The 'Gustav Vasa Bible' is the common name of the
Swedish Bible translation published in
1540-
41. The full title is as appears on the right: "Biblia / Thet är / All then Helgha Scrifft / på Swensko". Translated into English it reads: "The Bible / That is / All the Holy Scripture / In Swedish".
The men behind the translation were
Laurentius Andreae and the Petri brothers
Olaus and
Laurentius. Of them, Archbishop Laurentius is regarded as the main person. However, had the work not been commissioned by the Swedish King
Gustav Vasa, who had in effect broken with the
Pope in Rome in the 1520s, the work would not have been possible.
The Bible follows the German version by
Martin Luther from 1526 closely, not only in language, but in the fonts used and the typography as a whole. The Danish version, printed a few years earlier, also did this.
The Bible established the use of the
Swedish language. It established a uniform spelling of words, particularly the verb suffix -a, and defined the use of the vowels å, ä and ö.
This Bible text was, with revisions, basically the only Swedish Bible used before
1917. It was reprinted as a facsimile in 1938. Few people today, however, are able to read the text with ease. This has to do partly with the spelling and partly with the typeface.
References
★
Nationalencyklopedin, article ''Gustav Vasa Bible''