Medieval Rulership and Assembly: Thoughts on ‘Practice, Power and Place’ and ‘Residence, Ritual and Rulership’

Abstract

The two articles under discussion contain new and important considerations of the enacting of rulership in the Early Middle Ages. Both papers, although firmly based on detailed archaeological discussions of specific sites in southern Britain and Ireland respectively, make use of comparisons with other geographical areas, such as Scandinavia. Patrick Gleeson’s request that such comparative work should include both ‘Germanic and Celtic’ areas may seem obvious, but it is the case that Ireland as well as Scotland are frequently left out of discussions focusing on north-west Europe. A similar case was indeed made recently by authors in the volume Scotland in Early Medieval Europe (Blackwell 2019). By examining evidence from wider geographical areas, we have the potential to create overarching and conceptual discussions that in turn generate new pathways of thinking. In this piece, I intend to build on this approach and offer commentary from a Scandinavian point of view on the links between rulership, royal estates, and assembly sites, which are some of the main themes emerging from the two papers. Gabor Thomas and Chris Scull draw parallels between the great hall complexes of southern Britain and the central place complexes of Scandinavia, both of which are seen to have been multipurpose, with assembly as one of the functions (cf. Brink 1996, p. 238). Gleeson, on the other hand, examines the links between Irish royal residences and outdoor assemblies and inauguration sites. In order to take the discussion further, it is important to consider what types of assembly are envisaged in the two articles. In this context there are two main types that need to be distinguished as they differed in terms of ritual, performance, and space; the public assembly (i.e. the Scandinavian thing, Old Norse þing) and the royal assembly (‘the council’, Old Norse ráð, Anglo-Saxon witan). In modern terms, the public assembly has been compared to parliaments and courts while the councils have been likened to ‘pre-meetings’ before the full parliamentary debates (Norr and Sanmark 2008, pp. 379–381). The thing, also referred to as the ‘open assembly’, was elite led and participation was above all limited to landowners, although the overriding principle was that everyone was welcome, perhaps even encouraged, to attend. Thing meetings were held at outdoor assembly sites, many of which have been identified across Scandinavia (Norr and Sanmark 2008, pp. 379–381, Semple et al. 2020, chs. 4, 5 and 8). A major reason why meetings were held outdoors was the ‘concept of public knowledge’, seen as the ‘foundation of early Scandinavian law’ (Stein-Wilkeshuis 1998, pp. 313–314). The existence of this concept