Law was not written code imposed from above but living tradition maintained through collective memory, enforced through communal witness, created through consensus rather than decree. The Thing (assembly) was simultaneously court, legislature, religious gathering, and political forum—the place where free men met to speak their grievances, to judge disputes, to decide matters affecting the community, to maintain the social order through participation rather than subjection. This was democracy in its most fundamental form, not representative government but direct participation, not delegation of authority but collective exercise of judgment, the recognition that law emerged from the people rather than being imposed upon them by external authority.
