Sunday, 17 April 2011

THING SITES OF THE NORTH


A thing (Old Norse, Old English and Icelandic: þing; other modern Scandinavian languages: ting) was the governing assembly in Germanic and introduced into some Celtic societies, made up of the free people of the community and presided by lawspeakers, meeting in a place called a thingstead. Today, the term lives on in the official names of national legislatures and political and judicial institutions in the Nordic countries, in the Manx form tyn, as a term for the three legislative bodies on the Isle of Man, and in the English term husting.
In Anglo-Saxon England, a folkmoot or folkmote (Old English - "meeting of the people") was a governing general assembly consisting of all the free members of a tribe, community or district. It was the forerunner to the witenagemot, which was in turn in some respects the precursor of the modern Parliament.
The Slavic Veche similarly developed from a general assembly into a legislature, and by some theories might have been directly inspired by the Scandinavian institution brought to Rus by the Varangians.

Click here for a list of Thing sites on Mainland Britain

2 comments:

  1. Hello, I'm curious about the picture/painting in this article. Is it an original piece or did it come from some place else?

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  2. https://frisiacoasttrail.blog/2021/09/05/the-thing/

    ReplyDelete