THE FULL VOLUME 2. The Assembly Project (TAP). A. Sanmark, F. Iversen, N. Mehler, S. Semple (Eds.) 2015. Debating the Thing in the North II. Journal of the North Atlantic. Special Volume 8. Pp. 402 (2025)

THE FULL VOLUME 1: The Assembly Project (TAP). A. Sanmark, F. Iversen, N. Mehler, S. Semple (Eds.) 2013. Debating the Thing in the North. Journal of the North Atlantic. Special Volume 5. Pp 124

Selected papers from workshops organized by The Assembly Project (TAP). TAP represents the first international collaborative project dedicated to investigating the role of assemblies in the emergent power structures of medieval northwest Europe (A.D. 400–1500). The eight papers in this volume fall into three sections. The first, Debating Sources, examines the age and role of assemblies, mainly through the use of written sources. The second section, Systems of Power, contains studies from Norway and England, which together demonstrate the similarities and differences in administrative organization in the large geographical area under scrutiny by TAP. The third and final section, entitled Places of Assembly, deals with the archaeological evidence of assembly sites, placing them within the judicial networks in the landscape, from Shetland to Iceland and the wider North Atlantic Norse settlements.

A review of: Assembly sites in Northern Europe (A.D. 800-1500): Landmarks of political power and collective identities

In this short review I tackle a review of the paper presented by Dr Mehler’s which is part of a larger project, that has taken place over three years (2010-2013) entitled ‘The Assembly Project’ (TAP). Dr. Mehler contributed to the introduction of TAP’s first publication Debating the Thing in the North I: The Assembly Project Journal of the North Atlantic (JONA), Special Volume 5. Her article looks at the althing sites and the potential for one of these sites in the Shetland Islands.

Negotiating the North: Meeting-places in the Middle Ages in the North Sea, 2020

This book brings together the cumulative results of a three-year project focused on the assemblies and administrative systems of Scandinavia, Britain, and the North Atlantic islands in the 1st and 2nd millennia AD. In this volume we integrate a wide range of historical, cartographic, archaeological, field-based, and onomastic data pertaining to early medieval and medieval administrative practices, geographies, and places of assembly in Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Iceland, the Faroe Islands, Scotland, and eastern England. This transnational perspective has enabled a new understanding of the development of power structures in early medieval northern Europe and the maturation of these systems in later centuries under royal control. In a series of richly illustrated chapters, we explore the emergence and development of mechanisms for consensus. We begin with a historiographical exploration of assembly research that sets the intellectual agenda for the chapters that follow. We then examine the emergence and development of the thing in Scandinavia and its export to the lands colonised by the Norse. We consider more broadly how assembly practices may have developed at a local level, yet played a significant role in the consolidation, and at times regulation, of elite power structures. Presenting a fresh perspective on the agency and power of the thing and cognate types of local and regional assembly, this interdisciplinary volume provides an invaluable, in-depth insight into the people, places, laws, and consensual structures that shaped the early medieval and medieval kingdoms of northern Europe.

Kingdoms, Communities and Óenaig: Irish assembly practices in their Northwest European context

(forthcoming) The Assembly Project special edition Journal of the North Atlantic

Political Assemblies in the Earlier Middle Ages. Ed by P. S. Barnwell,and Marco Mostert (2003)

Medieval Review, 2004

Iversen, Frode (2019). Houses of Representatives? Courtyard Sites North of the Polar Circle: Reflections on Communal Organisation from the Late Roman Period to the Viking Age. In Power and Place in Europe in the Early Middle Ages. Oxford University Press, pp. 174–202.

Power and Place in Europe in the Early Middle Ages, 2019

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.

Churches As Assembly Places In Early Medieval Italy, Jayne Carroll, Andrew Reynolds And Barbara Yorke (Eds,), Power And Place in Europe in The 1st Millennium Ad, Proceedings Of The British Academy, 224, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2019, pp. 201-213.

‘Patterns of Assembly. Norse Thing Sites in Shetland’, Journal of the North Atlantic, Special Volume: The Assembly Project: Debating the Thing in the North I, Eds: Alexandra Sanmark, Frode Iversen, Natascha Mehler and Sarah Semple (2013), 96-110

The assembly (thing) sites in Shetland have hitherto not been systematically examined, and their locations are more or less unknown. The aim of this article is therefore to identify the locations of the assemblies in the so-called thing parishes and analyze their characteristics, using comparative evidence from other areas of Norse settlement. As part of this process, it is proposed that Rauðarþing, one of two “lost” parishes, was located on the island of Yell, rather than on the Shetland Mainland as previously argued. Close examination of the proposed thing locations has revealed a number of striking features, most of which have parallels in Scandinavia. This finding demonstrates that great care went into the selection of thing sites, although with some consideration for local conditions. On the basis of the strong site characteristics, a new potential thing site has been identified in the area of Benston in Nesting on the Shetland Mainland. Finally, it is argued that the first thing sites were established by early Norse settlers in the time before the Norwegian kings had established firm rule in Shetland.

Assembly Politics and Conflicting Discourses in Early Medieval León (10th-11th c.)

Published in Premodern Rulership and Contemporary Political Power. The King’s Body Never Dies, ed. by Karolina Mroziewicz and Aleksander Sroczyński (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2017), pp. 21-46.

Places of Assembly: New Discoveries in Sweden and England

This paper reviews recent field results from Sweden and England demonstrating that currently held perceptions of assembly-sites as archaic and cultic are only partially accurate. Evidence has emerged for the purposeful creation of assembly locations in the fourth to eleventh centuries AD as one of the many processes of kingdom formation. In common with other modes of expression such as burial, the creation of assembly sites was often undertaken by adopting or reusing ancient locations marked by palimpsests of prehistoric remains. However, as evidence from Sweden demonstrates, meeting-places could also be created de novo, and newly monumentalised by the addition of standing stones, inscribed stones and mounds.