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Description
The Icelandic linguist and philologist Konráð Gíslason (1808–1891) was the author of an influential Danish–Icelandic dictionary published in 1851, the first bilingual dictionary of its kind. The significance of this work lay less in its impact on lexicography than in its role in the history of linguistic purism in Iceland. One of its most distinctive features was the near absence of loanwords as Icelandic equivalents for Danish headwords, despite the widespread use of such loanwords in both spoken and written Icelandic at the time. Although the vigorous coinage of neologisms was a hallmark of nineteenth-century linguistic purism in Iceland, Gíslason’s dictionary contains relatively few newly coined terms. Instead, Gíslason relied primarily on existing vocabulary and occasionally revived archaic words attested in medieval texts as equivalents for Danish lemmas. He also frequently paraphrased the meaning of the Danish words through explanatory phrases rather than resorting to loanwords. His uncompromising puristic ideals limited the dictionary’s practical usefulness and made it a less accurate representation of contemporary Icelandic usage.