Alphabetic Excavations

Abstract Around the turn of the 17th century, the Swedish antiquary and mystic Johannes Bureus (1568–1652) claimed to have discovered the primordial theology and science of his Scandinavian ancestors encoded in their system of writing, the runic alphabet, inspired in large part by earlier Christian interpretations of the Kabbalah. In the leadup to the Swedish intervention in the Thirty Years’ War, he viewed the discovery as the ecumenical solution to the confessional divisions that were rending Europe asunder. This article explores how Bureus’s simultaneously typical and idiosyncratic engagement with the Kabbalah originated, what functions it served in his broader antiquarian program, and how it evolved to adapt to the shifting contours of Protestant scholarship in the first half of the 17th century.