This portrait of Johannes Bureus is a conventional image of a 17th-century scholar, showing him dressed in black and with a serious expression. Unusual, though, are the roundels with symbols of the Evangelists, which offer a hint as to his personality. Bureus worked in an age in which scholarship did not distinguish between proven knowledge and occult speculation. He was Sweden’s first student of runes, but was also convinced that he was the Lord’s chosen one, given insight into the hid- den order of Creation.