Johannes Bureus

Who was Johannes Bureus?

Johannes Thomae Bureus Agrivillensis was a Swedish antiquarian, polymath and mystic. He was royal librarian, tutor, and adviser of King Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden. Bureus was born in 1568 in Åkerby near the famous city of Uppsala in Sweden as a son of a Lutheran parish priest.

Bureus combined his runic and esoteric interests in his own runic system, which he called the "Adalruna". He was interested in the Rosicrucian manifestos. Contemporary mystics such as Jakob Böhme have studied his works.

In 1611 he published the first ABC book in the Swedish language, Svenska ABC boken medh runor using the runic alphabet and latin script. He also wrote a genealogy of Bure family, partly using runestones as sources.