Iceland is a land of haunting beauty and mesmerising myths and fairytales, a place we’d like to return to explore more! I went there with few expectations other than wanting to visit World Heritage listed Thingvellir National Park home to Althingi, the site of Iceland’s first parliament. Established in 930 AD it is reputedly the first parliament in Europe. And I particularly wanted to see the ‘rift’, the fractured seam where the North American and Eurasian tectonic plates are inching apart. And we did both! And I got to walk through tectonic fissures and on relatively new formed land. Amazing experience but I could have, desperately wanted to, linger longer!
An amazing country, it is powered by geothermal energy. Electricity is steam generated from the super boiling water constantly percolating to the surface and that means cheap energy. As a result other countries bring their bauxite to Iceland for smelting; those plants produce 2% of the world’s aluminium. Cheap ever-renewing energy!! Houses and streets are heated and hot water supplied from geothermal sources. So too greenhouses which grow anything from bananas to tomatoes - quite astonishing. One bakery bakes a lava loaf in the earth overnight. Good old earth!!
Iceland is a land of water, ice and fire, glaciers and volcanoes and is full of wonderful and strange things. We drove through what seemed like endless knobbly, jagged lava plains mostly covered with pale moss (it had been a relatively dry summer).
I'm standing on the North American tectonic plate looking across to the Eurasian plate! A wow moment for me.
The divide between tectonic plates at this point is 6 km and growing 2-3 cm per year. Much of the rift valley is filled with beautiful lakes and in the centre there is a very deep fissure, Silfra fissure, where people snorkel. I wish - another time perhaps!
This is a huge area of fissures created at the edge of the North American tectonic plate.
This boardwalk covers a huge fissure that opened up recently. Whoa!!
Rocks and more rocks
This is me standing near Law Rock where the head of the parliament, the Law Speaker, addressed the people, made proclamations, handed down sentences and settled disputes. And it is here that 1000 years ago the country adopted Christianity. Prior to that they had a rather beautiful set of beliefs rooted in the natural world. No heaven or hell. You decided where you wanted to go when you died - become part of the sea or a mountain or tree or sky etc.
The Logberg, Law Rock, is now hidden under heather and berry bushes, but around here every summer people gathered during the two weeks of the General Assembly (Althingi). The Assembly was made up of the leading Chieftains and the priest of the Norse religion. The laws of society were passed on orally as there was no written language.
Geysir geothermal area with Strokkur letting off steam every few minutes (every geyser in the world is named after the Icelandic word Geysir). We picnicked on a bench ringside and simply sat back and enjoyed the show. Rather spectacular!
The whole area is a bubbling steaming cauldron. We wandered through or rather around springs bubbling out hot sulphurous water at 80-100 degrees C. Not a place to bathe!
Cute as a button the Icelandic horses. The origins of the Icelandic horse date back to the Vikings who brought their small Nordic horses with them.
This is a volcanic field. In the distance you can see one of the mighty Glaciers - don’t know the name sorry. If this and other pix are a bit blurry that’s because they were mostly taken from a moving vehicle
This glacial torrent prompts me to tell you about the bridges. So many of them are single lane because each year the glacial melt barrels through and knocks out the bridges many times causing lots of accidents
Water plunging 32m, Gullfoss is a magnificent two-tiered waterfall which, when the sun catches the spray, sets off a glorious rainbow. We walked to the top and dallied there for a while taking selfies and listening to the ceaseless roar of the water plummeting into the river below.
It was a tad chilly and windy. Iceland is a very windy place all year round.
We walked the rim of this 3000 year old volcanic crater. The water level of the lake rises and falls with the level of the ground water and in there lies a complex story which I don’t think I can do justice to. It reminded me of Mt Gambier’s Blue lake - maybe their formation was similar.
This place recently experienced an earthquake that opened up a fissure that runs straight through this place - they built a shopping centre over it! ‘They’ say one side is the Eurasian plate and the other the North American plate. I’ll believe!
I have circled the volcano that produced that huge ash cloud that grounded planes in Europe in 2010.
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