Kjeld Elfelt and Mogens Jermiin Nissen’s Danish Translation of “Jabberwocky”

Lewis Carroll’s "Through the Looking-Glass" has been translated into Danish three times: in 1946 by Kjeld Elfelt (1902-1993), in 2005 by Vibeke Eskesen (b. 1944) and Peter Poulsen (1940-2024), and in 2015 by Christiane Rohde (b. 1943). Elfelt’s and Rohde’s translations were published together with the two translators’ respective versions of "Alice in Wonderland", whereas Eskesen and Poulsen’s translation is generally considered a sequel to Ejgil Søholm’s version of the first Alice book from 2000. There also exists a Danish translation of Tony Ross’ adaptation of "Through the Looking-Glass", translated by Hanne Leth and Jørn E. Albert in 1993. Of the three translations, Elfelt’s version is generally considered the standard Danish one. When it was issued by the publishing house Thorkild Becks Forlag in autumn 1946, it was praised as a landmark translation that elevated Carroll’s work to the status of a children’s classic in Denmark. Elfelt did not translate Carroll’s poems, however. These translations were instead the work of Mogens Jermiin Nissen (1906-1972), a Danish librarian, poet and musician. In the article I first describe “Jabberwocky” in the 1946 Danish translation and then briefly point out some of the conspicuous similarities between this text and the Swedish translation authored by Gösta Knutsson in 1945.