Booths are a distinctive feature of the assembly sites established in Iceland in the Viking Age. The study of Icelandic assemblies has a long pedigree. Although there have been significant advances in this field in recent years, the booths remain enigmatic, both in terms of their dating and their function. In this paper, it is argued that instead of viewing the booths primarily as functional solutions to the problem of camping in the open, it is more revealing to consider their symbolic meaning, which can be deciphered on at least two levels. On the political level, the size of the booths, their number, and their arrangement were determined by the political landscape of each assembly, providing fuel for hypotheses about political developments in late Viking Age Iceland. On an ideological and mental level, the booths can be seen as symbols of collective and individual participation in the new social and political structures being created, but also—critically in landscapes only beginning to acquire cultural signifiers—they served the purpose of marking, and thereby legitimizing, the assemblies and their functions.