2018 ICELAND Golden Circle 20 - Ancient Places

We had a second chance to find Pingvellir (pronounced thing-vet-leer). The name means Parliament Fields. It is a protected national shrine of Icelanders, a nature preserve, and a UNESCO site. After originally settling in Iceland about 870, this area became the site of the oldest parliament in the world in the year 930.

As I said previously, it is not a building. The Alpingi (name of the parliament) met here outdoors until 1779. An official building was finally erected in 1881 Reykjavik.

Major decisions were made at this historic site, such as chieftains deciding that Icelanders would convert to Christianity. Also, in 1262 it was decided to give up their independence to Denmark and seven centuries later in 1944 to take back their independence.

It is said that the chieftains would gather on a higher elevation and the peoples would gather below them when decisions were made. Honestly, we saw no specific signs in the park and we could not pinpoint the exact location. Google Pingvellir and you often get this view over the Öxará River, but I'm not really sure if this is "the place."

More interesting to me was the location where two tectonic plates split and continue to drift apart. One is the North American plate which appears to be higher in most places and the shorter Eurasion plate. So technically Iceland straddles two continents!!! There are also two viewing areas. We saw the lower one first.

You had to walk quite a way from the parking lot up a pathway. It was icy so we had to take our time, but the phenomenon was soooo interesting and worth the walk. Steps leads up to a T in the path.

See the tall North American plate in the back above and here.

At the top take a left or right to follow a path between the plates. The left seemed a little more icy.

We took a right.

We explored that for a while and returned to the car. Then we drove around to the higher viewing point. There was a small visitor center and gift shop there. We found we could take steps down to the lower area, but we had already seen that.

This is a view of where we were at the lower level.

You can see the split here near the mid toward upper right. The Öxará River flowing into Pingvellir Lake.

More views of the split. Some wide and some narrow. The rift moves 3mm (about a tenth of an inch) annually.

Also saw some interesting fossils, or maybe rolls of lava. This is a close-up.

After that we turned toward home. Mike and I went shopping at the little grocery store.

I needed some "American" food, so baked up a frozen pizza in our oven. It was actually pretty good and hit the spot. Mike stuck on a roast beef sandwich and Skyr.

We relaxed the rest of the evening. Watching a little TV--Mash rerun, NCIS, news (thank goodness only a little on Trump). Was grateful for that break. Jotted a few blog notes before hitting the hay.