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Parliament House (Althingishus)

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Parliament House (Althingishus)
Parliament House (Althingishus)
Parliament House (Althingishus)
Parliament House (Althingishus)
Parliament House (Althingishus)
Parliament House (Althingishus)
Parliament House (Althingishus)
Parliament House (Althingishus)
Parliament House (Althingishus)
Phone:
+354 563 0500

Hours:
SundayClosed
Monday8am - 7pm
Tuesday8am - 7pm
Wednesday8am - 7pm
Thursday8am - 7pm
Friday8am - 5pm
SaturdayClosed


The Alþingi is the national parliament of Iceland. It is the oldest parliament in the world. The Althing was founded in 930 at Þingvellir , situated approximately 45 kilometres east of what later became the country's capital, Reykjavík. Even after Iceland's union with Norway in 1262, the Althing still held its sessions at Þingvellir until 1800, 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 Alþingishús, was built in 1881, made of hewn Icelandic stone.The unicameral parliament has 63 members, and is elected every four years based on party-list proportional representation.The constitution of Iceland provides for six electoral constituencies with the possibility of an increase to seven. The constituency boundaries and the number of seats allocated to each constituency are fixed by legislation. No constituency can be represented by fewer than six seats. Furthermore, each party with more than 5% of the national vote is allocated seats based on its proportion of the 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. If the number of voters represented by each member of Alþingi in one constituency would be less than half of the comparable ratio in another constituency, the Icelandic National Electoral Commission is tasked with altering the allocation of seats to reduce that difference.The current speaker of the Althing is Steingrímur J. Sigfússon.
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

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