Talk:Althing

message: Moved because links on Ting point to the native names, for example folketing, Løgting and others. --Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 14:59, 2004 Jun 22 (UTC)
Shouldn't we use the English name? WhisperToMe 09:35, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Move 

message: Someone please check my work. There was a reference to "this same royal decree" but no prior reference to a decree. I puzzled over the Icelandic Alþingi article and I think I got it right. It's been 20 years since I studied the language. -- Alarob 22:13, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  High Court 1800-1845 

message: Them's mighty big words, especially compared to the established claim later in the article that the Althing is the oldest Parliament in Europe.  The Manx Tynwald has a documented claim to have been in continuous action since 979.  Does anyone have a source? - mholland 18:18, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The Althing was established in 930 and has existed continuously since then. --D. Webb 20:43, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: "The Althing was disbanded by royal decree in 1800" (this article); "The modern parliament, called "Alþingi" (English: Althing), was founded in 1845 as an advisory body to the Danish king." (from Iceland).  From what I understand, the current body is an establishment in the spirit of the original (and making a claim of authority based on that tradition), but in no real sense directly connected.  Isn't it a bit of a POV stretch to say that it's the oldest still-acting Parliament in the world? - mholland 22:47, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: No POV pushing at all. Althing has always been a parliament and is generally regarded as the oldest one in the world, despite the few decades when it was discontinued. Few sources in English:
http://www.tiscali.co.uk/reference/encyclopaedia/hutchinson/m0002850.html
http://www.danstopicals.com/iceland.htm
http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761570543/Althing.html
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,763855,00.html
http://www.interedu.com/include.php3?file=mbacia00
Regards, Introgressive 01:30, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

text: It has not existed continuously; and most of the time under the Danes it was an appointed High Court of Justice. But its claim to be the oldest is both traditional and defensible. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:37, 14 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Oldest still-acting Parliament in the world" 

message: Just noting that "Althing" isn't necessarily the only English rendition.  Iceland's embassy in the U.S. uses Althingi on its English-language FAQ.  The U.S. State Department's background notes on Iceland also uses Althingi, as does the National Geographic Society, though the CIA World Factbook uses Althing.  — OtherDave
:But Althing is by far the most common, and more common in English than Alþing; we should be accessible to our readers. As to the general question of Icelandic names, I think a doctrinaire adherence to thorn to be both unwise and unhelpful; but they are a far more difficult question than this established name. I have therefore returned this article to the name it bore until it was unwarrantedly moved last March, but I will go no further.   Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:40, 14 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Under Alþingi,  Icelandic Online Dictionary has "Althing (the Icelandic legislative assembly)". To change the topic slightly, I'm curious about the statement that alþing was the Old Norse form. Fritzner's Old Norse dictionary only has alþingi, and Cleasby / Vigfússon calls alþing a "mod(ern) form" of alþingi and doesn't even give alþing a separate entry of its own. I don't remember ever seeing alþing in Old Norse, however most of my reading experience has been with texts that use normalised Old Norse orthography, and in some cases modernised orthography. A search of the Orðabók Háskólans text database produces just one example of alþing in a medieval text, namely Bjarnar saga Hítdælakappa, albeit in modernised spelling, as against 25 examples of alþing in Modern Icelandic. It offers many examples, however, of alþingi in Old Norse texts. (But note that most, though not all, of these examples are ambiguous, since alþing is identical to alþingi in oblique cases.) These texts too use modern spelling, and may have been assimilated to the modern language on minor points such as slight variants in word form. The O.H. "Database of the Written Language" contains examples of each variant from Modern Icelandic; and the texts in this database are recorded in the original spelling. Provisional conclusion: both alþing and alþingi have been used in post-medieval Icelandic, and alþingi seems to have been the norm in Old Norse too. Whether alþing was used in the medieval language as well, and, if so, to what extent and from how early, I'm not sure. Dependent Variable 15:53, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

text: "Alþingi" is the accusative case. The nominative is "alþing." Foreign words are normally Anglicized from the nominative, not from other cases. 69.196.154.168 (talk) 10:14, 28 May 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: That's impossible because both Alþingi and Alþing are neuter nouns, which never distinguish between nominative and accuative forms in Icelandic (or, indeed, Indo-European languages in general). See Wiktionary. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 21:48, 22 August 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Althing versus Althingi 

message: hwo is the Leader of the Opposition at alþingi and can you make a list of them ?
:There is no such formal or even informal position and no form of address. Steingrímur J. Sigfússon is currently the head of the largest opposition party but I've never heard him referred to as "leader of the opposition". Haukur 10:42, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Leader of the Opposition 

message: Is it possible that the Allthing in Dan Simmons Hyperion novels is a reference to this topic? It is basically a parliment consisting of the entire internet (or what the internet has evolved into by the time the novel takes place).  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 209.203.6.145 (talk) 06:52, 7 July 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  References in popular culture 

message: This article is in dire need of updating, as Hannesson is no longer Prime Minister for one thing. --94.169.164.191 (talk) 03:13, 20 March 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Really out of date 

message: The article as written makes no mention of when Iceland a Female electorate or Women's suffrage.--Pawyilee (talk) 13:15, 29 June 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Female electorate? 

message: In Pico Iyer's book Falling off the Map, he writes, "[...] Marshall Brement, who has written beautifully of how Icelanders were the great European poets of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries and how, even now, on one night a year, every member of Parliament must speak in rhyme."
I've been trying to find further evidence of this idea, but am not having any success. I've tried searching for the 3 books of poetry that Marshall Brement translated, and a few sets of keywords in google, and am not sure what to try next. Can anyone here provide pointers/RSs for corroboration? Or if it's a myth/mistruth then any background information on that? Thanks. –Quiddity (talk) 22:47, 28 April 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Speaking in rhyme 

message: You can't say it's "literally" translated as "all"-"thing" because those words are both used here in senses that are extinct in Modern English. And it's not appropriate to give a translation into Old English in a Modern English encyclopedia. What for? Work a reference to thing (assembly) into the lede perhaps, but otherwise, skip it. The "literal translation" would be "general assembly", but that's not significantly different from the definition given, "national parliament". Wegesrand (talk) 11:43, 28 September 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: Not an expert on this, but agreed that the translation "all"-"thing" sounds bizarre and inaccurate. Snooganssnoogans (talk) 11:47, 28 September 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Deleting "literal" translation 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: Infobox color legend for "Centre Party" does not match "Current Structure of the Iceland Parliament" image that it is describing (see web address below for source image). The correct color in the image is a shade of teal on 9 seats, close to the right side. 
wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Althing_2019.svg
I tried to change this myself (it's currently a dark blue), but it's some kind of metadata I don't know how to edit. Here's the spot:
* CaedMcG (talk) 16:59, 23 May 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Color legend error 

message: The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion:
* 
Participate in the deletion discussion at the . —Community Tech bot (talk) 19:33, 24 December 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion 

message: In all my research looking into this I have not seen anyone cite a single source for where the date of foundation of the Althingi (930 CE) comes from. I see a lot of “it’s generally accepted” or “it is said to have been” without any evidence to show where that number came from. I don’t want to burst any bubbles, but it seems there’s a lot of things claimed about the early history of this assembly that is simply accepted in good faith without any further investigation. Can anyone speak further on this or direct me to the original source that this 930 date came from? I would love to add a proper citation to this article as the two sources currently cited are not at all adequate or authoritative. Both articles simply make the claim of the 930 founding date and don’t speak any further on the subject. Can we please cite this properly? Sirjohnnysmall (talk) 17:32, 18 July 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: The Book of Icelanders includes a chronology which historians rely on to work out various dates of events. I possess an edition which shows in the prologue how the 930 date is derived and I suspect that most decent editions contain such information in their prologues. Stefán Örvar Sigmundsson (talk) 19:02, 18 July 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Where did the 930 CE date come from?