The story
Medieval origins
The city of Lund has a long history as a centre for learning and was the ecclesiastical centre and seat of the archbishop of Denmark. A cathedral school (the Katedralskolan) for the training of clergy was established in 1085 and is today Scandinavia's oldest school.
In 1425, a Franciscan studium generale (a medieval university) was founded in Lund next to the Lund Cathedral (with baccalaureate degree started in 1438), making it the oldest institution of higher education in Scandinavia followed by studia generalia in Uppsala in 1477 and Copenhagen in 1479. After Sweden won Scania from Denmark in the 1658 Treaty of Roskilde, the university was founded in 1666 on the location of the old studium generale next to Lund Cathedral. The studium generale had not survived the Lutheran Reformation of 1536, which is why the university is considered a separate institution when founded in 1666.
17th–19th centuries
After the Treaty of Roskilde in 1658, the Scanian lands came under the possession of the Swedish Crown, which founded the university in 1666 as a means of making Scania Swedish by educating teachers in Swedish and culturally integrate the Scania region with Sweden. The university was named Academia Carolina after Charles X Gustav of Sweden until the late 19th century when Lund University became the widespread denomination. It was the fifth university under the Swedish king, after Uppsala University (1477), the University of Tartu (1632, now in Estonia), the Academy of Åbo (1640, now in Finland), and the University of Greifswald (founded 1456; Swedish 1648–1815, now in Germany).
The university was at its founding granted four faculties: Law, Theological, Medicine and Philosophy. They were the cornerstones, and for more than 200 years this system was in effect. Towards the end of the 17th century, the number of students hovered around 100. Some notable professors in the early days were Samuel Pufendorf, a juridical historian; and Canutus Hahn and Kristian Papke in philosophy.
The Scanian War in 1676 led to a shut-down, which lasted until 1682. The university was re-opened largely due to regional patriots, but the university was not to enjoy a high status until well into the 19th century. Lecturing rooms were few, and lectures were held in the Lund Cathedral and its adjacent chapel. The professors were underpaid.
In 1716, Charles XII of Sweden entered Lund. He stayed in Lund for two years, in between his warlike expeditions. Lund and the university attracted a temporary attention boost. The most notable lecturer during this time was Andreas Rydelius.
Peace was finally restored with the death of Charles XII in 1718, and during the first half of the 18th century, the university was granted added funds. The number of students was now around 500. Despite not being on par with Uppsala University, it had built a solid reputation and managed to attract prominent professors.
Around 1760 the university's reputation dropped as the number of students fell below 200, most of whom hailed from around the province. However, by 1780 its reputation was largely restored and continued to rise through the 1820s. This was largely owing to popular and well-educated lecturers particularly in philology; the prominent professor Esaias Tegnér was a particularly notable character with widespread authority. He, in turn, attracted others towards Lund. One of these was the young theological student C. G. Brunius, who studied ancient languages under Tegnér and was later to become a professor of Greek. With time he was to devote himself to architecture and he redesigned several of Lund's buildings, as well as churches of the province.
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In 1829, the murder at Locus Peccatorum occurred in the Locus Peccatorum residence at the university. Jacob Wilhelm Blomdahl, a theology student, beat his fellow student Anders Landén to death in the night. Blomdahl was later executed for the murder, and the controversy the murder created around the conditions of student life were a factor in the creation of Akademiska Föreningen in the 1830s.
In 1845 and 1862 Lund co-hosted Nordic student meetings together with the University of Copenhagen.
A student called Elsa Collin was the first woman in the whole of Sweden to take part in a spex (a student comedy show).
20th century – present
In the early 20th century, the university had a student population as small as one thousand, consisting largely of upper-class pupils training to become civil servants, lawyers and doctors. In the coming decades, it started to grow significantly until it became one of the country's largest. In 1964 the social sciences were split from the Faculty of Humanities. Lund Institute of Technology was established in 1961 but was merged with Lund University eight years later.
In recent years, Lund University has been very popular among applicants to Swedish higher education institutions, both nationally and internationally. For studies starting in autumn 2012, Lund received 11,160 foreign master's applications from 152 countries, which was roughly one third of all international applications to Swedish universities.
Women at the university
The first woman to study in Lund was Hildegard Björck (spring of 1880) who had previously studied in Uppsala and had been the first Swedish woman ever to get an academic degree. Her tenure in Lund was however very brief and the medical student Hedda Andersson who entered the university later in 1880 (two years before the next woman to do so) is usually mentioned as the first woman at Lund University. Hilma Borelius was the first woman who finished a doctorate in Lund, in 1910. The first woman to be appointed to a professor's chair was the historian Birgitta Odén in 1965, though Carin Boalt was made a professor at the Faculty of Engineering, which at the time was a separate institution, in 1964. In 1992 Boel Flodgren, Professor of Business Law, was appointed rector magnificus (or, strictly speaking, rectrix magnifica) of Lund University. As such, she was the first woman to be the head of a European university.
Campus
The university's facilities are mainly located in the small city of Lund in Scania, about 15 km away from central Malmö and 50 km from Copenhagen. The large student and staff population makes an impact on the city, effectively making it a university town. Over a hundred university buildings scatter around town, most of them in an area covering more than 1 km2, stretching towards the north-east from Lundagård park in the very centre of town. Buildings in and around Lundagård include the main building, Kungshuset, the Historical Museum and the Academic Society's headquarters. The main library building is located in a park 400 meters to the north, followed by the large hospital complex.
Lund University has a satellite campus in nearby Malmö, Sweden's third-largest city. The Faculty of Fine and Performing Arts' three academies: Malmö Art Academy, Malmö Academy of Music and Malmö Theatre Academy, are all located in Malmö. The city is also the location of Skåne University Hospital, where Lund University performs a considerable amount of research and medical training.
Campus Helsingborg is, as the name suggests, located in the city of Helsingborg, almost 50 km from Lund. Opened in 2000, it consists of a building in the city center, right next to the central train station and the harbor. Nearly 3,000 students are based on the campus. The Department of Service Management and the Department of Communication and Media are among those located at the campus in Helsingborg.
Teaching and training at the School of Aviation (LUSA) take place at an airfield next to the town of Ljungbyhed, about 40 km away from Lund.
Museums
The Biological Museum is a research collection, not having public exhibitions. It possesses between 10 and 13 million specimens of plants and animals. The museum was founded by Kilian Stobaeus, a teacher of Carl Linnaeus, in 1735. It is divided into three sections: the herbarium, the entomological collections and the zoological collections. The collections are particularly rich in specimens from Sweden and the other Nordic countries, and hold approximately 10,000 type specimens The collections were previously known as the Botanical Museum and Museum of Zoology. These were merged into the Biological Museum in 2005. The museum is a part of the Department of Biology, Faculty of Sciences. It holds the historically important collections of Johan Wilhelm Zetterstedt, Carl Gustaf Thomson, Carl Adolph Agardh, Anders Jahan Retzius, Erik Acharius, Axel Gustaf Gyllenkrok and Sven Nilsson.
Library
Lund University library was established in 1668 at the same time as the university and is one of Sweden's oldest and largest libraries. Since 1698 it has received legal deposit copies of everything printed in the country. Today six Swedish libraries receive legal deposit copies, but only Lund and the Royal Library in Stockholm are required to keep everything for posterity. Swedish imprints make up half of the collections, which amount to 170,000 linear meters of shelving (2006). The library serves 620,000 loans per year, the staff is 200 full-time equivalents, and the 33 branch libraries house 2600 reading room desks.
The current main building at Helgonabacken, designed by architect Alfred Hellerström, opened in 1907. It was named Sweden's most beautiful building in 2019. The old library building was Liberiet close to the city's cathedral. Liberiet was built as a library in the 15th century but now serves as a cafe.
Hospital
Education and research in the health sciences at the university are operated in cooperation with Skåne University Hospital, located in both Lund and Malmö. Medical education takes place in the Biomedical Centre, next to the hospital in Lund. Nursing and occupational therapy were taught in the Health Sciences Centre nearby, but have since then moved to the newly inaugurated Forum Medicum, which brings all health sciences disciplines under one roof. The university also operates the Clinical Research Centre in Malmö, featuring many specialized laboratories. There are over 100 faculty.
Accommodation
LU Accommodation offers housing in the cities of Lund, Malmö and Helsingborg. There are different room types including dormitory rooms, studio flats and one and two-bedroom apartments.
From Wikipedia’s article on IIIEE, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4