Fjärdingen

Fjärdingen is the place in Uppsala where everything begins — and everything ends. It is the neighborhood marked by academic life in its most concentrated form, where Uppsala Cathedral's towers rise 118.7 meters toward an often gray, sometimes magnificent sky and remind you that there are things in life larger than your calendar. The cathedral is Scandinavia's tallest, and it dominates not just the cityscape — it dominates the mentality.

It is around Fjärdingen that you understand what Uppsala actually is: a university town in the most absolute sense of the word. Uppsala University, founded in 1477, is one of the Nordic region's oldest, and its presence leaves its mark on every street and facade in the area. The student nations — those half-mystical, half-burlesque organizations that students belong to and which offer everything from lunch restaurants to party venues and discussion clubs — are in Fjärdingen like a parallel civil infrastructure. You pass one nation, then another, and sometimes a library in between, and it is hard to determine where the institution ends and life begins.