The nations are in charge of the sorts of social activities and venues that at other universities are handled by the student unions, fraternities, or companies: bars, clubs, theatre companies, orchestras, sports societies, and also some housing.
Nations notably host gasques, themed dinner parties that are a traditional part of Swedish student life.
[1] The nations take their names from the Swedish provinces from which they traditionally recruited their members, but do not always adhere to the strict practice of limiting membership according to those principles.
These are named on regional lines, where the nations in Lund take their names from provinces and areas in southern Sweden, and those in Uppsala take their names from all over Sweden, except for the Scanian lands, the traditional catchment area for Lund, which was founded in 1666 to provide higher education for the youth in the newly conquered areas.
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