ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews oldest administrative systems that can be reconstructed in Scandinavia, along with the top-level assembly sites in use at this time, and their potential predecessors. It explores major administrative divisions of Sweden, Denmark and Norway and then discusses the provincial assembly sites within these districts. The periods preceding the Scandinavian Viking Age provide evidence of increased territorialisation and a certain level of societal and military organisation. The Scandinavian administrative organisation is evident in a surviving group of documents termed the provincial laws and several associated written sources. Medieval Sweden had the largest number of law provinces, all with slightly varying traditions, together creating a rather complex picture. The work of T J Chevral has concentrated on evidence for state formation processes in Denmark. In Scandinavia, they were a specific kind of meeting and there are often correlations in the locations of top-level provincial legal assemblies and places of inauguration.
