Thing (assembly)
A thing, also known as 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 also simply an object of any kind. Thingstead or thingstow is the English term for the location where a thing was held.
Etymology
The word appears in Old Norse, Old English, and modern Icelandic as þing, in Middle English, Old Saxon, Old Dutch, and Old Frisian as thing, 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 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 a being, entity or matter, and then also an act, deed, or event. 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" is mirrored in the evolution of the Latin causa to modern French chose, Spanish/Italian/Catalan cosa, and Portuguese coisa and the cognate to English sake, 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 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 and the Isle of Man.
Early attestations
The first detailed description of 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:
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 the Thing'. "Mars of the Thing" may be interpreted in analogy with the week-day name as Tīwaz of the Thing. The god Tīwaz 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 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 was analogous, the forerunner to the witenagemōt "royal council" and a precursor of the modern Parliament of the United Kingdom.
Use in Germanic society
In the Viking Age, things were the public assemblies of the free men of a country, province, or a hundred. They functioned as parliaments and courts at different levels of society—local, regional, and supra-regional. Their purpose 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, 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 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. The thing's negotiations were presided over by 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 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 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 the Storting 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.
Norway
In the period between the eleventh and fourteenth centuries, Norway went through a state-formation process that elevated 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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.
Sweden
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 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 the Lawspeaker told the Swedish king Olof Skötkonung 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 the landsting, which also took other decisions regarding the island. The landstings 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.