Thursday, 25 January 2018

Stortorget – The oldest square in Scandinavia



Stortorget, The Main Square, in Lund, is one of the absolutely oldest in Scandinavia! It got its shape in the end of the 10th century.


The same time Lund got its first church just about 150 metres west from the Main Square. That church was built as a stave church for the Danish king Sweyn Forkbeard, or Svend Tveskæg in Danish (Lund and Scania were Danish territories at that time), and it was a bishop church. Only a bishop was allowed to baptise people and the church in Lund had a baptismal as well.

You can see a model of that church at the open-air museum Kulturen in Lund.

Lund became the archbishopric of whole Scandinavia in 1103. The same time Stortorget, about with a size of six thousand square meters, was embellished with oak planks. The project was quite expensive and required a giant work.

Stortorget played the central role in Lund history from the beginning. Here are just a few examples
- The 15th of April 1610 the son of the Danish king congratulated here as the legitimate successor.
- On 1667, when Lund became Swedish, the execution of unknown person took place here.
- In 1717 the Swedish king Charles XII recruited here a new soldiers for his campaign against Norway which lead to his death just a year later.


The archaeological layers under the Stortorget are about sever meters deep. So they’re the thickest in Lund.

Nowadays the Main Square is a nice peaceful place and a meeting point for citizens and students.



The City Council House  locates on Stortorget too.

Welcome to Lund!

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