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80-520: The village is centered along the northern shore of the Kollafjørður Fjord . Above the fjord is a narrow valley which stretches over a hilly region where trails are used for trekking. The Kollafjørður valley measures 8 kilometres (5.0 mi) and forms the eastern portion of the Kollfjardardalur valley, which lies east–west across Streymoy. It is a village which has developed length-wise along

160-662: A folkmoot , assembly , tribal council , and by other names , was a governing assembly in early Germanic society , made up of the free people of the community presided over by a lawspeaker . Things took place regularly, usually at prominent places accessible by travel. They provided legislative functions, as well as social events and trade opportunities. In modern usage, the meaning of this word in English and other languages has shifted to mean not just an assemblage of some sort but simply an object of any kind. Thingstead ( Old English : þingstede ) or "thingstow" ( Old English : þingstōw )

240-535: A French Jesuit who spent most of his life in India, had specifically demonstrated the analogy between Sanskrit and European languages. According to current academic consensus, Jones's famous work of 1786 was less accurate than his predecessors', as he erroneously included Egyptian , Japanese and Chinese in the Indo-European languages, while omitting Hindi . In 1818, Danish linguist Rasmus Christian Rask elaborated

320-659: A PIE homeland, the Kurgan and Anatolian hypotheses are the ones most widely accepted, and also the ones most debated against each other. Following the publication of several studies on ancient DNA in 2015, Colin Renfrew, the original author and proponent of the Anatolian hypothesis, has accepted the reality of migrations of populations speaking one or several Indo-European languages from the Pontic steppe towards Northwestern Europe. The table lists

400-463: A being, entity or matter (sometime before 899), and then also an act, deed, or event (from about 1000). The original sense of "meeting, assembly" did not survive the shift to Middle English. The meaning of personal possessions, commonly in the plural, first appears in Middle English around 1300, and eventually led to the modern sense of "object". This semantic development from "assembly" to "object"

480-532: A clear organizational structure. Iceland was divided into four administrative quarters during the Viking Age with a fixed number of thirty-nine goðis "lawmakers": twelve goðis in the northern quarter and nine each in the eastern, southern, and western quarters. The main distinction between Iceland and greater Scandinavia lies in the organization of the Icelandic Althing ( Alþingi ), the main assembly during

560-476: A close association between chieftains' farms and sites interpreted as assemblies or court sites. These areas were considered neutral ground where the landowning elite could meet for political reasons and for Norse rituals . This view is based partly on Norse sagas ' narratives of Viking chieftains and the distribution of large grave mounds. Ultimately, this neutrality was important for thing participants' cooperation; royal officials required cooperation to look after

640-544: A conventional mark of reconstructed words, such as * wódr̥ , * ḱwn̥tós , or * tréyes ; these forms are the reconstructed ancestors of the modern English words water , hound , and three , respectively. No direct evidence of PIE exists; scholars have reconstructed PIE from its present-day descendants using the comparative method . For example, compare the pairs of words in Italian and English: piede and foot , padre and father , pesce and fish . Since there

720-453: A detailed, though conservative, overview of the lexical knowledge accumulated by 1959. Jerzy Kuryłowicz's 1956 Apophonie gave a better understanding of Indo-European ablaut . From the 1960s, knowledge of Anatolian became robust enough to establish its relationship to PIE. Scholars have proposed multiple hypotheses about when, where, and by whom PIE was spoken. The Kurgan hypothesis , first put forward in 1956 by Marija Gimbutas , has become

800-455: A few spots of blue colouring on the pulpit but otherwise nothing has been painted. The little ship hanging under the vault was donated as a tribute by the parents of a 25-year-old who drowned off the coast of Iceland. In addition to the village's fishing industry, there is a supermarket, a café, a timber outlet and the Atlanticpane window factory. The annual village festival, Sundslagsstevna,

880-606: A language. From the 1870s, the Neogrammarians proposed that sound laws have no exceptions, as illustrated by Verner's law , published in 1876, which resolved apparent exceptions to Grimm's law by exploring the role of accent (stress) in language change. August Schleicher 's A Compendium of the Comparative Grammar of the Indo-European, Sanskrit, Greek and Latin Languages (1874–77) represented an early attempt to reconstruct

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960-422: A local family's attempt to claim supremacy are standard features of thingsteads. It is common for assembly sites close to communication routes, such as navigable water routes and clear land routes. The thing met at regular intervals, legislated, elected chieftains and kings , and judged according to the law, which was memorized and recited by the lawspeaker (judge). The thing's negotiations were presided over by

1040-512: A riding surrounding the wapentake, the wapentake would merely be a local assembly coordinating the power of the riding. In Scandinavian York's case, it would be under the king's command at what is now King's Square, York . The Kingdom of East Anglia controlled the Danelaw , which had been organized as the Five Boroughs. The Five were fortifications defending the land against Wessex , or against

1120-643: A specially designated place, often a field or common, like Þingvellir, the old location of the Icelandic Alþing. The parliament of the Isle of Man is still named after the meeting place of the thing, Tynwald , which etymologically is the same word as þingvellir ; there is still an annual public assembly at Tynwald Hill each July 5, where the new Manx laws are read out and petitions delivered). Other equivalent place names can be found across northern Europe: in Scotland , there

1200-505: A thing was held was called a "thingstead" or "thingstow". An alternative Proto-Germanic form of the word 'thing' was *þingsō , whence Gothic þeihs 'time'. All of these terms derive from * þingą meaning "appointed time," possibly originating in Proto-Indo-European * ten- , "stretch," as in a "stretch of time for an assembly". In English, the term is attested from 685 to 686 in the older meaning "assembly"; later, it referred to

1280-559: A thing was made by Tacitus in 98 CE. Tacitus suggested that the things were annual delegate-based meetings that served legal and military functions. The oldest written reference to a thing is on a stone pillar found along Hadrian's Wall at Housesteads Roman Fort in Northumberland in the United Kingdom. It is dated 43–410 CE and reads: DEO MARTI THINCSO ET DUABUS ALAISIAGIS BEDE ET FIMMILENE ET N AUG GERM CIVES TUIHANTI VSLM To

1360-597: A thousand years. According to the prevailing Kurgan hypothesis , the original homeland of the Proto-Indo-Europeans may have been in the Pontic–Caspian steppe of eastern Europe. The linguistic reconstruction of PIE has provided insight into the pastoral culture and patriarchal religion of its speakers. As speakers of Proto-Indo-European became isolated from each other through the Indo-European migrations ,

1440-734: Is Dingwall in the Scottish Highlands and Tingwall, occurring both in Orkney and Shetland , and further south there is Tinwald , in Dumfries and Galloway and – in England – Thingwall , a village on the Wirral Peninsula . In Sweden, there are several places named Tingvalla, the modern Swedish form of Þingvellir, and the Norwegian equivalent is found in the place name Tingvoll . In Dublin , Ireland ,

1520-526: Is Thingwall on the Wirral . In the Yorkshire and former Danelaw areas of England, wapentakes —another name for the same institution—were used in public records. Several places ending in the -by "village" place name suffix originally possessed their laws, by-laws , and jurisdiction subject to the wapentake in which they served, which often extended over a surrounding ground called a thorpe "hamlet". If there were

1600-422: Is a consistent correspondence of the initial consonants ( p and f ) that emerges far too frequently to be coincidental, one can infer that these languages stem from a common parent language . Detailed analysis suggests a system of sound laws to describe the phonetic and phonological changes from the hypothetical ancestral words to the modern ones. These laws have become so detailed and reliable as to support

1680-517: Is believed to have had an elaborate system of morphology that included inflectional suffixes (analogous to English child, child's, children, children's ) as well as ablaut (vowel alterations, as preserved in English sing, sang, sung, song ) and accent . PIE nominals and pronouns had a complex system of declension , and verbs similarly had a complex system of conjugation . The PIE phonology , particles , numerals , and copula are also well-reconstructed. Asterisks are used by linguists as

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1760-635: Is celebrated alternatingly in Kollafjørður, Hósvík and Hvalvík in early July. Jens Christian Djurhuus (1773–1853), who lived in Kollafjørður, wrote a number of ballads based on the Icelandic sagas . They are still sung today, especially the ones about Olaf Tryggvason or the Battle of Svolder and the ballads of Sigmund and Leif. The poet Tummas Napoleon Djurhuus (1928-1971) was a native of Kollafjørður. Thing (assembly) A thing , also known as

1840-721: Is mirrored in the evolution of the Latin causa ("judicial lawsuit", "case") to modern French chose , Spanish / Italian / Catalan cosa , and Portuguese coisa (all meaning "object" or "thing") and the cognate to English sake (purpose), sak in Norwegian and Swedish, sag in Danish, zaak in Dutch, saak in Afrikaans, and Sache in German, which in languages like Old Norse meant "accusation, lawsuit," but today also carries

1920-647: Is the English term for the location where a thing was held. The word appears in Old Norse, Old English, and modern Icelandic as þing , in Middle English (as in modern English ), Old Saxon , Old Dutch , and Old Frisian as thing (the difference between þing and thing is purely orthographical), in German as Ding , in Dutch and Afrikaans as ding , and in modern Norwegian , Danish , Swedish , Faroese , Gutnish , and Norn as ting . The place where

2000-424: Is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European language family . No direct record of Proto-Indo-European exists; its proposed features have been derived by linguistic reconstruction from documented Indo-European languages. Far more work has gone into reconstructing PIE than any other proto-language , and it is the best understood of all proto-languages of its age. The majority of linguistic work during

2080-792: The Eastern Settlement of Greenland . These two sites were located through written sources and archeological evidence. Between these two Greenlandic sites, several overlapping characteristics support the hypothesis that these booth sites are assemblies. However, not all "assembly features" previously seen in Scandinavia appear at every assembly site, and there are also characteristics that have either not been recorded in Greenland or are unique to Greenland. The temporary turf structures of Greenland have only been recorded in Iceland and would not have been seen at

2160-549: The Indian subcontinent became aware of similarities between Indo-Iranian languages and European languages, and as early as 1653, Marcus Zuerius van Boxhorn had published a proposal for a proto-language ("Scythian") for the following language families: Germanic , Romance , Greek , Baltic , Slavic , Celtic , and Iranian . In a memoir sent to the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres in 1767, Gaston-Laurent Coeurdoux ,

2240-576: The Neogrammarian hypothesis : the Indo-European sound laws apply without exception. William Jones , an Anglo-Welsh philologist and puisne judge in Bengal , caused an academic sensation when in 1786 he postulated the common ancestry of Sanskrit , Greek , Latin , Gothic , the Celtic languages , and Old Persian , but he was not the first to state such a hypothesis. In the 16th century, European visitors to

2320-800: The Storting , has historically been divided into two chambers named the Lagting and the Odelsting , which translates loosely into the "Thing of the Law" and the "Thing of the Allodial rights ". However, for much of the Storting's recent history, the division into Lagting and Odelsting has been mostly ceremonial, and the Storting has generally operated as a unicameral parliament. A constitutional amendment passed in February 2007 abolished

2400-587: The Thingmote was a raised mound, 40 foot high and 240 foot in circumference, where the Norsemen assembled and made their laws. It stood south of the river, where Saint Andrew's Church now stands, until 1685. It is contested between scholars to what extent things were sites of economic transactions and commerce and arenas for political and legal decisions. In Norway, it is clear that the assemblies functioned as an administrative level for economic transactions and taxes to

2480-505: The Vikings , depending on who ruled there; together with Lindsey, Lincolnshire , which was divided into three ridings like Yorkshire. Again, the naming of the two roads named Inner and Outer Ting Tong on a hill-top in Devon between Budleigh Salterton, Woodbury and Exmouth is widely derided as fanciful, but may be derived from Thing-Tun, a dun (hill fort) or tun (settlement) around the place where

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2560-522: The landsting , which also took other decisions regarding the island. The landsting ' s authority was successively eroded after the island was occupied by the Teutonic Order in 1398. In late medieval times, the thing comprised twelve representatives for the farmers, free-holders or tenants. As a representative legislative body, the things in Iceland were similar to those in greater Scandinavia but had

2640-471: The 19th century was devoted to the reconstruction of PIE and its daughter languages , and many of the modern techniques of linguistic reconstruction (such as the comparative method ) were developed as a result. PIE is hypothesized to have been spoken as a single language from approximately 4500 BCE to 2500 BCE during the Late Neolithic to Early Bronze Age , though estimates vary by more than

2720-669: The Gulating provides that the handling of these weapons should be controlled and regulated. This is seen at Haugating , the thing for Vestfold in Norway, which was located in Tønsberg at Haugar (from the Old Norse haugr meaning hill or mound). This site was one of Norway's most important places for the proclamation of kings. In 1130, Harald Gille called together a meeting at the Haugating, where he

2800-603: The Lagting and Odelsting, making this de facto unicameralism official following the 2009 election . On the lower administrative level the governing bodies on the county level in Norway are called Fylkesting, the Thing of the County. The names of the judicial courts of Norway contain for the most part the affix ting . The primary level of courts is called the Tingrett , with the same meaning as

2880-719: The Lawspeaker told the Swedish king Olof Skötkonung (c. 980–1022) that the people, not the king, held power in Sweden; the king realized that he was powerless against the thing and gave in. The main things in Sweden were the Thing of all Swedes , the Thing of all Geats , and the Lionga thing . The island of Gotland had twenty things in late medieval times, each represented at the island-thing called landsting by its elected judge. New laws were decided at

2960-575: The Middle Ages. The thing was led by law-speakers called asega "lawspeaker". Every pagus had its own thing, but due to a lack of written sources, it isn't easy to establish where the thingsteads were. Thing sites are being presumed by historians at Naaldwijk in the pagus Maasland (Land of the River Meuse), at Katwijk in the pagus Rijnland "land of the Rhine", at Heemskerk in the pagus Kennemerland, at De Waal in

3040-558: The North Adriatic region are sometimes classified as Italic. Albanian and Greek are the only surviving Indo-European descendants of a Paleo-Balkan language area, named for their occurrence in or in the vicinity of the Balkan peninsula . Most of the other languages of this area—including Illyrian , Thracian , and Dacian —do not appear to be members of any other subfamilies of PIE, but are so poorly attested that proper classification of them

3120-622: The Pontic–Caspian steppe and into eastern Europe. Other theories include the Anatolian hypothesis , which posits that PIE spread out from Anatolia with agriculture beginning c. 7500–6000 BCE, the Armenian hypothesis , the Paleolithic continuity paradigm , and the indigenous Aryans theory. The last two of these theories are not regarded as credible within academia. Out of all the theories for

3200-517: The Proto-Indo-European and Proto-Kartvelian languages due to early language contact , as well as some morphological similarities—notably the Indo-European ablaut , which is remarkably similar to the root ablaut system reconstructible for Proto-Kartvelian. The Lusitanian language was a marginally attested language spoken in areas near the border between present-day Portugal and Spain . The Venetic and Liburnian languages known from

3280-457: The Storting (Big Thing) today. Towards the end of the Viking age , royal power became centralized, and the kings consolidated power and control over assemblies. As a result, things lost most of their political role and began to function mainly as courts in the later Middle Ages. In the period between the eleventh and fourteenth centuries, Norway went through a state-formation process that elevated

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3360-902: The Swedish Tingsrätt , and four of the six Norwegian Courts of Appeal are named after historical Norwegian regional Things ( Frostating , Gulating , Borgarting and Eidsivating ). In Dutch , the word geding refers to a lawsuit or trial , most noticeably with the term kort geding (literally: short thing ) which refers to an injunction . Proto-Indo-European language Pontic Steppe Caucasus East Asia Eastern Europe Northern Europe Pontic Steppe Northern/Eastern Steppe Europe South Asia Steppe Europe Caucasus India Indo-Aryans Iranians East Asia Europe East Asia Europe Indo-Aryan Iranian Indo-Aryan Iranian Others European Proto-Indo-European ( PIE )

3440-525: The Swedish and Finnish court system, which are called tingsrätt ( Finnish : käräjäoikeus ), the 'court of the thing'. Similarly, prior to 1953, the Danish legislature was known as Rigsdagen , which comprised the two houses of the Folketing "People's Thing" and Landsting "Land Thing". The latter, which was reserved for people of means, was abolished by the constitution of 1953. The Norwegian parliament,

3520-513: The Thing used to meet. Thynghowe was an important Danelaw meeting place, or thing, located in Sherwood Forest, Nottinghamshire , England. It was lost to history until its rediscovery in 2005–06 by local history enthusiasts Lynda Mallett and Stuart Reddish. The site lies amidst the old oaks of an area known as the Birklands in Sherwood Forest. Experts believe it may also indicate the boundary of

3600-442: The Thing'. "Mars of the Thing" may be interpreted in analogy with the week-day name (the Germanic Tuesday corresponding to Latin Martis dies 'the day of Mars '; cf. Interpretatio germanica ) as Tīwaz of the Thing. The god Tīwaz (Old English Tíw , Old Norse Týr ) was likely important in early Germanic times and has numerous places in England and Denmark named after him. The possible theonyms Beda and Fimmilena in

3680-424: The Viking period and the Middle Ages. Unlike other European societies in the Middle Ages, Iceland was unique for relying on the Althing's legislative and judicial institutions at the national level rather than an executive branch of government. Þingvellir was the site of the Althing, and it was a place where people came together once a year to bring cases to court, render judgments, and discuss laws and politics. At

3760-428: The annual Althing, the thirty-nine goðis along with nine others served as voting members of the Law Council ( Lögrétta ), a legislative assembly. The Lögrétta reviewed the laws which the lawspeaker recited, made new laws, set fines and punishments and were informed of sentences of outlawry and banishment passed by the courts in local spring assemblies. Besides the Althing, there were local assembly districts in each of

3840-426: The assembly sites of Viking-age Sweden . Further, the booth sites at Brattahlíð and Garðar were close to high-status farms. Taken together, it indicates that trade would have taken place at these sites, and given the sparse nature of the Greenlandic settlement, it is reasonable that the participants of a thing would have taken the opportunity for social interaction or trade when gathered with others. In England, there

3920-476: The common origin of Sanskrit, Persian, Greek, Latin, and German. In 1833, he began publishing the Comparative Grammar of Sanskrit, Zend , Greek, Latin, Lithuanian, Old Slavic, Gothic, and German . In 1822, Jacob Grimm formulated what became known as Grimm's law as a general rule in his Deutsche Grammatik . Grimm showed correlations between the Germanic and other Indo-European languages and demonstrated that sound change systematically transforms all words of

4000-496: The control and power of the king. On the regional level, it has been assumed that the king would have taken control of the organization of assemblies via local representatives. Today, few thingsteads from Norway are known for sure, and as new assembly sites are found, scholars question whether these are old jurisdiction districts which the king used as a foundation for his organization or whether he created new administrative units. In southeast Norway in particular, one hypothesis for why

4080-527: The effects of hypothetical sounds which no longer exist in all languages documented prior to the excavation of cuneiform tablets in Anatolian. This theory was first proposed by Ferdinand de Saussure in 1879 on the basis of internal reconstruction only, and progressively won general acceptance after Jerzy Kuryłowicz 's discovery of consonantal reflexes of these reconstructed sounds in Hittite. Julius Pokorny 's Indogermanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch ('Indo-European Etymological Dictionary', 1959) gave

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4160-557: The four quarters of Iceland, and each year a Spring Assembly ( vorþing ) was brought together by three goðis who lived in each local assembly district ( samþingsgoðar ). The four quarters also had courts ( fjórðungsdómar ) that met at the Althing after a constitutional reform around 965. The goðis appointed the judges for these courts from the farmers in their districts. In the early twentieth century, scholars identified two potential Greenlandic thing sites at Brattahlíð in Eiríksfjörður and Garðar in Einarsfjörður; both are located in

4240-520: The god Mars Thincsus and the two Alaisiagae, Beda and Fimmilena, and to the Divinity of the Emperor the Germanics, being tribesmen of Tuihanti, willingly and deservedly fulfilled their vow. The pillar was raised by a Frisian auxiliary unit of the Roman army deployed at Hadrian's Wall. The name Tuihanti refers to the current region Twente , which is in the east of the Netherlands . However, these Tuihanti tribesmen have been interpreted by different historians as Frisians. Deo Mars Thincsus means 'god Mars of

4320-503: The interests of larger numbers of people. In Norway, the thing was a space where free men and elected officials met and discussed matters of collective interest, such as taxation. Though some scholars say that the things were dominated by the most influential members of the community, the heads of clans and wealthy families, other scholars describe how every free man could put forward his case for deliberation and share his opinions. History professor Torgrim Titlestad describes how Norway, with

4400-468: The king would have established new thing sites might be that they were a "strategic geopolitical response to the threat from the Danish king in the beginning of the 11th century." Since the record of Norwegian thing sites is not comprehensive, it is not favorable to rely on archeological and topographical characteristics to determine whether they were established before the state-formation period. In northern and southwestern Norway, there appears to have been

4480-417: The king's interests in local areas. In this regard, Norwegian things became an arena for cooperation between the royal representatives and the farmers. Based on what is known from later medieval documents, one deep-rooted custom of Norwegian law areas was the bearing of arms coming from the old tradition of the wapentake "weapon-take", which refers to the rattling of weapons at meetings to agree. The Law of

4560-436: The king. The role of commerce at the thing is more undetermined in Iceland in particular because of the role of saga literature in influencing conclusions about things. Þingvellir was thought of as a trading place as a result of saga passages and law texts that refer to trade: As shown in the Laxdæla saga , meetings at Þingvellir required people to travel from long distances and gather together for an extended period, thus it

4640-429: The kingdoms of Mercia and Northumbria . English Heritage has recently inspected the site, and has confirmed it was known as the Thynghowe in 1334 and 1609. It functioned as a place where people came to resolve disputes and settle issues. Thynghowe is an Old Norse name, although the site may be older than the Danelaw, perhaps even Bronze Age. Howe is derived from the Old Norse word haugr "mound". This often indicates

4720-494: The lawspeaker and the chieftain or the king. More and more scholarly discussions centre around the things being forerunners to democratic institutions as we know them today. The Icelandic Althing is considered to be the oldest surviving parliament in the world, the Norwegian Gulating also dating back to 900-1300. While the things were not democratic assemblies in the modern sense of an elected body, they were built around ideas of neutrality and representation, effectively representing

4800-654: The main Indo-European language families, comprising the languages descended from Proto-Indo-European. Slavic: Russian , Ukrainian , Belarusian , Polish , Czech , Slovak , Sorbian , Serbo-Croatian , Bulgarian , Slovenian , Macedonian , Kashubian , Rusyn Iranic: Persian , Pashto , Balochi , Kurdish , Zaza , Ossetian , Luri , Talyshi , Tati , Gilaki , Mazandarani , Semnani , Yaghnobi ; Nuristani Commonly proposed subgroups of Indo-European languages include Italo-Celtic , Graeco-Aryan , Graeco-Armenian , Graeco-Phrygian , Daco-Thracian , and Thraco-Illyrian . There are numerous lexical similarities between

4880-501: The main road with a few shops. The northern shore line of the road adjoins the fjord. The harbour is located 23 km north of Tórshavn at the centre of the Faroe Islands. It is the third harbour under the control of Tórshavn Port Authority. Initially there were only a few dwellings adjoining the village church. However, there has been growth in the area reaching a population of 900 in 2008, but thereafter it has been declining with 807 in 2009 and 793 in 2012. The settlement extends along

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4960-680: The members of a clan were obliged to avenge injuries against their dead and mutilated relatives. As a result, feuding is often seen as the most common form of conflict resolution used in Viking society. However, things are in a more general sense, balancing structures used to reduce tribal feuds and avoid social disorder in North Germanic cultures. They played an essential role in Viking society as forums for conflict resolution, marriage alliances, power display, honor, and inheritance settlements. In Sweden, assemblies were held at natural and man-made mounds, often burial mounds . Specifically in Scandinavia, unusually large runestones and inscriptions suggesting

5040-423: The most popular. It proposes that the original speakers of PIE were the Yamnaya culture associated with the kurgans (burial mounds) on the Pontic–Caspian steppe north of the Black Sea. According to the theory, they were nomadic pastoralists who domesticated the horse , which allowed them to migrate across Europe and Asia in wagons and chariots. By the early 3rd millennium BCE, they had expanded throughout

5120-401: The name of the Swedish Assembly of Finland ( Svenska Finlands folkting ), a semi-official body representing the Finland Swedish , and those of the three distinct elected Sámi assemblies which are all called Sameting in Norwegian and Swedish ( Northern Sami Sámediggi ). The Swedish national legislature, since medieval times , has borne a different style, Riksdag , which is cognate to

5200-436: The north side of the fjord beside the fishing port and fish factories. In the late Middle Ages, it was a moot where the so-called spring assembly gathered. The church is a typical Faroese wooden church from 1837. Standing close to the coast, it is a black-tarred wooden building with a turf roof, white painted windows, and a small white bell tower on the roof's western end. Inside, everything is made of unvarnished wood. There are

5280-406: The old name of the German national assembly, Reichstag . In Sweden, however, ting is used to name the subnational county councils, which are called Landsting . That name was also used in medieval times for the tings that governed the historical Landskap provinces, that were superseded by the counties in the 17th century. The name ting is also found in the names of the first level instances of

5360-439: The old, local magnate families attempting to maintain control. The battle for power between the king and local magnates is most visible through runic inscriptions at thing sites used to make power statements. Swedish assembly sites could be characterized by several typical features: large mounds, rune-stones, and crossings between roads by land or water to allow for greater accessibility. A famous incident took place when Þorgnýr

5440-399: The pagus Texel, at Franeker in the pagus Westergo and at Dokkum in the pagus Oostergo . From the 12th century the thing called Upstalsboom took place on the level of the civitas. At Upstalsboom , near the current town of Aurich in the East Frisia region, Germany, delegates and judges from all seven Frisian Sealands used to gather once a year. The assembly of things were typically held at

5520-439: The presence of a prehistoric burial mound. The Frisian Kingdom knew three levels of things: the highest level of the civitas , the middle level of the pagus , and the lowest level of the centena ( hundredth ). The pagi are the oldest building block, and they probably took place three times a year and were attended by all freemen. Early-medieval Frisia consisted of about 16 pagi. The other thing levels only became relevant during

5600-426: The proto-Indo-European language. By the early 1900s, Indo-Europeanists had developed well-defined descriptions of PIE which scholars still accept today. Later, the discovery of the Anatolian and Tocharian languages added to the corpus of descendant languages. A subtle new principle won wide acceptance: the laryngeal theory , which explained irregularities in the reconstruction of Proto-Indo-European phonology as

5680-428: The regional dialects of Proto-Indo-European spoken by the various groups diverged, as each dialect underwent shifts in pronunciation (the Indo-European sound laws ), morphology, and vocabulary. Over many centuries, these dialects transformed into the known ancient Indo-European languages. From there, further linguistic divergence led to the evolution of their current descendants, the modern Indo-European languages. PIE

5760-442: The sagas, and place names, "such as the 'Disting' market that is said to have been held during the thing meetings at Gamla Uppsala in Sweden." The national legislatures of Iceland , Norway and Denmark all have names that incorporate thing : The legislatures of the self-governing territories of Åland , Faroe Islands , Greenland and Isle of Man also have names that refer to thing : In addition, thing can be found in

5840-515: The same inscription relate to the bodthing and fimelthing , two specific types of assemblies were recorded in Old Frisian codices from around 1100 onward. Perhaps the distinction was that the fixed thing was protected by the god Thincsus, the extraordinary thing by Beda, and the informative or non-decision-making thing by Fimmilena. The Anglo-Saxon folkmoot ( Old English : folcgemōt ; Middle English : folkesmōt ; Norwegian : folkemøte )

5920-577: The sense "thing, object". Today the term lives on in the English term hustings and in the names of national legislatures and political and judicial institutions of some Nordic countries (e.g. the Icelandic parliament, the Alþing ) and the Isle of Man (the Tynwald ). In modern German and Dutch, the day Tuesday is named after the thing, namely ' Dienstag ' and ' dinsdag .' The first detailed description of

6000-707: The set of correspondences in his prize essay Undersøgelse om det gamle Nordiske eller Islandske Sprogs Oprindelse ('Investigation of the Origin of the Old Norse or Icelandic Language'), where he argued that Old Norse was related to the Germanic languages, and had even suggested a relation to the Baltic, Slavic, Greek, Latin and Romance languages. In 1816, Franz Bopp published On the System of Conjugation in Sanskrit , in which he investigated

6080-405: The thing sites, displayed an advanced political system over a thousand years ago, one that was characterized by high participation and democratic ideologies. These things also served as courts of law, and if one of the smaller things could not reach agreement, the matter at hand would be brought to one of the bigger things, which encompassed larger areas. The legislature of Norway is still known as

6160-422: Was analogous, the forerunner to the witenagemōt "royal council" and a precursor of the modern Parliament of the United Kingdom . In the Viking Age, things were the public assemblies of the free men of a country, province, or a hundred ( Swedish : härad, hundare , Danish : herred ). They functioned as parliaments and courts at different levels of society—local, regional, and supra-regional. Their purpose

6240-539: Was declared King of Norway . Sigurd Magnusson was proclaimed king in 1193 at the Haugating. Magnus VII was acclaimed hereditary King of Norway and Sweden at the Haugating in August 1319. Similar to Norway, thing sites in Sweden experienced changes in administrative organization beginning in the late tenth and eleventh century. This resulted from the power struggle between the rising Christian royal power establishing itself and

6320-443: Was inevitable that entertainment, food, tools, and other goods would have played a role in the gatherings. The main question is whether trade was conducted in the assembly or on the margins of the gathering. Similarly, there are unanswered questions about the connection between trade and assembly in Greenland. Research on Scandinavian trade and assembly is burgeoning, and thus far evidence has mostly been found in written sources, such as

6400-512: Was to solve disputes and make political decisions, and thingsteads were often places for public religious rites. According to Norway's Law of the Gulating , only free men of full age could participate in the assembly. According to written sources, women were present at some things despite being left out of decision-making bodies, such as the Icelandic Althing . For prechristian Norse clans ,

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