More than 100 volcanic necks in central Scania (southern Sweden) are the product of Jurassic continental rift-related mafic alkaline magmatism at the southwest margin of the Baltic Shield. They are mainly basanites, with rarer melanephelinites. Both rock groups display overlapping primitive Mg-numbers, Cr and Ni contents, steep chondrite-normalized rare earth element patterns (LaN /YbN = 17–27) and an overall enrichment in incompatible elements. However, the melanephelinites are more alkaline and have stronger high field strength element enrichment than the basanites. The existence of distinct primary magmas is also indicated by heterogeneity in highly incompatible element ratios (e.g. Zr/Nb, La/Nb). Trace element modelling indicates that the magmas were generated by comparably low degrees of melting of a heterogeneous mantle source. Such a source can best be explained by a metasomatic overprint of the mantle lithosphere by percolating evolved melts. The former existence of such alkaline trace element-enriched melts can be demonstrated by inversion of the trace element content of green-core clinopyroxenes and anorthoclase which occur as xenocrysts in the melanephelinites and are interpreted as being derived from crystallization of evolved mantle melts. Jurassic magmatic activity in Scania was coeval with the generation of nephelinites in the nearby Egersund Basin (Norwegian North Sea). Both Scanian and North Sea alkaline magmas share similar trace element characteristics. Mantle enrichment processes at the southwest margin of the Baltic Shield and the North Sea Basin generated trace element signatures similar to those of ocean island basalts (e.g. low Zr/Nb and La/Nb) but there are no indications of plume activity during the Mesozoic in this area. On the contrary, the short duration of rifting, absence of extensive lithospheric thinning, and low magma volumes argue against a Mesozoic mantle plume. It seems likely that the metasomatic imprint resulted from the earlier Permo-Carboniferous rifting episode which affected the entire study area and clearly was accompanied by plume activity (Ernst and Buchan in American Geophysical Union, pp 297–337, 1997). Renewed rifting in Jurassic times triggered decompression melting in the volatile-enriched lithospheric mantle and the alkaline melts generated inherited the earlier “stored” plume signature.