Houses of Representatives? Courtyard Sites North of the Polar Circle: Reflections on Communal Organisation from the Late Roman Period to the Viking Age
Houses of Representatives? Courtyard Sites North of the Polar Circle: Reflections on Communal Organisation from the Late Roman Period to the Viking Age
This chapter deals with the geographical organisation of the thing-system of Northern Europe prior to the state-formation processes in the 9th and 10th centuries ad. The courtyard sites (ad 200–900) of Hålogaland, Norway are interpreted as an early form of legal, cultic and military assembly sites and their size and location are discussed in relation to administrative landscapes (thing-units) reconstructed on the basis of later written sources (ad 1150–1560s). There is a remarkable correlation between the number of houseplots and the number of administrative units in the areas in question. This new discovery has far-reaching implications for understanding the age and formation processes of administrative legal landscapes on the fringes of Northern Europe.
Keywords: thing-system, courtyard sites, Hålogaland, houseplots, assembly sites, administrative legal landscapes
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