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The idea of creating nations for students at universities originates from the High Middle Ages. A few early examples are the universities in Paris and Bologna. The students formed associations, so-called nationes, based on their geographical origin. At the beginning of the 17th century, students in Uppsala began to organize themselves in the same way. The division into nations was based on which province the students came from. The same was true at the universities of Dorpat, now Tartu (founded in 1632), and Åbo, later the University of Helsinki (founded in 1640 as the Royal Academy of Åbo). Initially, the authorities viewed the student nations with suspicion, as they stood outside governmental control. In 1655 the nations were banned, but this created more problems than it solved. The state reconsidered, and already in 1667 membership in a nation was made mandatory instead. The difference was that the state required each nation to have an inspector, a professor, who would supervise that nation life followed the university’s rules for a decent and diligent student life.
When Lund University began its activities on January 29, St. Charles’ Day, 1668, the principles for the nations’ organization and activities were already established. Exactly one year later, according to its later adopted statutes, the Västgöta Nation in Lund was founded. The statutes justified its formation by stating that order and good laws were needed so that students living far from home could succeed in their studies. The students were generally sons of farmers who had shown good academic ability, although other backgrounds also occurred. Overall, the students had extremely limited financial resources. From the very beginning, the nation’s activities therefore had a distinctly social orientation, and in times of acute financial shortage the nation could assist students with small but vital loans from the nation’s treasury. In cases of illness, the nation could also provide practical help to the affected student. In the event of death, the nation would intervene and handle the practical consequences. The most important function, however, seems to have been to provide social education through fellowship. The students were to learn to be polite, to express themselves properly and well, partly to prevent discord, and to be able to resolve various arising disputes in a mutually positive way for those involved. All of this was to take place within a framework of piety and orderly conduct.
The Scanian War of 1675–1679 meant that the university’s activities ceased, and with them the student nations. A few years after the Peace of Lund in 1679 and the Diet of 1680, which introduced royal absolutism, the university was able to resume its activities in 1682, and soon thereafter the student nations as well. For this reason, 1685 has been celebrated as the nation’s founding year, which is thus not entirely accurate. However, it is correct that since 1685 the nation has had uninterrupted activity for more than 330 years.
After the relaunch, the nation was led by a curator. The expression itself comes from the Latin word “cura” which roughly means “care”. A curator was a person who would attend to a series of matters or simply run the business. From 1708 the mission was one-year. The number of members in the nation was low for a long time, between 10 and 20. The students, members of the nation, were divided into three categories, namely seniors, juniors, and novices. Seniors and novices still exist today as concepts. The latter were the lowest in rank and were to be socially adapted into the community. This meant that they would do errands for the others, such as leaving and retrieving mail. However, this lasted only a shorter time and anyone who could afford could buy himself free by payment to the national treasury. The novitiates would also appear a few times a week with the seniors, known as courting, to answer questions about their way of life. For the novitiates, at least in the 17th century, they were not allowed to dress so that they looked like experienced students. The outward signs of student dignity at the university were tied hat and vest. This was thus forbidden to the novitiates from wearing, as well as hat with plume. When a novice became a junior, he would continue to report on his life to the seniors and, for example, report to the curator before leaving Lund for a time and when returning. Towards the end of his studies, the junior was able to become a senior and gain increased responsibility for and some power over the junior nation members. The seniors were few and were chosen under the direction of the inspector from among the juniors. Community was based on control, because the nation would shoulder responsibility for the education of each student, who now lived so far from his family and family.
Accommodation was spread out in the small town of Lund, which for a long time had only a few thousand inhabitants. The city itself was limited to the medieval core, which has the same external features as in our days. Through Charles XI's reduction, in 1688 the King's House in Lundagård, erected in 1584, was donated to the Crown and handed over to the university. The King's House was thereafter the main building of the university until 1882 when the current main building was put into use. Another important locale was the Liberiet, the small 15th-century red-brick building located just south of the cathedral's apse.
Professors' homes were also important places for meetings and disputations or seminar-like talks. The students, who for a long time were about 200 young men or young men, lived in private with professors or the citizens of the city. They were required as part of their studies to attend the meetings of nations, which took place a few times per semester. There the curator and the seniors had the decisive influence and the novitiates were supposed to stay in the background. They were supposed to listen but were not allowed to speak. The nation as such had no permanent premises of its own. The academic environment consisted of Lundagård, including King's House, and some houses in the immediate vicinity of the cathedral as well as the professors' homes. The university, all staff including servants and the students, had its own jurisdiction in both civil and criminal matters and thus constituted a state within the city. This underlined the importance of nations being managed with judgment and accuracy. During the 19th century, the university's legal special status was gradually dismantled and ceased completely in 1908.
The nation constituted an association of students who came from Västergötland. The county was, as today, divided between the dioceses of Gothenburg and Skara and contacts with the dioceses, especially Skara, were handled by regular correspondence. It was often in the cathedral schools of the diocesan towns that students had their school background and at the university the fellowship with old schoolmates continued but now within the nations. From the 17th century and well into the 20th century, the church played an important role in educational contexts, since all education was supposed to take place in the Lutheran Christian spirit prescribed by the Swedish state. The church was part of the state and the clergy part of the education system. Since most of the students in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries were peasant sons who studied theology to become priests, this also characterized the student nations for a long time, including the Västgöta nation.
The difficult times of the general matriculation in the 18th century led to a decrease in the number of new novitiates and the total membership shrank. The Västgöta nation merged in 1767 with the Kalmar and Östgöta nations and the three formed the Götian nation, which consisted for 30 years. After that he left Östgöta and started his own and in 1817 also Kalmar. Västgöta called itself the Götiska nation until 1871 when its own name, Västgöta nation, was reclaimed. As a historical memory of the Götisk nation, the Västgöta, Kalmar and Östgöta nations had for a long time during even years a common celebration under the name of the Götisk fest.
For students, the economy has always been a fundamental problem that needs to be solved. Only few of the nation's members could, for the first three centuries of its operation, rely on any sort of family fortune. Some state student loans did not exist before the 1960s, but some scholarships did exist. For the vast majority of students, parental assistance was necessary, but often it was not enough at all. The student was then allowed to interrupt his studies, travel home or to another part of the country to work for one or more years and try to save up his study funds. Some students took jobs as informants, i.e. private tutors, with a better informed family. Others were allowed to take work in the church, in agriculture, or in commerce. From the 19th century, students could take out bank loans to finance their studies if they could get any solvent person to stand as a guarantor, that is, as a guarantor that the loan was repaid.
The major political events of the 18th and early 19th centuries caused Sweden to become a smaller country in terms of surface and population. With the loss of Finland and Swedish Pomerania, several of the country's universities ended up outside its borders. Still there were Uppsala and Lund. For Lund University, this meant that its importance to the country increased, the number of students rose slowly but clearly and the Västgöta nation had in the later decades of the 19th century some 30 members. Disciplinary control had gradually been replaced by “a good and comradely spirit”. Celebration, song and joy could now be expressed in more casual forms. The role of inspector also underwent a gradual change from head and examiner to ceremonial head and benevolent adviser.
An important marker of the new conditions brought about by the 19th century was the advent in 1830 of the Academic Society and in 1851 of its building, the AF-Borgen. The idea was to gather within one organization students and teachers of all faculties and nations. This is also expressed in the association's choice language “coniuncta valent”, unity gives strength. In the bail there were premises for the nation to use and there the students could go to meet for reasons other than national meetings. With the advent of the Academic Society, the conditions of nations changed for the better. In the future, there was a meeting place for all Lund students and premises where national life could thrive.
At the end of the 19th century, the figure increased from a long period of about twenty members to a maximum of 50 in 1890, before decreasing again to just over 20 around the turn of the century 1900 and then increasing again. In 1910 there were 51 members, by 1920 they were 40 and by 1930 the number had risen to 104. Behind the changes was the development of the university where the growth of students went from just over 500 in 1870 to close to 2500 in 1930. The growth of the university in turn was due to the general development of society with a, despite continuing large economic gaps, an increased opportunity for an increasing number of people to take baccalaureate degrees and thus qualify for university studies.
Theology students, who had dominated the nation from its inception, declined in proportion during the 19th century and made up about 15 percent of the members at the turn of the century in 1900. The reason for this change was the emergence of the industrial society and the reorientation of the curricula from a Latin-based school of learning to a broader orientation with an increased schedule space for both natural and social sciences. In Västergötland in addition to Gothenburg, at the end of the 1910s, there were four educational institutions, namely in Skara, Skövde, Vänersborg and Borås. It was solely from these high schools new members could be recruited even if their parental home was located elsewhere in Västergötland.
The first female member was drafted in 1875 and the second in 1902. This was of course of great symbolic importance but the number of women remained low until the 1930s. The female members had either taken the student as privateers or in the girls' schools that existed in the country's largest cities. After 1928, however, the state educational institutions remained open to both boys and girls, which during the 1930s meant a marked increase in the number of female students. In 1935, when the Västgöta nation celebrated its 250th anniversary, there were 19 female members out of a total of 128. The proportion of women increased gradually over the following four decades and since the mid-1980s, there has basically been a numerical equilibrium between women and men among the students in general as well as among the members of the Västgöta nation. The first female curator was installed in 1961.
The nation had 108 members in 1940. The contingency calls brought growth to a halt but in 1950 there were 162 members and ten years later it was more than double that number, namely 376. The 1960s marked a very rapid growth culminating in 1968, this in the student context such a special year, when the nation peaked at 850 members. The following decades saw first a declining membership trend, bottoming out in 1980 when the number was 392 and then a gradual rise to about 500 until the Union and National Bond, which had existed since 1908, was abolished by the Riksdag in 2010.
In the nation's first two centuries, it was the combination of community and social and scholastic control that characterized the business. During the 19th century, community outside studies became the nation's main focus. Since the construction of the AF-Bail, it was the main meeting place for the students, but there were more. The Lundensian cartoonist Carl Henrik Jensen-Carlén, in his picture suite Drag ur Studentens liv (1917), has portrayed with humor and precision the life of a Lund student as it happened in the 1910s (supplemented below with the author's captions). The tables show an existence that can be considered generally valid for the Lundensian student. It can be observed that the only attire that could be considered for everyday life, even for the poorest student, was a black suit with a student cap and for feasts always frack. The exam was generally oral and took place at the home of the respective professor. The student was a young man who lived in lodgings with some private person or in one of the “student barracks” that came into existence during the 19th century. They were privately owned residences in which a number of rooms of simple standard upstairs were rented out to students, thus an early form of corridor living. Social life was therefore advantageously conducted elsewhere.
Lunches are often eaten in so-called food teams. Someone, usually a woman with great cooking skill, organized daily in her home meals for a group of students at a low cost. During the years 1919-1965, the Lund Student Union's conventorium was located at Kyrkogatan opposite the university building. There, students could ingest very affordable meals three times a day. Conviction, which ended definitively in 1968, thus played an important social role for many students. The 1930s brought a boost to national life, not least because women had come into existence. The big event was a bigger party every semester. In addition, national evenings and excursions were organized. During the 1940s, sport also acquired a cohesive importance through the championships arranged between the nations. It was an honour to represent Västgöta in a yellow and black dress. At last April's competitions, held at the Central Sports Ground, teams from the nations fought under student denticos for the top tables at the evening's spex performance. The nation's fixed point right up until the construction of Västgötagården was the so-called nation room at AF, where the national receptions, that is, the nation's expedition opening time, were always held. The walls of the room were lined with gun-adorned lockers. In the middle of it stood a long sitting table with a veritable throne for the curator at one of its short sides. National receptions continued for a long time at AF, until the nation acquired its own expedition at Västgötagården at the beginning of the 1990s.
The advent of Västgötagården is depicted elsewhere next door. It can be stated that it meant completely new and better conditions for the nation's activities to have its own house from 1954 and, after the extension in 1959, to be able to offer a hundred high-quality corridor rooms to almost a third of its members. The new premises also offered a basement floor for the nation's activities with, among other things, a guild house for dancing and national evenings, a senior room for Saturday coffee with waffles, a sauna and other things that favored contact and togetherness. As a neighbour, the nation of Halland established itself with Hallandsgården, which provided an excellent basis for future close contact and cooperation. A new era had begun.
During the 1960s, the nation's contacts widened to include, in addition to its sister nation in Uppsala, the nation of Central Finland at the University of Helsinki, contacts which have subsequently been maintained through mutual curatorial visits in connection with spring balls. In Lund, the growth in the number of students meant that the need for student housing increased. A number of other nations built student houses and the Academic Association had large student complexes built, such as Ulal, Studentlycken, Delphi, Vävdaryggen, Vildanden and Sparta. Along Tornavägen, where Västgötagården is located, the South Scanian nation, Kristianstad nation and Helsingkrona nation were located. To this end came the International Student House and Michael Hansen's College at Dag Hammarskjöld Road. The focus of Lund's student life was thus shifted to the northeast. Västgöta's geographical location next to Tunaparken could not be better from the point of view of accessibility and proximity.
The Västgöta Nation has never made political stances, but during the left-wing wave of the late 1960s, a group of strongly left-wing members, some with strong sympathies for Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong, demanded that the nation become politically involved. However, this was rejected by a large majority. The heightened tone is illustrated by some comments about the nation's songbook, which in the 1960s had a red cover and was referred to in the nation's annual chronicle as “the little red,” which is what Mao's political handbook was generally called. Therefore, a reservation to the meeting of nations stated: “The Chronicle used an irrelevant expression of the nation's new songbook — The Little Red. To draw such parallels between Chairman Mao's work and the nation's unassuming songbook, we find to be a clear insult to the Chinese people.” The national coexistence in the 1970s and 1980s as a whole meant a symbiosis between large public events with national entertainment celebrities and the traditional expressions of student culture with the Key Words, that is, balls with big festive costumes, revues, folk dances and the big parties at last April and Lussetid respectively. The nation was quantitatively not at its greatest during this time but the quality of the business was undeniably high. From the 1970s it was also opened up for membership to students from parts of the country other than Västergötland.
The nation's newspaper "Seismografen" informed the members during the 1970s about the most impoortant events. These included "Linnéa bares herself" and "Vitsippan bares herself".
The so-called education explosion, which took place in Sweden from the 1960s, meant that far more people than before began studying at university level. A generous system of government study grants, grants and loans, was introduced in 1965 and has persisted in modified form ever since. Lund's student union increased steeply its membership and by the beginning of the 1970s it was about 20,000. Later, the figure increased when a range of existing educations were ranked under the concept of higher education, something that continued throughout the 1990s and after the turn of the millennium. With this background, the number of students in Lund increased to approximately 40,000 at the time of writing (2019). The state powers also increased the number of higher education institutions in batches to at least one in each county but often they were more numerous.
In Västergötland, the exception of Gothenburg, higher education institutions emerged in 1977 in Borås, Skövde and Trollhättan, which meant that it was no longer as obvious for students from there to apply to Lund or Uppsala. Something that distinguished the two old universities from newer universities, however, were the conditions for student life, that is, the existence of nations. When, in 2009, the Riksdag decided to abolish the union and national bonds, this particularly affected Lund and Uppsala, as the conditions for student life became completely different. Would the nations, especially the smallest ones, such as Västgöta, be able to survive in these uncertain circumstances? The nation's response was to embark on partly entirely new paths. Västgöta developed within the space of a decade into a leading restaurant nation, a socially oriented “company” where many times a week food was served of high class and in convivial forms. At the same time, dances and other activities remained. Lund's students gave a strong response with an influx of unprecedented kind. The number of members of the nation not only increased, but also very steeply, so that by the end of the 2010s, that is, at the time of writing, several semesters in a row it has exceeded 3000. Västgöta became the second largest nation in Lund in 2017.
The success had much to do with the great skill with which the business was conducted. Wise curators guarded the good spirit, now called “the Västgötska spirit”, and great care was applied to the new recruitment of elected officials, i.e. foremen, senior collegium and curator. The nation became, without having it as a goal, a school of leadership for all those who engaged. The paradox of national life is that as soon as a foreman or curator has become warm in his clothes and learned to master the various parts of a highly complex mission, it is time to resign. No one is in office for more than a year, most of them only for one term. In this way, it can be said that the nation is a very “learning organization” in which evaluations and transfer of knowledge are a key element in maintaining the quality of the operations at all times. The continuity of the nation is maintained through a conscious care of its own traditions, parties, song lyrics, especially the national anthem “Hymn till Västergötland” as well as the symbols, thus the coat of arms of Västergötland, the national flag and the yellow-black colours in all contexts.
-Hans Albin Larsson, Inspector since 2015
This text can also be found in Västgöta nation's anniversary book from 2019: Den västgötska andan, Lund: Westrogothica Publishing House.
