Lund

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IPA: is a city in Skåne in southern Sweden. The city is held to have been founded around 990, when the Scanian lands belonged to Denmark. It soon became the Christian center with an archbishop and with the towering Lund Cathedral, built in 1103.

The city itself today has about 74,000 inhabitants not counting all temporary students. The Lund Municipality with 101,000 inhabitants includes several surrounding small towns and villages, particularly to the east. The municipality includes Dalby and the adjacent Dalby Söderskog national park.

History

The foundation of Lund remains unclear. Until recently, the town was thought to have been founded by King Canute the Great around 1020, however, recent archeological discoveries suggest that the first settlement was founded around 990, when the village of Uppåkra was moved to Lund's location, by King Sweyn I Forkbeard. The distance is only some five kilometres, but Lund is located on a hill, and on the other side of a rivulet-ford, giving the new site considerable defensive advantages compared to Uppåkra, that is situated on the highest point of a rather large plain. Beside new techniques of warfare, the relocation is believed to signify the process of unification of Denmark.

The city was made see in 1060, and in 1103 made the site of the archbishop for Scandinavia. The 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 got an archbishop of its own, although nominally subordinate to the archbishop of Lund.

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. The school is also one of the most prestigious schools in Sweden, and many well-known people have attended it, among whom actor Max von Sydow and several high ranking politicians.

In 1658, all Scanian counties except the islands Bornholm and Anholt, were ceded by Denmark to Sweden by the Treaty of Roskilde. On December 4 in 1676 it was defended at the Battle of Lund, one of the bloodiest battles fought in Scandinavia. Lund University, established in 1668 as a means of "Swedification", is Sweden's largest with 41,000 students, though not all students actually live in Lund.

Geography

As an unavoidable consequence of Lund being located on a hill, albeit very gently sloping, the city has a considerable difference in altitude — to particular disadvantage for the many, students and others, who use bikes as their main means of transportation. The difference in altitude is about 80 meters from the lowest point in the south to the highest point in the north.

Lund is located in Sweden's largest agricultural district, less than 10 km from the sandy shore of the Öresund Straits and about 16 km from Malmö. From the top of the hill Sankt Hans Backar it is possible to spot Copenhagen, the capital of Denmark. In the eastern part of the Lund municipality there is forest, mainly decidious.

Industry

Lund is home to the Tetra Pak company that manufactures and markets paper packaging and equipment for milk, orange juice etc. all over the world. Sony Ericsson develops cell phone handsets in Lund based on platforms Ericsson Mobile Platforms (EMP) develop and sell to several cell phone manufacturs. Other important industries include medical technology (Gambro), pharmaceuticals (Astra Zeneca), biotechnology (Active Biotech, among others), (Alfa Laval) and publishing and library services.

Education

Notable natives

External links

Lund - Official site

Other uses

Lund is also name of a caste in the Sindh province of Pakistan
Lund is a municipality in the county of Rogaland, Norway. (See Lund, Norway)

Southwestern Scania | South Skåne | Lund | Cities in Sweden