AN ICELANDIC-ENGLISH DICTIONARY.*
IT is one of the privileges of a wealthily-endowed university to -.further the cause of learning by such well-placed munificence as * An Icelandic-English Dictionary. Based on the MB. Collection of the tale Richard easby; Enlarged and Completed. By Cludbrand Vigoason, MA. With an Intro- . Alnaton and Life of Richard Cleasby by G. W. Daeent, D.C.L. London: macminan.
has encouraged the production of this magnificent work. The Royal grants which Continental savants avail themselves of, scanty sums by which specialists such as Fausboll contrive to live, with freedom enough to pursue their unremunerative but price- less studies, do not wait upon scholars here in England ; and more and more, as the press of business forces all men into the hopeless grooves of daily drudgery, it is well that the half- dozen exceptional men who can do nothing but read Pali, or decipher Byzantine Greek MSS., or spell out the dark sayings of Runic writers, should have one haven in this frenzied money-mart, where they may live outside the world that so cordially mistrusts and misunderstands them. Such a haven the British Museum ought to be, and such the University of Oxford is, and it is only perhaps there that such a work as is now before us—so sumptuous in its appearance, so scholarly in its contents, so extremely valuable to students, and yet so certain not to be a monetary success—could be produced. It will be a lasting honour to the University if it retains its far-sighted munificence in matters of this kind, and is ready to risk its ample funds in great undertakings in philology and science. Vigfusson's Dictionary does not come before it was needed. Thirty years ago "to read Icelandic was to read a language without a dictionary," for the only respectable one was that of Bjorn Hallthirsson, a book of extremely little value. At the very time, 1840, that Cleasby, in Copenhagen, was laying down the plan of the present work, the learned and laborious Egilsson was begin- ning his excellent Lexicon Poeticum, a dictionary of the poetical words found in the Staves and Sagas. This work has been pub- lished for many years, and all the gaps in the philology of the North are now finally filled up by the exhaustive lexicon before us, founded on the papers of the late Richard Cleasby, and built up by Mr. Vigfusson with untiring zeal and ability.
The first embryonic hint of the coming work is found in Cleasby's "Diary," for the 10th of January, 1840, about two months before he had begun to read Icelandic with Konrad Gislason ; and on that day occurs this prophetic entry :—"Talked with Rafn about editing an Icelandic Dictionary." Cleasby was then in Copenhagen, busy in the midst of literary amusement, studying philology, surrounded by such friends as Molbech, Oehlenschlmger, Finn Magnusen, Rafn, and Bronsted. Fortu- nately for us and for the learned world, to none of these men, but to their English guest, did the idea occur of com- piling a lexicon that should at last place the glorious primitive language of Northern Europe within the grasp of students. On the 18th of April, intentions grew to deeds. "Bought four reams of paper," says the "Diary." For a long while Gislason seems to have been the chief amanuensis, but in August we come across another since-famous name, Pjeturson, who travels with Cleasby to Germany and England. Cleasby found the work far more absorbing than he had anticipated. In April, 1841, he writes :—" I have been toiling very hard in the Icelandic field all this winter, and am not a little exhausted. The further I get from the beginning, the further I seem to be from the end ; but in time, I suppose the perspective will change." From this time the years passed in the usual manner with Cleasby ; hectic rushing all over Europe, much drinking of abominable waters, herb-teas, and loathsome vegetable preparations ; incessant travelling, while the work of the Dictionary slackened in the hands of the amanuenses, four in number at last, only to quicken again when the ubiquitous master flew back to his home in Copenhagen. Every year the shattered health of Cleasby threatened more and more to prostrate him, but the indomitable hero persevered. Of all modern men, he most resembled in temper of mind Mr. Browning's " Grammarian ;--
" This man determined not to live, but know," might well be said of him, as death slowly grasped him point by point, he still wrestling to the last with his Icelandic Dictionary. The last entry in the "Diary" refers to his life's work. On the 6th of October, 1847, he passed away, at Copenhagen, dying truly in harness, with the fragments of his gigantic labour spread around him. Such was the end of a life that Dr. Dasent records in the most charming manner and with affectionate enthusiasm. It was at first intended that Gislason and Krieger should continue the Dictionary together, but the Danish atmosphere did not seem to conduce to the health of so vast an undertaking ; the Delegates of the Oxford University Press were induced to inter- . est themselves in its fate, aud after several years Cleasby's MSS. were forwarded from Copenhagen to Oxford. It proved that they were far too fragmentary and too chaotic for any ordi- nary editor to grapple with, and the University was truly for- tunate in being able to secure the services of the most thorough
scholar of Old Scandinavian now existing, Mr. Gudbrand Vigfusson, then engaged in the Arna Magnaean Library at Copenhagen. Mr. Vigfusson found himself obliged to rewrite and remodel the whole of the materials, and in fact, as Dr. Dasent says, "the Dictionary as it now stands is far more the work of Vigfusson than of Cleasby ; but if the dead take heed of aught here below, it must be a consolation to the spirit of Richard Cle,asby to know that the work which he so boldly projected has at last been worthily completed, though by other hands."
The language we call Icelandic, but which is more accurately known in the North itself as Olditordisk, or Old Scandinavian, was not confined to the island where its most brilliant emanations were written, but in heathen times was the speech of all Scandi- navia, from Slesvig to the uttermost part of Sweden, from the west coast of Iceland to the Baltic. It bore different names in different places ; in Dentnark it was called Ddnsk ttinga, or Danish tongue; in Norway, Nornena, or the Norse tongue ; in Iceland, Vor tinge, "our tongue," or simply, Iceland°. But in all its phases it remained essentially the same. It was the language that the Aesir brought with them, in the remote times when that after- wards-deified race drove out the Fins, much as the Anglo-Saxons dispossessed the Britons among ourselves. The old Icelandic lan- guage is conspicuous for its singular purity and wealth of expres- sion, the Homeric force of its words, and a polish of form that is truly unusual in a primitive language of this kind. It possesses far more power and fullness than the modern branches that have usurped its place in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark. That the language, though somewhat modified, still lives in Iceland, gives the philologist an unusually good opportunity of studying its forms and development. Yet, until Rask brought out his Icelandic-Danish Grammar in 1818, nothing of really scientific value had been produced, even in Scandinavia itself. In some respects, England is more fitted to appreciate the niceties of Icelandic idiom than Denmark or Sweden ; these modern Scan- dinavian tongues have suffered so much from the infusion of German roots and forms, that there are many words in Icelandic for which it is easier to give an English than a Danish equivalent. But Dr. Dasent shall give his own words on this matter. He is apologising, it must be remembered, for the appearance in English of the first great Old Scandinavian lexicon :— " Of all the kindred tongues, English, and that form of English which is called Lowland Scotch, has remained nearest in form, feeling, and often in vocabulary, to the Icelandic. As for German and French, with all their richness and facility, they cannot dispute the claims of English in this particular respect ; and this, no doubt, is owing, besides the natural and spiritual affinity existing between English and Ice- landic, to the flexibility of the former tongue, which enables her to make foreign words more thoroughly her own than any other language. The Danish, the Swedish, and the German, if we may be allowed the expression, swallow many foreign words, but they seem to want the power to digest and assimilate The courage of the Delegates of the Oxford Press in undertaking this work, and the care and time bestowed on printing it, will meet with their reward in the undoubted fact that they have not only given to the world one of the greatest helps to comparative philology that has ever appeared, but that this Dictionary is peculiarly a work to be published in England and by a great English University."
To these sentiments we give our most cordial assent. It would be needful to possess the learning of the compiler himself to dare to eulogise in full terms the results of Mr. Vigfusson's labours. Enough to say that when the two early parts, published in 1869 and 1871, appeared, the combined criticism of all the best scholars in Europe failed to expose any serious flaw in the conception or the execution of the work. For our own part, we confess that we have never been led to make use of a dictionary that equalled this in fullness of detail and clearness of plan, and many of the individual articles contain a wealth of suggestive allusion and in- teresting reference that make the book, as a whole, far more read- able than most novels. It is to be hoped that the University of °afoul will not fail to secure Mr. Vig,fusson's inestimable services in further literary and philological research.
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