Lund ~ Travel

Lund Cathedral

Lund (Swedish pronunciation: [lɵnd]) is a city in the province of Skåne, southern Sweden. The town has 82,800 inhabitants in 2011, out of a municipal total of 110,824. It is the seat of Lund Municipality, Skåne County. The city is believed to have been founded around 990, when Skåne 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. 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..

A street in the old part of the town

History

Along with Sigtuna, Lund is the oldest city in present-day Sweden. Lund's origins are unclear. Until the 1980s, the town was thought to have been founded around 1020 by either Sweyn I Forkbeard or his son Canute the Great of Denmark. The area was then part of the kingdom of Denmark. But, recent archaeological discoveries suggest that the first settlement dated to circa 990, possibly the relocation of settlers at Uppåkra. The Uppåkra settlement dates back to the first century B.C. and its remains are at the present site of the village of Uppåkra. King Sweyn I Forkbeard moved Loda to its present location, a distance of some five kilometres. The new location of Lund, on a hill and across a ford, gave the new site considerable defensive advantages in comparison with Uppåkra, situated on the highest point of a large plain.

Adelgatan Street, Lund

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.

Lund University main building

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 prominent people were educated there, among them the 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.

The University Library

Lund University, established in 1666, is Sweden's largest, with 42,000 full or part-time students, although not all 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 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, from the 1990s within information management, have set up establishments in the city; and the town's population, architecture and energy have been transformed.

Liberiet

Compared with many other Swedish cities, the urban heart of Lund is well preserved. A local law requires archaeological excavation in association with any downtown property planned for demolition and redevelopment.

Grand Hotel

Climate

Lund, like the rest of southern Sweden, has an oceanic climate. Despite its northern location, the climate is relatively mild compared to other locations in similar latitude, or even somewhat further south, mainly because of its proximity to the sea. Because of its northerly latitude, daylight lasts as long as 17 hours in midsummer, and only around 7 hours in midwinter.

The Cathedral School

Summers are warm and pleasant with average high temperatures of 22 °C (72 °F) and lows of around 14 °C (57 °F), but temperatures do sometimes exceed 25 °C (77 °F) and occasional heat waves are common during the summer. Winters are cold, with temperatures steady between -1 to 3 °C (30 to 37 °F).

Rainfall is light to moderate throughout the year with 169 wet days. Snowfall occurs sparingly, mainly in December through March, but snow cover does not remain for a long time, and some winters tends to be virtually free of snow.

Wickmanska gården

Main sights

During the 12th and 13th centuries, when the town was the seat of the archbishop, many churches and monasteries were built. At its peak, Lund had 27 churches, but most of them were demolished as result of the Reformation in 1536. Several medieval buildings remain, including Lund Cathedral, Liberiet, the restaurant Stäket and parts of the Cathedral School. Timber framing is characteristic of the houses built up to the end of the 19th century, for example the Wickmanska gården.

Most of the central buildings in Lund date from the late 19th century, when small houses were replaced by multi-storey ones. Notable buildings built during this period include the University Library (1902), Grand Hotel (1899) and the University Main Building (1882).