Iceland ran itself for centuries with no king and no capital

In 930 AD, Iceland's farmer-chieftains gathered at a rift valley called Thingvellir and founded the Althing, an assembly that met once a year to make law and settle feuds -- with no monarch and no standing executive. It's often called the world's oldest parliamentary institution still in existence today.

— Jesse Byock, Viking Age Iceland — Penguin, 2001
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