Thing and assembly sites
Things or assembly places have been known about for centuries but only recently has there been a concerted effort to try and understand them in the context of the Norse world.
Sanmark sums up many of those findings in her ‘Viking Law and Order’. She identifies a hierarchy of things, top-level, regional and local with one top-level site for each law province. She produces a range of feature associated with Scandinavian assembly sites that I group as follows:
Communication hub: land routes; water routes; fords; portages
Siting: wetlands; elevations; large mounds; ‘law rocks’ and ‘assembly slopes’
Historical context: prehistoric cemetery; rune stones; standing stones; wooden posts; ship settings;
Created features: hearths and cooking pits; cleared or marginal land; area to keep horses; ‘booths’
She does emphasise that not all features are to be expected at each site but the more important the site, the more likely it is to have the features.
We can understand North Uist’s thing sites through three strands of evidence, historical, place-name evidence and physical.
Sanmark sums up many of those findings in her ‘Viking Law and Order’. She identifies a hierarchy of things, top-level, regional and local with one top-level site for each law province. She produces a range of feature associated with Scandinavian assembly sites that I group as follows:
Communication hub: land routes; water routes; fords; portages
Siting: wetlands; elevations; large mounds; ‘law rocks’ and ‘assembly slopes’
Historical context: prehistoric cemetery; rune stones; standing stones; wooden posts; ship settings;
Created features: hearths and cooking pits; cleared or marginal land; area to keep horses; ‘booths’
She does emphasise that not all features are to be expected at each site but the more important the site, the more likely it is to have the features.
We can understand North Uist’s thing sites through three strands of evidence, historical, place-name evidence and physical.