The first half of the 19th century saw a sudden flourish in Nordic philology and historical-comparative linguistics in Denmark (as elsewhere in Europe); this flourish was largely associated with the person of Rasmus Rask (1787–1832) and his followers.
In the Vejledning til det Islandske eller gamle Nordiske Sprog, 1811, Rask emphasizes the common Old Norse origin of the Scandinavian languages. In 1814, while visiting Iceland, Rask submitted a prize essay to the Danish Academy of Sciences to demonstrate from which source the Scandinavian languages could be derived, as well as to establish the principles upon which their historical and comparative study should be founded. Although the Undersögelse om det gamle Nordiske eller Islandske Sprogs Oprindelse was awarded the prize, it remained unpublished until 1818.
Rask sought to establish genetic relationships between languages by structural and morphological correspondences, lexical analogies in core vocabulary (such as pronouns and numerals), and regular correspondences in sounds/letters. Rask called these correspondences “letter transitions” (Bogstavovergange). The mechanisms and causes of linguistic change, not explicitly addressed in Rask’s work, were taken up by his friend Jakob Hornemann Bredsdorff (1790–1841) in Om Aarsagerne til Sprogenes Forandringer (“On the reasons for changes in languages”, 1821).
The interest in Old Norse was expressed in the foundation of Det Nordiske Oldskriftselskab (1825), from 1828 Det Kongelige Nordiske Oldskriftselskab, Rask and Carl Christian Rafn (1795–1864) being two of the chief initiators.
In Denmark, the National-Romantic movement was furthered by a number of scholars in linguistics. One of the foremost advocates of Danish patriotism was Rask’s schoolmate and friend, N.M. Petersen (1791–1862). All Petersen’s work, which includes extensive volumes on the history of the Scandinavian languages and of Danish literature, the history of Denmark, and Scandinavian mythology, were written within the National-Romantic framework.
Rask never wrote a history of the Danish language himself, but he was most probably involved in the prize competition that resulted in Petersen’s Det danske, norske og svenske Sprogs Historie under deres Udvikling af Stamsproget, which surveys the history of the Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish languages up until 1700 and traces their origin from a common proto-language. The two volumes contain investigations not only of the grammar, but also of foreign influence, the development of the lexicon and of the literary language. This work became a benchmark work of reference for several generations. Unlike Rask, Petersen placed language in its social and historical context, and his work provides a supplement to Rask’s prize essay, since Petersen is also concerned with the intermediate stages in the development from the mother language to the modern tongues.
During the 1840s and 1850s, the National-Romantic movement in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden was characterized not only by national but also by strong Pan-Scandinavian sentiments. Petersen, who in 1845 was appointed to the first professorship in the Scandinavian languages in the Nordic countries, even went as far as to advocate the formation of a common Scandinavian language, derived from Old Norse. As part of the Danish educational reform of 1871, the Scandinavists, among whom were several of Petersen’s pupils, succeeded in making instruction in Old Norse and Swedish mandatory in the high schools.
Petersen’s strong emphasis on Old Norse was opposed by the linguist and classicist Johan Nicolai Madvig (1804–1886), who held important political and administrative positions.
Spelling became an important issue with Rask’s attempt to formulate what he termed a scientifically-based orthography (Forsøg til en videnskabelig dansk Retskrivningslære med Hensyn til Stamsproget og Nabosproget, 1826). This was based on the pronunciation of educated speakers, which meant, in principle, that there should be only one single letter for each individual sound. Scholars in more official positions rejected Rask’s system. Some years later, Petersen adapted this with a Scandinavist tendency. Often referred to as the Rask-Petersen orthography, it won fairly widespread acceptance, and was adopted in Scandinavist circles. Seven years after Petersen’s death (1869), representatives from Norway, Sweden, and Denmark met in Stockholm to work for greater uniformity in the orthography of the Scandinavian languages, and the result for Danish was very similar to the Rask-Petersen orthography. In his book from 1826 Rask also argued for using the Latin alphabet instead of the “Gothic” alphabet (Fraktur). In 1875 it was decided that the Danish students should no longer be taught to write the “Gothic” letters; this meant a rapprochement with the other Scandinavian writing traditions and a dissociation from German practice.
The development of comparative philology raised the question as to the precise nature of the kinship between the Germanic languages. The linguistic facts were open to various interpretations, since the variations within the German-speaking area, e.g. in terms of dialect boundaries, were just as pervasive as those between the Nordic countries and the German-speaking area. This meant that the linguistic facts could be used to argue for the integration of (parts of) Denmark into a German nation (as was in fact done by Grimm in his Geschichte der deutschen Sprache, 1848, and in an intervention in the Frankfurt Parliament that same year). Conversely, Danish linguists felt it important to prove the nation’s ancient right to South Jutland (Schleswig-Holstein) on linguistic and historical grounds.
Linguistics in the 19th century was, also in Denmark, in general characterized by an interest in dialects; Christian Molbech published a Danish dialect dictionary in 1841, based on existing collections and material sent to him from around the country. This dictionary covers all of Denmark except Bornholm. In the 1840s and 1850s we find several dialect investigations dealing specifically with Southern Jutlandic, an area of particular national interest since it abutted on and overlapped with German-speaking areas. The most significant study of Southern Jutlandic, Bidrag til en sønderjysk sproglære (1858), based on detailed fieldwork, was made by Kristen Jensen Lyngby (1829–1871), the founder of Danish dialectology. Lyngby was also influential as teacher of the outstanding generation of comparatists and language historians: Karl Verner (1846–1896) and Vilhelm Thomsen (1842–1927).
In most of the period, Danish language interest was locked into a contradistinction against German; the diglossia of the duchies of Schleswig-Holstein were a particular irritant, leading to opposing senses of national appurtenance in the region and two German-Danish wars (1848-50 and 1864); in the interim between the two wars the Danish authorities by law introduced Danish as the official language in Schleswig, even in areas where German was the most widespread language. The linguistic situation in these border areas moved towards a settlement following a referendum in 1920.
Scandinavism lost its influence with Norwegian independence from Sweden in 1905, which, almost symbolically, was followed the next year, 1906, by a downscaling of Old Norse in Danish gymnasiums; the subject was wholly cancelled in 1935.
