Viking ’Thing’ Discovered Beneath Parking Lot in Scotland
Source: livescience.com
A Viking parliamentary site that dates to the 11th century has been found beneath a parking lot in Scotland.
The site, located in the town of Dingwall, Scotland, was dubbed a "Thing" site, referring to its name in antiquity. Like other Thing sites, this one was likely a place where ancient Norsemen gathered to settle legal disputes, uphold laws and make key political decisions."It’s a fantastic find, really," said Oliver J. T. O’Grady, the director of the site’s excavations and an archaeologist who runs an archaeological consulting firm called OJT Heritage. "No one’s had dating [information] from a Thing site in Scotland."
The Thing
Historians had long wondered whether Dingwall was a site of a Viking parliamentary gathering known as the Thing because the word Dingwall probably originated from the word thingvellir, which means "the field of the assembly."
Such Thing sites are scattered from Iceland to Norway to the Shetland Islands, and Norsemen traveled from far and wide to get to the seasonal gatherings, often to settle disputes that would otherwise end in bloodshed. But Things were held mostly at open-air fields, and people only stayed temporarily, leaving relatively few archaeological traces of their presence.
"Many archaeologists have said, ’How do you find the archaeology of a bunch of people gathering together?’" O’Grady told LiveScience.
O’Grady and his colleagues at The Thing Project, which works on similar sites around Europe, were not deterred, because traces of temporary dwelling booths had turned up at other Thing sites.
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Read the full article at: livescience.com
