I moved into my apartment at Lund University just over 2 weeks ago, and there is a lot I have learned since my arrival! In this blog post I will tell you about the town of Lund and Lund University, and also describe my orientation program.
To best understand the character of Lund, you have to understand that there is an extensive history behind the cobblestone streets and ivy-laden buildings. The town of Lund is one of the oldest in Sweden, believed to have been founded around 900 AD when this southern-most region of the country (known as Skåne) still belonged to the kingdom of Denmark. The settlement became an important Christian missionary outpost, and the famous Lund Cathedral was finished in 1103 in the town center. The Lund Cathedral still holds services throughout the week, and you can hear the bells ringing from its 2 towers during the day. If you wander through the streets today you may find one of many city parks complete with benches and lavish fountains, old brick buildings with ivy growing on all surfaces, or new apartment blocks that are sprouting up to accommodate the growing population. Even still, your sore butt after riding a bike over these cobblestone streets always serves to remind you that this town has aged gracefully.
In 1425 a studium generale was founded next to Lund Cathedral, and in 1666 these became the grounds of Lund University, which is the oldest higher education institution in Scandinavia (not to mention more than 100 years older than the United States). Now in 2016, Lund University has approximately 42,000 students studying more than 300 degree programs, in a town which has only 80,000 permanent citizens. The campus stretches in all directions to include the university hospital, the engineering faculty and science park, and newly built research facilities, as well as satellite campuses in the nearby cities of Malmö and Helsingborg.
Leaving town brings you to the pleasant countryside which doesn’t look too different than rural America, except that there are a lot more wind turbines dotting the horizon. This southern portion of Sweden is quite flat, and it enjoys temperate weather for most of the year (it usually only snows once or twice) because of its proximity to the Baltic Sea. For these reasons Skåne has always been home to the agriculture industry of Sweden, and people from this region are sometimes mocked as country hicks by the cosmopolitan types from Stockholm.
With such an old university comes lots of fun (and sometimes outright weird) traditions, especially around the welcome period (called Nöllning) for the new students (called Novische) that are just beginning their studies at LTH Faculty of Engineering. The Nöllning lasts for 4 weeks, and it includes different days of games, outings, dinner parties, and competitions between different guilds. The guilds are student groups which you are sorted into based on what your program of study is in the Faculty of Engineering.
Myself and about 20 other international students are in the Water Resources guild, or W-guild for short, and since we arrived in Lund we have been joined by 60 incoming students to the W-guild. On different days we have had team building activities, a scavenger hunt, a dinner party, and a competition where all of the guilds in LTH send students to jump in a lake on campus and pick up as much trash as possible. Without lots of sports teams or 300+ student clubs on campus, a lot of the social life at Lund is oriented around the students that you have classes with.
Even though the Nöllning period extends through September, my friends and I knew that the warm, sunny days would not last very long. Before our first week of classes, we made an excursion to Lomma Beach, which is a pleasant 12 km bike ride from campus. We had a blissful afternoon splashing around on the shallow sandbars and playing volleyball on the beach. If only classes didn’t have to start so soon!
