The Viking-era assembly founded in Iceland in AD 930 was Alþingi, also known in English as the Althing.
Iceland’s settlers established Alþingi at Þingvellir around 930. It served as the country’s principal legislative and judicial gathering, where chieftains, legal experts and other free men met during the annual assembly. The law-speaker recited the law from memory and helped explain its application.
Þingvellir was not simply a parliament building. It was an outdoor meeting place in a landscape shaped by geological faults, and the assembly combined lawmaking, legal judgments, political negotiation and social interaction. Iceland had no single king during this early period.
The original commonwealth ended in the thirteenth century when Iceland accepted the authority of the Norwegian crown. Alþingi later changed form, but it remains a central symbol of Icelandic political history and is often described as one of the world’s oldest parliamentary institutions.