Lund

Lund (/lʊnd/, US also /lʌnd/ LU(U)ND; Swedish: [ˈlɵnːd] ^ⓘ) is a city in the province of Scania, southern Sweden. The town had 94,393 inhabitants out of a municipal total of 130,288 as of 2023^[update]. It is the seat of Lund Municipality, Scania County. The Öresund Region, which includes Lund, is home to more than 4.2 million people.

Archeologists date the founding of Lund to around 990, when Scania was part of Denmark. From 1103 it was the seat of the Catholic Metropolitan Archdiocese of Lund, and the towering Lund Cathedral, built c. 1090–1145, still stands at the centre of the town. Denmark ceded the city to Sweden in the Treaty of Roskilde in 1658.

Lund University, established in 1666, is one of Scandinavia's oldest and largest institutions for education and research. The university and its buildings dominate much of the centre of the city, and have led to Lund becoming a regional centre for high-tech industry.

Along with Sigtuna, Lund is the oldest city in present-day Sweden. Lund's origins are unclear. Until the 1980s, the city 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. However, recent archaeological discoveries suggest that the first settlement dated to c. 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 Lund to its present location, a distance of some five kilometres (3.1 miles). 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.

The organisation of the Danish church begun under the rule of Canute the Great. Lund became the see of one of seven dioceses in 1048. In 1104 it became an archbishopric. Lund's ecclesiastical province comprised Scandinavia and even Garðar on Greenland. 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 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.

Lund was ceded to Sweden in 1658 as part of the terms of the Treaty of Roskilde. It was, however, recaptured by Denmark in 1676 during the early phases of the Scanian War. The exceptionally bloody Battle of Lund was fought just north of the city in 1676, and ended in a decisive Swedish victory; Swedish control of Scania was confirmed in the Peace of Lund later that year. Sweden's control over Scania, and hence Lund, was again confirmed by another treaty in 1720.

Scandinavia's first university, the Academy of Lund was founded in the 1400s. It was suppressed during the Danish Reformation in 1537. The present Lund University was established in 1666.