Alexander Kuchin (1888–1913?) and his Small Russian- Norwegian dictionary

Abstract

The article introduces Alexander Kuchin and his “Small Russian-Norwegian dictionary”, which was published in 1907 by the publishing house “Pomor” (Finnmarken) in Vardø (Norway) and was very popular at that time. Its author, Alexander Stepanovich Kuchin, a man with a unique destiny, is known to compatriots as the only Russian who participated in the discovery of the South Pole in the Roald Amundsen’s expedition, and also as the first of our countrymen who, after the discovery of Antarctica in 1820 by the expedition of Faddey F. Bellingshausen and Michael P. Lazarev, landed on the coast of the Southern continent. A talented young man who died in the expedition of Vladimir A. Rusanov at the age of only 25, made a great contribution to science, research and navigation. Born in the village of Kushereka in the Onega district of the Arkhangelsk province, Alexander received a good education for that time. He graduated from a two-grade parochial school in Kushereka, brilliantly studied at the Onega City School, attended classes at the Tromsø school for a year and was the only one in the course graduated from the Arkhangelsk Merchant and Maritime School with a gold medal. He read H. Ibsen, K. Hamsun, J. Falkberget and other writers in the original. Alexander was also lucky to work at the biological station in Bergen under the direction of Bjørn Hjelland-Hansen, one of the founders of oceanography as a science; here he also met Fridtjof Nansen, one of the national Norwegian heroes, which played a significant role in A. Kuchin’s life. The “Small Russian-Norwegian dictionary” was published in 2,000 copies and was very popular that time. The dictionary contains around 4,000 words on 48 pages. There are no proper names in it, but at the end of the dictionary basic information about the phonetics and grammar of the Norwegian language is disposed. It is focused on Russian users and arouses undoubted interest among linguists, since it appeared in 1907, two years after the termination of the union with Sweden. It is valuable that Alexander Kuchin, not being a linguist, fixed the language used by common people such as fishermen and trawlermen in the North of Norway (particularly in Finnmark and Troms). Such a democratic version of the language is also of special scientific interest. In general, the dictionary was caused by necessity, appeared at a proper time, was well compiled and completely fulfilled the functions assigned to it.