RASK, RASMUS CHRISTIAN Danish scholar and philologist, was born at Brandekilde, Fiinen, on Nov. 22, 1787. He studied at the university of Copenhagen, and in 1808 was appointed assistant keeper of the university library, and later professor of literary history. In 1811 he published, in Danish, his Introduction to the Grammar of the Icelandic and other Ancient Northern Languages, from printed and ms. mate rials accumulated by his predecessors in the same field of re search. The Arna-Magnaean Institution then commissioned him to edit the ms. of the Icelandic Lexicon (1814) of Bjorn Hal dorson. Rask spent ten years in Iceland, mastering the language and familiarizing himself with the literature, manners and cus toms of the natives. He was the first president of the Icelandic Literary society, established at Copenhagen early in 1816. In October 1816 Rask left Denmark on a literary expedition, at the cost of the king, to prosecute inquiries into the languages of the East, and collect manuscripts for the university library at Copenhagen. He went first to Sweden, making an excursion into Finland to study the language. Here he published, in Swedish, his Anglo-Saxon Grammar in 1817. In his Essay on the Origin of the Ancient Scandinavian or Icelandic Tongue (Copenhagen, 1818) he traced the affinity of Icelandic to the other European languages, particularly Latin and Greek. In the same year he
brought out the first complete editions of Snorro's Edda and Sae mund's Edda. From Stockholm he went in 1819 to St. Peters burg, and thence through Tartary into Persia, and resided for some time at Tabriz, Teheran, Persepolis and Shiraz. From Persia he went to India and Ceylon. Rask returned to Copenhagen in May 1823, bringing a considerable number of Oriental manu scripts, Persian, Zend, Pali, Sinhalese and others, with which he enriched the collections of the Danish capital. He died at Copen hagen on Nov. 14, 1832.
During the period between his return from the East and his death Rask published in his native language a Spanish Grammar (1824), a Frisic Grammar (1825), an Essay on Danish Orthography (1826), a Treatise respecting the Ancient Egyptian Chronology and an Italian Grammar (1827), and the Ancient Jewish Chronology previous to Moses (1828). Rask's Anglo-Saxon, Danish and Icelandic Grammars were brought out in English editions by Thorpe, Repp and Dasent respectively.
See his collected essays, Samlade Afhandlinger (Copenhagen, 3 vols., 1834-38).