example, a connection between the European Goths and the Swedish “Göter,” a mythological people, and traced Swedish history back to Japhet’s son Magog.

The chronicle was nevertheless a significant work, and the only publications that can compete with it in influence are Petri’s reformatory works. Successive Swedish kings and statesmen directly or indirectly obtained their historical knowledge from the chronicle, and Gothicism greatly influenced the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century view of history.

The 1600s

During the 1600s, Sweden became a great power through its victories during the Thirty Years’ War, and in that context, antiquarian research went in a direction that had little in common with what had preceded. Sweden’s first antiquarian and, moreover, director of national antiquities was johan bure (1568–1652). In 1599, he devised a system to interpret runes, and in the same year he received a permit from King Karl IX (1550–1611) to travel around Sweden and document rune stones and locate ancient monuments. Bure was a pioneer in rune research, as Petri’s documentation had been fairly insignificant.

Although Bure’s contributions were limited, his close contact with the kings of Sweden drew their attention to antiquarian research, and as a result, official antiquarian research took shape. On the advice of Bure, King Gustav II Adolf (1594–1632) issued, for example, an “antiquities instruction” whereby he ordered the nation’s antiquarians to collect antiquities, and consequently, the Central Board of National Antiquities developed.

Bure’s successor, Johan Hadorph (1630– 1693) traveled throughout the countryside with draftsmen and scribes and documented about 1,000 runic inscriptions. One of the draftsmen was Elias Brenner (1647–1717), a student of Olof Verelius (1618–1682), who was professor of antiquities at Uppsala. It was, however, from Johannes Schefferus (1621–1679) that Brenner received his first insights into numismatics, which he elevated to a science in the 1690s. Hadorph researched both ancient monuments and artifacts as well as folk traditions. During the mid-1680s, he also conducted archaeological excavations in the Viking town of Birka. Verelius had also undertaken fieldwork, and so had Olof Rudbeck (1630–1702), who investigated royal Iron Age burial mounds in Old Uppsala.

Place-name research by Petter Dijkman (1647?–1717) developed alongside antiquarian research. Dijkman communicated with Schefferus about his numismatic studies under Brenner, and Dijkman’s Bua Haiti, one of the first attempts at place-name research, was published in 1711. Dijkman was influenced by Kilian Stobaeus’s uncle Anders Stobaeus (1642–1714), a historian, Latin scholar, and poet. One of Dijkman’s more important works was published posthumously in 1723. It contained a selection of material from seventeenth-century rune research and was particularly concerned with the Christian faith’s influence on the inscriptions. Dijkman made use of previously published material, and of the ninety inscriptions he discussed, some seventy are found in Bure and Verelius.

Hadorph was primarily an organizer and viewed himself as a materialist. In 1666, he was appointed director of national antiquities, and he became powerful within the Antiquities Committee, which was established during the same year. The committee’s tasks were to preserve the country’s ancient monuments; publish Icelandic sagas and ancient Swedish laws; create a Swedish dictionary; document rune stones, coins, and seals; and carry out archaeological excavations. The committee was first based in Uppsala but was moved in 1690 to Stockholm. Gradually, its organization was tightened, and it was renamed the Antiquities Archive. The chairman had the title of secretary and functioned as the director of national antiquities.

Hadorph also became secretary of the Antiquities Archive but died soon afterward. After the demise of the last secretary in 1777 there was no appointment of a new one, and in 1780, the archive was dissolved. After the reorganization of Queen Lovisa Ulrika’s (1720–1782) Literary Academy in 1786, the Academy of Literature, History, and Antiquities took over the duties of the Antiquities Archive, and its secretary became the director of national antiquities.