Russian dialectology in educating Slavists in Norway: experience and results

Abstract

The fact that a legendary Norwegian explorer Fridtjоf Nansen, who was a talented and highly educated man, knew very well the history and culture of the peoples of Northern Russia, is mentioned in almost every work dedicated to his planned expedition to the Kola Peninsula, which was never performed. However, there are no research works that mention the fact that his deep knowledge, which inspired him to investigate the Kola Peninsula, was acquired only thanks to great support from a Norwegian slavist Olaf Broch. Until now it has also been unknown that the idea of investigating the Kola Peninsula came to Nansen’s mind long before professor Solberg’s project was initiated in 1924. The article “At the Roots of the Kola Expedition: Fridtjоf Nansen and Olaf Broch” deals with the prehistory of the failed expedition and the role played by Broch in the origin and development of Nansen’s idea. This idea was to perform a many-sided investigation of the Kola Peninsula, including a linguistic line of research – the study of the dialects on the peninsula, with special attention to words connected with the unique culture of the local population. The article makes use of the unpublished materials comprising the epistolary legacy of Olaf Broch and deposited in Russian and Norwegian archives.