Frederik Rostgaard was born at the Krogerup estate in North Zealand. Upon his father's death in 1684, he was orphaned, but the financial situation was good, allowing him to receive a thorough education and higher education. After staying with the rector of the Copenhagen School, Peder Foss, he was privately tutored by him in 1687. He had Willum Worm, later a justice of the Supreme Court, as his guardian. Being wealthy, he pursued various independent studies, enjoyed visiting libraries, and began, as a very young student, to collect the works of Bording and other Danish poets, especially those in Latin.

After a few short trips to Scania and Northern Germany, he traveled abroad in 1690, where he stayed for the next nine years. He first stayed in Germany, especially in Giessen, where his main study was jurisprudence, but he also studied Arabic at the same time. In the spring of 1692, he traveled to the Netherlands, making Leiden his main residence, and although he did not abandon law, it was linguistics that occupied him for the remainder of his stay abroad. It was during this trip he saw the opportunity to publish his collections of Latin poems by Danish authors. (See Larsen, ”Knud, Frederik Rostgaard og bøgerne”, Danmarks Biblioteksskoles Skrifter 3, 1970).

Biblioteca Danica IV, 184.
Thesaurus 634