A thing, also known as a folkmoot, assembly, tribal council, and by other names, was a governing assembly in early Germanic society, made up of the free people of the community presided over by a lawspeaker. Things took place at regular intervals, usually at prominent places that were accessible by travel. They provided legislative functions, as well as being social events and opportunities for trade. In modern usage, the meaning of this word in English and other languages has shifted to mean not just an assemblage of some sort but simply an object of any sort.
Rosamond Deborah McKitterick is an English medieval historian. She is an authority on the Frankish kingdoms in the eighth and ninth centuries AD, who uses palaeographical and manuscript studies to illuminate aspects of the political, cultural, intellectual, religious, and social history of the Early Middle Ages. From 1999 until 2016 she was Professor of Medieval History and director of research at the University of Cambridge. She is a Fellow of Sidney Sussex College and Professor Emerita of Medieval History in the University of Cambridge.
Eric George Molyneux Fletcher, Baron Fletcher, was a Labour Party politician in the United Kingdom.
Nicholas Andrew Martin Rodger FSA FRHistS FBA is a historian of the Royal Navy and senior research fellow of All Souls College, Oxford.
Martin Oswald Hugh Carver, FSA, Hon FSA Scot, is Emeritus Professor of Archaeology at the University of York, England, director of the Sutton Hoo Research Project and a leading exponent of new methods in excavation and survey. He specialises in the archaeology of early Medieval Europe. He has an international reputation for his excavations at Sutton Hoo, on behalf of the British Museum and the Society of Antiquaries and at the Pictish monastery at Portmahomack Tarbat, Easter Ross, Scotland. He has undertaken archaeological research in England, Scotland, France, Italy and Algeria.
Sandsting is a parish in the West Mainland of Shetland, Scotland, forming a southern arm of the Walls Peninsula. After the parish of Aithsting was annexed into Sandsting in the sixteenth century, it became known as Sandsting and Aithsting parish.
Howard M. R. Williams is a British archaeologist and academic who is Professor of Archaeology at the University of Chester in England. His research focuses on the study of death, burial and memory in Early Medieval Britain.
Rhind Lectures are a series of lectures on archaeological topics. They have been hosted by the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland since 1874. The content of the lectures is usually published in journals or expanded into new works by their authors.
Signals of Belief in Early England: Anglo-Saxon Paganism Revisited is an academic anthology edited by the British archaeologists Martin Carver, Alex Sanmark and Sarah Semple which was first published by Oxbow Books in 2010. Containing nine separate papers produced by various scholars working in the fields of Anglo-Saxon archaeology and Anglo-Saxon history, the book presents a number of new perspectives on Anglo-Saxon paganism and, to a lesser extent, early Anglo-Saxon Christianity. The collection – published in honour of the archaeologist Audrey Meaney – was put together on the basis of a conference on "Paganism and Popular Practice" held at the University of Oxford in 2005.
Audrey Lilian Meaney was an archaeologist and historian specialising in the study of Anglo-Saxon England. She published several books on the subject, including Gazetteer of Early Anglo-Saxon Burial Sites (1964) and Anglo-Saxon Amulets and Curing Stones (1981).
Judith Jesch is professor of Viking Age studies at the University of Nottingham. Jesch is chair of the international Runic Advisory Group and president of the English Place-Name Society.
Julia Steuart Barrow, is an English historian and academic, who specialises in medieval and ecclesiastical history. Since 2012, she has been Professor in Medieval Studies at the University of Leeds and previously served (2012–16) as the Director of the University's Institute for Medieval Studies.
Lesley Jane Abrams, is a retired academic historian. She was a Colyer-Ferguson Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford, between 2000 and 2016, and Professor of Early Medieval History at the University of Oxford from 2015 to 2016.
Mary Teresa Josephine Webber, is a British palaeographer, medievalist, and academic. She has been a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge since 1997 and Professor of Palaeography at the Faculty of History, University of Cambridge since 2018. Webber studied Modern History as an undergraduate at Somerville College, Oxford.
Susan Marian Oosthuizen is Emeritus Professor of Medieval Archaeology at the University of Cambridge. She specialises in examining the origins and development of early medieval and medieval landscapes, and in the evolution of systems of governance.
Marie Louise Stig Sørensen is a Danish archaeologist and academic. She is Professor of European Prehistory and Heritage Studies at the University of Cambridge and a Professor of Bronze Age Archaeology at the University of Leiden. Her research focuses on Bronze Age Europe, heritage, and archaeological theory.
Sally M. Foster is a Scottish archaeologist and senior lecturer at the University of Stirling. She specialises in the archaeology of Scotland, particularly the Picts and their neighbours in the early medieval period.
Gillian "Gilly" Carr is a British archaeologist and academic. She currently specialises in the Holocaust and conflict archaeology, while her early career research focused on the Iron Age and Roman Archaeology. She is an associate professor and academic director in archaeology at the University of Cambridge's Institute of Continuing Education, and a fellow and director of studies in archaeology at St Catharine's College, Cambridge. In 2019, she was elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London and of the Royal Historical Society. In 2020, she won the EAA European Heritage Prize for her work on the heritage of victims of Nazism.
Susan "Sue" Elaine Brunning is an archaeologist specialising in Early Medieval material culture, particularly swords, and is the curator of Early Medieval Europe Collections at the British Museum.
Barbara Elizabeth Crawford OBE FRSE FSA FSA(Scot) is a British historian. She is a leading authority on the mediaeval history of the Northern Isles of Scotland and Norwegian-Scottish 'frontier' and relations across the North Sea. She is Honorary Reader in Mediaeval History at the University of St Andrews, and Honorary Professor at the University of the Highlands and Islands. She was awarded an OBE for services to History and Archaeology in 2011. She became a Member of the Norwegian Academy in 1997 and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 2001.
