Þingvellir

Þingvellir- (Thingveh-tlir) or “General Assembly.” As described in many of the Icelandic sagas, this was the spot of one of the oldest parliaments in the western world. It was thought to be established around 930 and used until around 1798.

In Iceland around this time, power was distributed among local chiefs called Goðis (Go-thies) who were stationed throughout the island. They were more-or-less landowners who were powerful enough to rally people around them by being their landlord/indebted protector and who made decisions regarding punishment and compensation for crime.

They had a complicated legal system, though it was in some ways more of a systemized attempt to regulate violence and crime through a competition of wit and physical strength. This often manifested itself as blood feuds and more violence. For example, the convicted could challenge the offended to a duel over receiving a proper sentence, so giving his physical prowess legal precedence over punishment and the fact that he just stole or killed a family member or close friend of the offended.

The people would meet here annually at the “Thing” to try and settle such disputes over murder, property, etc. that could not be settled locally. A man called a law speaker would stand in the center of this divide and yell out the laws so everyone could hear it and try and settle their disputes with his lawyer-like guidance. So it was a kind of complicated and process-oriented lawlessness. O.J. Simpson would have done well there with his football induced physical strength and his cunning for “working the system.” Iceland was eventually Christianized around 1000 C.E. and integrated into the fold of the protestant Christian west.