ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how the concept of the early popular assembly is appropriated and reimagined from the early modern era to the present, and how the open-air ‘folk-moot’, of the kind described by Tacitus, became embedded in antiquarian. It takes the discussion right up to the present to demonstrate how differences in approach and interpretation in modern scholarship reflect the national and transnational discourses developed in the past. The ‘histories’ that antiquarians penned on their realms are often organised along these ancient principles. Historia de Gentibus Septentrionalibus by Olaus Magnus provides one of the earliest historical and chorographical accounts of the north, and both Saxo Grammaticus and Adam of Bremen feature large in his writings. Drawing on prehistoric monuments and symbols, inauguration sites were intended to instil a common and stronger sense of national identity through their invented settings and ritual action.
