- published: 24 Oct 2013
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Lund University (Swedish: Lunds universitet) is one of Europe's most prestigious universities and Scandinavia's largest institutions for education and research, consistently ranked among the world's top 100 universities. The university, located in the city of Lund in the province of Scania, Sweden, traces its roots back to 1425, when a Franciscan studium generale was founded in Lund next to the Lund Cathedral, making it the oldest institution of higher education in Scandinavia followed by studium generales in Uppsala in 1477 and Copenhagen in 1479. The current university was founded in 1666 after Sweden had won Scania in the 1658 peace agreement with Denmark.
Lund University has eight faculties, with additional campuses in the cities of Malmö and Helsingborg, with 47,000 students in more than 280 different programmes and around 2,250 separate courses. The University has some 680 partner universities in over 50 countries and it belongs to the League of European Research Universities as well as the global Universitas 21 network.
Lund (Swedish pronunciation: [lɵnd] ( listen)) is a city in the province of Scania, southern Sweden. The town has 82,800 inhabitants in 2010, 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 Scania 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.
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.