The Althing is Iceland’s national parliament and is commonly described as the world’s oldest surviving parliamentary institution.
The Icelandic Commonwealth established the Althing at Þingvellir around AD 930. Chieftains and other free men gathered there to make laws, settle disputes, and hear speeches from the lawspeaker. The assembly was not a modern representative parliament, but it created a central legal forum for Iceland’s decentralized society.
The Althing continued after Iceland came under Norwegian and then Danish rule. In 1800, the Danish crown dissolved the old institution and replaced it with a high court. A restored advisory Althing opened in Reykjavík in 1845, and Iceland gained a constitution and an elected parliament in 1874.
The modern Alþingi operates in Reykjavík. Þingvellir remains a major historical and cultural site, and its landscape is also geologically significant because it lies in a zone where the North American and Eurasian tectonic plates move apart.