The Althing was established at Þingvellir in 930 and continued meeting there until 1798. An open-air landscape, rather than a monumental chamber, housed legal and political assembly. We include it for the depth of that documented tradition and its relationship to place. Its longevity should not be confused with uninterrupted modern parliamentary democracy: medieval representation, later sovereignty and contemporary voting rights belong to different historical contexts.
Source: Þingvellir, Iceland.
Image credit: Holger Uwe Schmitt · CC BY-SA 4.0. Resized and JPEG compressed.
