Norse States
Ridings are originally Scandinavian institutions.
In Iceland the third part of a thing which corresponded roughly to an English county was called þrithjungr. The island of Gotland and the Swedish province Närke were also divided into þrithjungar instead of hundreds.
In Norway (excluding Iceland) the þrithjungr seems to have been an ecclesiastical division.
Read more about this topic: Riding (country Subdivision)
Famous quotes containing the words norse and/or states:
“Carlyle has not the simple Homeric health of Wordsworth, nor the deliberate philosophic turn of Coleridge, nor the scholastic taste of Landor, but, though sick and under restraint, the constitutional vigor of one of his old Norse heroes.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Since the Civil War its six states have produced fewer political ideas, as political ideas run in the Republic, than any average county in Kansas or Nebraska.”
—H.L. (Henry Lewis)