Lund
2 of the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf carry an entry for Lund. Both are reproduced below, so you can see where they agree and where they differ.
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
a city of Gothland, in the extreme S. of Sweden, 374 miles S. W. of Stockholm and 10 N. E. of Malmö. The principal building is the fine Romanesque cathedral, dating from the 11th century, with an imposing crypt. Lund owes its revival to the founding of a university in 1668 by Charles XI. It was attended in 1911 by 1,405 students, and has a library of 120,000 volumes and 3,000 MSS., an excellent zoological museum, and a botanic garden. Tegnér was a professor from 1813 to 1826, and here he composed his masterpiece "Frithjof." In the 10th century Lund was a large and powerful city, was made a bishopric in 1048, and an archbishopric in 1104. The archbishop claimed ecclesiastical supremacy over the whole of Scandinavia. At the same period Lund was the chief seat of the Danish power in the Scandinavian peninsula, and for a long period the capital of the Danish kingdom; at the epoch of its greatest prosperity it is said to have had 200,000 inhabitants. But after the introduction of the Reformation by Christian III. in 1536, the city began to decline, and had sunk down to a mere village before the . Pop. about end of the 17th century 20,000.
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
a historic city of Sweden. It is situated about eight miles inland in the laen of Malmo, twenty-three miles by water and land east of Copenhagen. There are about 20,000 inhabitants. The surrounding country is agricultural. Glove-making and foundry work are important local industries. Lund is a city of interesting historic associations. It is the Londinum of the Goths. Medieval kings of Scandia were elected on a hill in the vicinity. The cathedral of Lund, a Romanesque structure recently restored, has been pronounced the finest specimen of ecclesiastical architecture in Scandinavia. The University, attended by 700 students, has modern buildings, a museum, and a library of 180,000 volumes. The poet Tegner was a professor at Lund. A statue has been erected in his memory.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Both accounts describe a quiet cathedral town of about 20,000 people with a university of 700 to 1,400 students. Lund today has roughly 95,000 residents in the city and around 40,000 students, making its university one of the largest in Scandinavia, and the glove-making and foundry work Aiton's noted in 1910 has given way to research and technology, anchored by the Ideon science park opened in 1983, the MAX IV synchrotron light source inaugurated in 2016, and the European Spallation Source built alongside it. The Romanesque cathedral and its crypt, praised by both entries, still stand and are still the city's landmark. Collier's report that medieval Lund "is said to have had 200,000 inhabitants" is a legend no modern historian accepts; the Danish archiepiscopal city was substantial for its day but numbered in the thousands.
Written for this edition, 2026.