Lund

Lund is a city in the province of Scania, southern Sweden. The town has 76,188 inhabitants in 2005, out of a municipal total of 105,000. It is the seat of Lund Municipality, Skåne County. The city is believed to have been founded around 990, when the Scanian lands belonged to Denmark. It soon became a major Christian center of the Baltic Sea region, at a time when the area was still a frontier area for Christian mission, and within Scandinavia and especially Denmark through the Middle Ages. From 1103 it was the seat of an archbishop and at the center of the city stands the towering Lund Cathedral, built ca 1090-1145.

Lund University, established 1666, is today one of Scandinavia's largest institutions for education and research.

Along with Sigtuna, Lund is the oldest city in current Sweden. Lund's origins are unclear. Until recently, the town was thought to have been founded by either Sweyn I Forkbeard or his son Canute the Great ofDenmark around 1020. The area was then part of the kingdom of Denmark. However, recent archaeological discoveries suggest that the first settlement was founded around 990 possibly as a relocation of the settlements in Uppåkra. The Uppåkra settlement dates back to the first century b.c. and is located at the present site of the village of Uppåkra. Lund was later moved to its present location by KingSweyn I Forkbeard. The distance moved was only some five kilometres, but the new location of Lund, on a hill and on the other side of a ford, gave the new site considerable defensive advantages in comparison with Uppåkra, which is situated on the highest point of a rather large plain.

The city was made a see in 1048 and united with Dalby in 1060, and in 1103 became the seat of the archbishop for Scandinavia. The diocese of nearby Dalby was absorbed in 1066. Lund Cathedral was similarly founded in or shortly after 1103. In 1152, the Norwegian archdiocese of Nidaros was founded as a separate province of the church, independent of Lund. In 1164 Sweden also acquired an archbishop of its own, although he was nominally subordinate to the archbishop of Lund. It is still, as the diocese of Lund, a diocese in the Church of Sweden.

A street in the old part of the town

Lund Cathedral School (Katedralskolan) was founded in 1085 by the Danish king Canute the Saint. This is the oldest school in Scandinavia and one of the oldest in Northern Europe. Many well-known people have attended it, among them actor Max von Sydow and several high-ranking politicians.

In 1658, the Scanian lands were ceded by Denmark to Sweden by the Treaty of Roskilde. On December 4, 1676 Lund was defended in the Battle of Lund, one of the bloodiest battles fought in Scandinavia.

Adelgatan Street, Lund

Lund University, established in 1666, is Sweden's largest with 42,000 full or part-time students, although not all actually live in Lund. The figure includes Lund Institute of Technology, which is to some extent independent of the old university. As late as the 1940s, Lund was a relatively small city with few large-scale industries, covering only about a fourth of the current urban area and was dominated by the cathedral and the university. Since then, the student population has increased about twelvefold, many industrial companies in the chemical, medical or electronics branches and, more recently, within information management, have set up establishments in the city, and the town's population, architecture and pulse has been transformed.

Compared with many other Swedish cities, the urban heart of Lund is well preserved. A local law requires any downtown property that is due to be demolished and rebuilt to be archaeologically excavated.

(Information from Wikipedia.org)