Editing Rasmus Rask (section)

==Prize essay==
In 1811, the [[Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters]] put out a call for a prize essay on the topic of language history that would "use historical critique and fitting examples to illuminate the source whence the old Scandinavian tongue can be most probably derived, to explain the character of the language and the relations that it has had through the middle ages to the Nordic as well as Germanic dialects, and to accurately ascertain the basic tenets upon which all derivation and comparison of these tongues should be constructed."<ref name="Nielsen" />

In order to conduct research for the prize essay, Rask traveled to [[Sweden]] in 1812 with his friend Rasmus Nyerup. There, he studied Sami and [[Finnish language|Finnish]] in order to determine whether they were related to the Scandinavian languages. When he returned to Denmark, he was recommended to the [[Arnamagnæan Institute]], which hired him to edit [[Björn Halldórsson]]'s ''Icelandic Lexicon'' (1814), which had long remained in manuscript. From 1813 to 1815, Rask visited [[Iceland]], where he became fluent in Icelandic and familiarized himself with Icelandic literature and customs.

In 1814, while still living in Iceland, he finished his prize essay, "Investigation of the Origin of the Old Norse or Icelandic Language" (1818), in which he argued that Old Norse was related to the [[Germanic languages]], including Gothic, to the [[Baltic languages|Baltic]] and [[Slavic languages]], and even to Classical Latin and Greek, which he grouped together under the label Thracian. He further  hinted that [[Persian language|Persian]] and [[Indo-Aryan languages]] might also be related.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Solodow |first=Joseph B. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Q6UgAwAAQBAJ |title=Latin Alive: The Survival of Latin in English and the Romance Languages |date=2010-01-21 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=978-1-139-48471-8 |pages=14 |language=en}}</ref> He also argued that the Germanic languages were not related to [[Basque language|Basque]], [[Greenlandic language|Greenlandic]], Finnish or the [[Celtic languages]] (on this last instance he was wrong, and he later acknowledged this). The academy accepted the essay but suggested that he could have spent more time comparing Icelandic with [[Persian language|Persian]] and other Asian languages. Because of this, Rask envisioned a trip to India to study Asian languages such as [[Sanskrit]], which was already being taught by philologists such as [[Franz Bopp]] and [[Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel|Friedrich Schlegel]] in Germany. In 1814, after returning from Iceland, Rask worked as a sub-librarian at the University of Copenhagen library.<ref name="Leksikon" />