A thing or ting was the governing assembly in Germanic and some Celtic societies, made up of the free people of the community and presided by lawspeakers, meeting in a place called a thingstead. Today the term lives on in the official names of national legislatures and political and judicial institutions in the Nordic countries, and (in the Manx form of tyn) as a term for the three legislative bodies on the Isle of Man. The Slavic Veche similarly developed from a general assembly into a legislature, and by some theories if might have been directly inspired by the Scandinavian institute brought into Rus by the Varangians.