National parliaments and current institutions

Forerunners to parliament

In Anglo-Saxon England, a folkmoot or folkmote (Old English - a meeting of the people) was a governing general assembly consisting of all the free members of a tribe, community or district. It was the forerunner to the witenagemot, which was in turn in some respects the precursor of the modern Parliament.

Witenagemot

The Witenagemot or the Witena gemot (IPA: [ˈwɪtənəgɪˌməʊt]), also known as the Witan (more properly the title of its members) was a political institution in Anglo-Saxon England which operated from before the seventh century until the eleventh century. The name derives from the Old English ƿitena ȝemōt, or witena gemōt, for "meeting of wise men." The Witenagemot functioned as a national assembly whose primary function was advisory to the king and whose membership was composed of the most important noblemen in England, both ecclesiastic and secular. The institution is thought to represent an aristocratic evolution of the ancient Germanic general assemblies, or folkmoots. In England, by the 7th century, these ancient folkmoots had developed into convocations of the land's most powerful and important people, including ealdormen, thegns, and senior clergy, to discuss matters of both national and local importance.

THING

A thing or ting (Old Norse, Old English and Icelandic: þing; other modern Scandinavian languages: ting) was the governing assembly in Germanic societies, made up of the free people of the community and presided by lawspeakers. Today the term lives on in the official names of national legislatures and political and judicial institutions in the North-Germanic countries.

Etymology

The Old Norse, Old Frisian and Old English þing with the meaning "assembly" is identical in origin to the English word thing, German Ding, Dutch ding, and modern Scandinavian ting when meaning "object". They are derived from Common Germanic * þengan meaning "appointed time", and some suggest an origin in Proto-Indo-European * ten-, "stretch", as in a "stretch of time for an assembly". The evolution of the word thing from "assembly" to "object" is paralleled in the evolution of the Latin causa ("judicial lawsuit") to modern French chose, Spanish/Italian cosa and Portuguese coisa (all meaning "object" or "thing").

In English the term is attested from 685 to 686 in the older meaning "assembly", later it referred to a being, entity or matter (sometime before 899), and then also an act, deed, or event (from about 1000). The meaning of personal possessions, commonly in plural (possibly influenced by Old Icelandic things meaning objects, articles, or valuables), first appears recorded in Middle English in around 1300.

National parliaments and current institutions

The national parliaments of Iceland, Norway and Denmark all have names that incorporate thing:

• Alþingi - The Icelandic "General Thing"
• Folketing - The Danish "People's Thing"
• Storting - The Norwegian "Great Thing"

The parliaments of the self-governing territories of Åland, Faroe Islands, Greenland and Isle of Man also have names that refer to thing.

• Lagting - The Ålandic "Law Thing"
• Løgting - The Faroese "Law Thing"
• Landsting - The Greenlandic "Land Thing"
• Tynwald - The Manx "Thing Meadow"
• Þingvöllr now called Dingwall - Scottish-Viking "Parliament Field"
• Tingwall, Shetland, the former capital of Shetland, on Lawting Islet

The Swedish national parliament, since medieval times, has borne a different style, Riksdag, which is cognate to the old name of the German national assembly, Reichstag. In Sweden ting is however used to name the subnational county councils, which are called Landsting. That name was also used in medieval times for the tings that governed the historical Landskap provinces, that were superseded by the counties in the 17th century. The name ting is also found in the names of the first level instances of the Swedish and Finnish court system, which are called Tingsrätt (Finnish: käräjäoikeus), the Court of the Thing.

Similarly, prior to 1953, the Danish parliamentary system was the Rigsdag, which comprised the two houses of the Folketing (People's Thing) and the Landsting (Land Thing). The latter, which was reserved for people of means, was abolished by the constitution of 1953.

Folkting is also the name of the Swedish Assembly of Finland, a semi-official body representing the Swedish-speaking population (Svenskfinland or "Swedish Finland").

In addition, there are three distinct elected Sami assemblies that are all called Sameting in Norwegian and Swedish.

The Norwegian parliament, Storting, is divided into two chambers named the Lagting and the Odelsting, which translates loosely into the Thing of the Law and the Thing of the Lords. On the lower administrative level the governing bodies on the county level in Norway are called Fylkesting, the Thing of the County, The names of the judicial courts of Norway contain for the most part the affix ting. The primary level of courts is called the Tingrett, with the same meaning as the Swedish Tingsrätt, and four of the six Norwegian Courts of Appeal are named after historical Norwegian regional Things. (Frostating, Gulating, Borgarting and Eidsivating).

Interregnum

An interregnum (plural interregna or interregnums) is a period of discontinuity of a government, organization, or social order. Archetypally, it was the period of time between the reign of one monarch and the next (coming from Latin inter-, "between" + rēgnum, "reign" [from rex, rēgis, "king"]), and the concepts of interregnum and regency therefore overlap. An interregnum can simplistically be thought of as a "gap", although the idea of an interregnum emphasizes the relationship to what comes before and to what comes after in a sequence. This contrasts with a near synonym like gap, which may be random, encompassing neither connotation of interjacency in a sequence nor formal interrelation. The term is also applied to the period of time between the election of a new President of the United States and his or her inauguration, during which the outgoing president remains in power, but as a lame duck.

Examples of interregna are periods between monarchs, between popes, between emperors of the Holy Roman Empire, between kings in an elective monarchy, or between consuls of the Roman Republic. The term can also refer to the period between the pastorates of ministers in some Protestant churches.

In Roman law, interregnum was usually accompanied by the proclamation of justitium (or state of exception, as Giorgio Agamben demonstrated in his 2005 book of this name). This is not surprising, as when a sovereign died - or when the Pope died - tumultus (upheavals) usually accompanied the news of a sovereign's death. Progressively, justitium came to signify the public mourning of the sovereign, and not anymore justitium, auctoritas being (mythically) attached to the physical body of the sovereign.

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