This article addresses the question of how vast societies were created by increased interaction among smaller communities through judicial cooperation. This process is explored through two case studies of the law provinces of (1) Gulathing and (2) Hålogaland, Norway, covering a time span of nearly a millennium, from the 3^rd to 13^th century. Central to the discussion of the early phase, during the 3^rd–10^th centuries, are the courtyard sites of Åse and Bjarkøy, Hålogaland, providing key materials to these developments in a northern European context. This material is supplemented by a case study of the Gulathing law area, which is one of only a few Scandinavian cases where the development can be more securely traced from the 11^th to the 13^th centuries. In addition, population size and the number of delegates present at the representative thing are considered.

The Late Iron Age in the Rhineland area was a period of intensive social change, manifested in the development of a hierarchical system of sanctuaries. This paper discusses the social implications of this development, thereby emphasizing the role of regional and supraregional cult places as key-sites in the construction of politicized ethnic identities and associated power networks. Moreover, some interesting spatial and temporal patterns can be observed. In the Middle Rhine-Moselle area, the main sanctuaries and assembly places seem to be located in major fortified settlements (oppida) and often seem to have been the oldest elements within these sites. In the Lower Rhine region, there is no link between cult centers and fortified settlements, and at least one of the regional cult sites was situated in a forest.

This paper explores the nature of assembly practices in early medieval Ireland (AD 400–1100). It focuses specifically on the óenach, the pre-eminent assembly of each level of community and kingdom in Irish society, and it engages critically with how assembly as a topic has been traditionally understood and analyzed by Irish scholarship. Through analysis of the nature of the óenach, I suggest that the predominantly economistic interpretation of this institution by Irish scholarship is misplaced and that rather the óenach was an Irish equivalent of pan-European assembly practices. Accordingly, this paper explores the character of óenaig (plural of óenach) in the context of this pan-European phenomenon. Furthermore, some preliminary results from ongoing research offer insights into the archaeological manifestation of assembly practices, the spatial dynamic of assembly landscapes, and the implications of the same for our understanding of civil society, scales of identity, and the practice of assembly in early medieval Ireland.

This paper investigates relationships between assembly places and expressions of collective identities among Gaelic elites during the period from the 9^th to the 16^th century in Ireland. I note patterns of continuity and change in users of assembly sites located in the “Midland Corridor” of Ireland, a historically important route between the early medieval provinces of Mide and Munster. Assembly sites, distinguished as exceptional places by their distinctive topographies and funerary aspects, were the focus of displays of ancestral attachment among Gaelic ruling dynasties. Who convened assemblies and where they were held were influenced by deference to mythological identities arising from the pseudo-historical binary cosmography of the island, changes in territorial boundaries, and the tendency for powerful families to dominate.

The site of the Icelandic general assembly at Þingvellir has long been at the center of assembly research. Over the past few decades in particular, archaeologists have criticised the antiquarian investigations of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The criticism was directed at the methods used at the time to pinpoint assembly sites and to identify their architectural components, such as booths and court-circles. However, it is also important to take a critical approach to the question of what actually took place at Þingvellir. After Iceland became independent, a period of nationalistic historiography set in, during which it was stated that Þingvellir was not only the place for the general assembly but also the greatest market place in Iceland. This paper presents the results of a systematic study of written and archaeological sources to put to the test the premise of a large-scale market at Þingvellir. Written and archaeological evidence for economic activities are faint and ambiguous. On the basis of this it is argued that there was probably not a market zone within the assembly area and that trade only took place there at a limited scale, barely exceeding necessary levels for provisioning..

The paper discusses a particular type of assembly site in medieval and presumably even older times for the exercise of justice in the province of Skåne (Scania) in southern Sweden (Scandinavian medieval: approx. AD 1050–1520). Through a close and detailed consideration of historical and antiquarian research focused around two key landscape case studies—Torna hundred and Vemmenhög hundred—this study challenges long-established models of assembly formation, location, and naming. The paper concludes by providing an entirely new perspective on what place-names associated with legal practice and judicial administration might signal about the genesis and organization of early medieval systems of power and justice.

In this paper, I summarize the evidence of former gallows sites in Shetland from place-names, oral traditions, historical records, and archaeological remains. I make an attempt to date the alleged places of execution by comparison of their spatial distribution with known or presumed historical assembly or court sites and districts. I argue that the Gallow Hills are associated with the post-medieval judicial organization of Shetland rather than the Norse division and may therefore be later in date than has been suggested before. Furthermore, I show that some of the oral traditions associated with the gallows sites reflect notions of liminality and hidden worlds that have parallels in other parts of northwestern Europe.

The mound as a focus for early medieval assembly is found widely throughout Northern Europe in the first millennium AD. Some have argued such features are evidence of early practices situated around places of ancestral importance, others that an elite need for legitimate power drove such adoptions. Elsewhere evidence for purpose-built mounds suggests they were intrinsic to the staging of events at an assembly and could be manufactured if needed. This paper builds on the results presented in the Ph.D. thesis of the first author. Here we take up the issue of meeting mounds, focusing on their role as sites of assembly in the Danelaw. This region of northern and eastern England was first documented in the early 11^th century as an area subject to conquest and colonization from Scandinavia in the 9^th century and beyond. The county of Yorkshire forms a case study within which we explore the use of the mound for assembly purposes, the types of monuments selected, the origins of these monuments and the activity at them, and finally the possible Scandinavian influences on assembly practices in the region.

Are there any continuities between the places of assemblies in Saxony before the Frankish conquest and after? What do we know about the sites and their locations, use, and function for the Saxons and the kings of the east-Frankish realm during the 10^th century? This paper shows the spatial differences between the western part of Saxonia and the eastern regions and highlights chronological changes evident between the reign of the Carolingians and their successors, the Ottonian kings, which were of Saxon origin.

… solam pene famam sequens in hac parte [de origine statuque gentis], nimia vetustate omnem fere certitudinem obscurante.

“… I have to follow mostly the legends in this part [on the origins of the elder Saxons] because the distant time is darkening any certainty.”

It is argued here that eddic poetry, where oaths were sworn on items like rings and weapons, can provide insight into practices of swearing oaths in the real world of the Vikings. It is problematic that the earliest surviving manuscripts of the eddic poems date from the late 13^th century, but other sources, including written sources from outside Scandinavia, evidence the existence of such oaths. The workings of the oaths rested on beliefs that the gods, and the items invoked in the process, would take vengeance on oath-breakers. When Christianity arrived, the procedure continued, but in a new wrapping: around the year 1000 A.D., God replaced the gods, items like weapons and rings disappeared from the procedure, and instead, people swore on items like the Bible or the cross. This transformation of a legal procedure rooted in heathen times into a procedure accepted in a Christian context seems to have taken place among the other Germanic peoples and Celts who converted to Christianity centuries before the new religion reached Scandinavia.

This article argues that eddic poetry, where females are described attending assemblies, swearing oaths, receiving compensation, and taking revenge, can provide some insight into the real “ladies of law” of pre-Christian Scandinavia. In Christian times, when “law” was seen to emanate from the male God, considerable changes were introduced.

In this paper, we make a case for identification of a thing site at Dingwall in Scotland, which has previously only been known from place-name evidence. A complex of features associated with the thing is reconstructed through reference to a mound, known in the medieval period as the Mute hill of Dingwall, which is shown to have been closely associated with a legally bounded field and church. Results are presented from a detailed local historic landscape study with findings from the first modern archaeological exploration at the candidate assembly mound, including geophysical survey and excavation. We discuss the complexities of the site's historical and landscape context with reference to the expansion of Norse lordship into northern Scotland during the Viking Age and Late Norse Period, and a review of recently identified thing sites elsewhere in Scotland. A considered interpretation is achieved of the political context for the thing's establishment and reuse during the medieval period, with reference to radiocarbon dates from the mound and discussion of the potential for Late Norse and Early Gaelic influences.

The very first historical sources which shed light on economic life in early medieval Scandinavia demonstrate that measures were being taken in order to provide for the security of trade. Merchants themselves made efforts to develop cooperative forms of organization designed to provide the greatest possible protection for life and goods when they were on the move. Kings and other territorial lords were also interested in removing threats to merchants and markets within their dominions, particularly since vigorous trade meant higher tax income for them. Early medieval Northern Europe witnessed the execution of economic policies designed to succor trade and direct it in orderly channels.