Thingvellir

The final stop on our tour was Thingvellir National Park.

How it's spelled in Icelandic - the first letter looks like a P with the half-circle in the middle. A Thing or Ting or Ping is a democratically-elected governing body or parliament, and Iceland is quite proud of having had the first one in the world. At some point though, they had enough problems governing themselves that they turned themselves over to Norway, which later came back under Danish control, and so Iceland was under Danish rule until 1963 when it again became an sovereign nation.  Anyway, this first Thing was in this valley, and it is still the site of major ceremonial events. Although not the beheadings and drownings that were the outcome of their early judicial system. The actual Thing was moved to Reykjavik after a major earthquake dropped the land here a couple of meters.

The valley it is located in is at the meeting place of the North American and Eurasian tectonic plates, so it's subject to lots of earthquakes. This is the largest natural lake in Iceland, and it fills in some of the gap created by earthquakes.

These fissures or rifts as our guide called them are especially prominent on the west side of the valley. Some looked to be 20 feet or more deep, and some were wide enough to have walking paths at the bottom.

There were a few more pictures I would have taken here, but my camera battery died. At least it was the last stop on my last full day of the trip.

Geysir

The next stop was Geysir national park. This is home to the big Geysir, after which geysers worldwide were named. It hasn't erupted for over 10 years, since a big earthquake in the area disrupted the underground channels. It's still bubbling slightly, so it may erupt again some day. There are a lot of smaller geysers near by, and one of them, Strokkur, erupts every 10 to 15 minutes so you don't have to wait long for an eruption.

The original Geysir, with only a little steam visible.

Strokkur erupts.

Strokkur's eruption fading away.

The clear water of this geyser pool lets you see into the depths where an eruption would come from.

A field of baby geysers.

Little Geysir. It just bubbles away, like a pot on full boil.

Gulfoss

Our second stop was at Gulfoss, or Golden Waterfall. I'm not sure if it is the largest waterfall in Iceland, or the most scenic, or just the most well-known.

This river is glacier-fed, specifically from the Längjökull Glacier, seen in the map above.

The edges of the Längjökull Glacier in the distance. I don't know how much their glaciers are shrinking, but our guide did tell us that they are now able to grow some crops that haven't been grown there since before the Little Ice Age. And she pointed out some ski areas near Reykjavik that have had to close because they don't get enough snow in the winter any more.

Gulfoss.

Skalholt

I took what's known as the Golden Circle tour, offered by several tour companies and comprising 3 main geographical/historical sites. Our first stop however wasn't listed on the itinerary. It was Skalholt, site of the first bishopric after Iceland adopted Christianity in the year 1000. It has been the site of 10 churches in the 1000+ years since, and at one time was one of the larger towns in Iceland, including one of the first schools and a monastery. There is still a small study/conference center there, alongside a modern church finished in 1963.

This old cellar entrance was just to the right of the church.

There had been some excavations of structures from the early villages.

This stone foundation was mostly intact, although overgrown.

The interior of the church was mostly plain white and modern, except for beautiful stained glass windows and this fantastic altar piece. It seemed to be made of glass beads, because it glistened in the sunshine.

Iceland

After a couple more days in the Stockholm area, I flew to Iceland. When I started planning this trip, I quickly realized that, since SAS doesn't fly out of Seattle any more and all the increased fees and fuel charges for flying, it was going to be a better deal to fly on Icelandair. All their flights connect through Iceland, and there's no charge for stopovers, so I decided to take a couple days to see a little bit of a new country. I stayed in Keflavik, which is very close to the airport, but unless I was just going to drive around the southwest peninsula, I probably wouldn't do that again. It was nice and quiet, but not much going on. And the tour I took started in Reykjavik, so I had to go by bus for almost an hour just to start the tour.

A park by Keflavik Harbor my first night in Iceland.

As we were driving into the countryside, the tour guide pointed this out as a dormant volcano. I thought, how dormant can it be if it's steaming like that?

But then you start to notice that there are steam vents all over the place. Some small and isolated...

Some larger, with generating plants built up around them. Iceland has become a leader in utilizing geothermal energy, even exporting it in the form of smelted aluminum. (It takes so much energy to smelt aluminum that it is shipped to Iceland in its raw form, smelted, and then shipped back.)

They also use the geothermal to heat greenhouses (and presumably light them in winter), which enables them to grow about 25% of their vegetables.

A view of a southern fjord, with the rolling ridges left from different lava flows. The geology here is very new, with the land built up from volcanos in relatively recent times.