Johan Skytte

Baron Johan Skytte
Lithography by Johan Cardon
2nd Governor-General of Swedish Livonia
In office 1629–1634
Preceded by	Jacob De la Gardie
Succeeded by	Bengt Bengtsson Oxenstierna
Governor-General of Swedish Ingria
In office 1629–1634
Preceded by	Nils Assersson Mannersköld
Succeeded by	Bengt Bengtsson Oxenstierna
Governor-General of Swedish Karelia
In office 1629–1634
Personal details
Born	1577 Nyköping, Sweden
Died	15 March 1645 Söderåkra, Sweden
Children	Vendela Skytte

Johan Skytte (Nyköping, 1577 – Söderåkra, 15 March 1645) was a Swedish politician.

Skytte was son of the Mayor of Nyköping, Bengt Nilsson Skräddare. While attending school in his home town and for the nine years he was studying at foreign universities, he used the surname Schroderus, a Latinised form of the German Schröder – his father's surname – which means "tailor".

Already at his return from his foreign studies in 1602, he was hired as tutor of the young Prince Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden, the future king, and was ennobled the following year, taking the name Skytte after an extinct noble family from which he claimed descent on the maternal side.

He was sent to London in 1610 on a diplomatic mission, an attempt to seek the hand of Elizabeth Stuart, the daughter of James I for the young prince. In 1611, he was made governor of Vestmannia, in 1617 a high councillor and in 1622 chancellor of Uppsala University, which he remained until his death. Skytte participated in drafting the 1617 Coronation Oath of king Gustav Adolf.

Having in 1624 been created a baron (friherre), receiving the barony of Tuutarhovi in Ingria, Livonia, which had just been added to the Swedish Realm, and in 1629 appointed Governor-General of Livonia, Ingria and Karelia, he was in 1632 appointed chancellor of the new Academia Gustaviana (University of Tartu), in addition to his Uppsala chancellorship, and made plans for a new appellate court in Tartu (in today Estonia). In 1632, Skytte returned from Livonia and was in 1634 made president of the Göta appellate court (Göta hovrätt) in Jönköping.