Debating the "Thing" in the North: Selected Papers from Workshops Organized by The Assembly Project. Vol. 1

'The Assembly Project (TAP) – Meeting-places in Northern Europe AD 400-1500' is an international collaborative project investigating the first systems of governance in Northern Europe. The study of lordship and power in medieval societies in northwest Europe has seen considerable attention in historical as well as archaeological scholarship, with a particular focus on the transition between chiefdoms and petty kingdoms to supraregional kingdoms and states. The study of military and royal institutions has largely dominated the scholarly discourse, however, at the expense of discussion on what can be considered perhaps the most important agent in the process of medieval power: the assembly. Around the North Sea littoral, by the 9th to 12th centuries A.D., kingdoms were governed using systems of power in which assembly — both royal and public — were integral elements in the processes of negotiating, achieving consensus and exercising authority. In Norse society, assemblies referred to as 'thing', which were both parliaments and courts, are evidenced in runic inscriptions and written documents from the 11th century onwards.