attempt to show what such an approach could result in. It deals with the first Scandinavian English-Danish and English-Swedish dictionaries from the 18th century. A comparison between the dictionaries involved, shows a great deal of resemblance between the Danish dictionaries and the Swedish one, which is the older of them. No doubt, the Danish lexicographers have used the Swe-dish dictionary for their own purposes, something which earlier researchers have not noticed. The comparison gives a hint of what could be found in a more systematic investigation of early Scandinavian lexicography, something which no doubt would be of great interest for our lexicographical history.