Store norske leksikon
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Store norske leksikon, abbreviated SNL is currently the most comprehensive contemporary Norwegian language (bokmål) encyclopedia. The SNL was created in 1978 when the two publishing houses Aschehoug and Gyldendal merged their encyclopedias and created the company Kunnskapsforlaget. The name translates into English as "Great Norwegian encyclopedia". Up until 1978 the two publishing houses of Aschehoug and Gyldendal, Norway's two largest, had published Aschehougs konversasjonsleksikon and Gyldendals konversasjonsleksikon, respectively. The first editions of these came out in 1907—1913 (Aschehoug) and 1933—1934 (Gyldendal).
The slump in selling paperbased encyclopedias around the turn of the century hit the Kunnskapsforlaget hard, but a fourth edition of the paperbased encyclopedia was finally secured by a grant of 10 million Norwegian kroner from the foundation Fritt Ord in 2003. The fourth edition will consist of 16 volumes, a total of 12.000 pages and 280.000 entries.
SNL has been available online since 2000 and has several hundred thousand subscribers (private and institutional). The number of online articles is about 150 thousand.
