Fifty years of giant-watching — A sideline view by translator

Abstract

No doubt any historian — and I do not claim to be one myself — would say that it is a mistake to suppose that giants belong only to some past golden age. Yet how trippingly those names dance off the tongue — Arpi, Attman, Boethius, Friis, Glamann, Hammarström, Hildebrand, Jutikkala, Montgomery, Oden, Utterstrom and of course Ernst Söderlund, first chief editor of this journal and the moving spirit in its foundation! I pass over the point that one or two of these individuals could justifiably repudiate the status of grand old man (person?) on the ground of being still professionally active today. Be that as it may, I realised even at the time that to be entrusted with translating articles written by such figures was something of a privilege. I am still more conscious of it now, for suddenly the years have flown and I have to fight, not entirely successfully, against the temptation to feel that merely to have known them from the sidelines, as it were, in those great days possibly invests me also with a touch of grand-old-man(person)hood.