A thing (Old Norse, Old English and Icelandic; þing; German, Dutch; ding; modern Scandinavian languages; ting) was the governing assembly of a Germanic society, made up of the free people of the community presided over by lawspeakers. Its meeting-place was called a thingstead. The Anglo-Saxon folkmoot or folkmote (Old English – “folk meeting”, modern Norwegian; folkemøte) was analogous, the forerunner to the witenagemot and in some respects the precursor of the modern Parliament of the United Kingdom. Today the term lives on in the English term husting, in the official names of national legislatures and political and judicial institutions of Nordic countries and, in the Manx form tyn, as a term for the three legislative bodies on the Isle of Man.
