From the history of Danish-Russian bilingual lexicography. Ivan Stscelkunoff (1870–1966) and his dictionary

Abstract

The first Danish-Russian dictionary (Dansk-Russisk Ordbog) was published in Denmark in 1949. Author Ivan Stchelkunoff was born in Copenhagen to a family that moved from Russia. He received a good education, studied at the prestigious Metropolitan School, then at the University of Copenhagen, majoring in Latin, Greek and English. In 1901–1910 he was an Orthodox deacon in Athens. The years after returning to Denmark until 1917 were very successful. He was priest of the Imperial Diplomatic Mission of Russia, priest of the Alexander Nevsky Church in Copenhagen. He implemented several projects related to Russia. He published a book based on the history of Russia, Letters of Empress Catherine to the Dowager Queen Juliane Maria, a translation of I. S. Turgenev’s novel The Day Before, Russian Textbook for Beginners, Russian Commercial Correspondence, and two pocket dictionaries: Danish-Russian and Russian- Danish. In the early 1920s he moved from Copenhagen to Bornholm, where he became a teacher. He told about his life in the book Fifty years under the golden domes. Denmark, Greece, Russia. The publication of translations of L. N. Tolstoy’s novel Anna Karenina and two Ehrenburg books belongs to this period. In 1945, after the surrender of Germany, Soviet soldiers had to liberate the island due to the ridiculous orders of the German command. In 1945–1946, when they were on the island, Stchelkunoff was “an interpreter for Russian soldiers.” The Danish-Russian dictionary was created for a long time, from 1934 to 1946. In the preface, the author expresses gratitude to professor Holger Pedersen, who helped him. The dictionary was published in 1949 shortly after the adoption of changes in Danish spelling, but they could not be taken into account. Danish-Russian Dictionary is aimed at Danish users “who want to learn Russian, but it can be useful for Russians who want to get directly acquainted with Danish literature while reading.” Therefore, the author made do with minimal grammatical explanations. There are no lists of abbreviations and geographical names that are given in the corpus. The dictionary is satisfactory for this volume (about 30.000 words), although there are non-obvious lexemes for this pair of languages. In general, the dictionary can be assessed as reliable, conscientiously made and very timely appeared.