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- Title
ASSEMBLY ORGANISATION IN THE LONGUE DURÉE: THE SCANDINAVIAN THING INSTITUTION IN ITS EUROPEAN CONTEXT.
- Authors
SANMARK, ALEXANDRA
- Abstract
This paper is examines the main traits of the Scandinavian ping (thing, assembly) institution, which was in place from the Viking Age onwards, and demonstrates that this system was not unique, but rather fits into the longstanding assembly traditions identified in both preliterate and literate Germanic societies in Mainland Europe. Even though the written sources are sparse and at times rather problematic, it is clear that the assembly as a form of early government, conflict resolution and court system existed across a wide geographical region and time span. The nature of the Scandinavian thing organisation is examined through regulations surrounding assembly organisation in the earliest surviving laws, above all the Norwegian laws of the Gulathing and the Frostathing. For the analysis of the early assembly systems of the European Mainland, a wider variety of written sources, ranging from Tacitus' Germania, saints' lives to a collections of early medieval laws including The Burgundian Code and The Laws of the Salian and Ripuarian Franks have been employed. Through this comparative approach, it is demonstrated that these different assembly organisations share a number of key features, despite being diving by time and geography.
- Subjects
LONGUE duree (Historiography); CONFLICT management; MEDIEVAL law; OLD Norse language; SCANDINAVIAN history
- Publication
Quaestiones Medii Aevi Novae, 2018, Vol 23, p153
- ISSN
1427-4418
- Publication type
Article