What is "althing"

Althing \Al"thing\, n. [Icel. (modern) alping, earlier alpingi; allr all + ping assembly. See All, and Thing.] The national assembly or parliament of Iceland. See Thing, n., 8.

The Alþingi (anglicised as or ) is the national parliament (literally: "[the] all- thing", or general assembly) of Iceland. It is one of the oldest extant parliamentary institutions in the world together with the , today , of Jämtland County, Sweden. The Althing was founded in 930 at , the "assembly fields" or "Parliament Plains", situated approximately east of what later became the country's capital, Reykjavík. This event marked the beginning of the Icelandic Commonwealth. Even after Iceland's union with Norway in 1262, the Althing still held its sessions at until 1799, when it was discontinued for 45 years. It was restored in 1844 and moved to Reykjavík, where it has resided ever since. The present parliament building, the , was built in 1881, of hewn Icelandic stone.

The constitution of Iceland provides for six electoral constituencies with the possibility of an increase to seven. The constituency boundaries are fixed by legislation. Each constituency elects nine members. In addition, each party is allocated seats based on its proportion of the overall national vote in order that the number of members in parliament for each political party should be more or less proportional to its overall electoral support. A party must have won at least five per cent of the national vote in order to be eligible for these proportionally distributed seats. Political participation in Iceland is very high: usually over 80 per cent of the electorate casts a ballot (81.4% in 2013). The current president of the Althing is .