Last Day in Iceland

On my last full day in Reykjavik, I rented a car with my new Canadian friend, Andrew. He had not been to Thingvillier National Park yet, and I felt like I had not had enough time when I went there on the first bus tour that I took so that is where we headed first.

Located about forty kilometers from Reykjavik, Thingvillier holds a very special place in Icelandic history. It is where they established the parliament or the Althing when the Vikings first arrived in the mid-900’s. They came to Iceland to escape a Norwegian chieftain who was uniting all the different factions in a bid to be the first king of Norway. It would work, he became Harald Fairhair. Plus they wanted more farmland they felt that Norway was overcrowded in 940 AD.

Interesting fact is that while Iceland (known as Islandia) had been known for hundreds of years. A Greek scholar referred to it in 4 BC, it was totally uninhabited when the Vikings arrived. They brought cows, sheep, horses, seeds, wives and slaves. The slaves were mostly from Ireland which the Vikings had been raiding for some time by the mid-900’s. As a matter of fact, the city of Dublin was first a Viking outpost. Rumors about that time has that the original city wall around Dublin built by the Vikings (called the Pale) was built not to keep Irish hordes out, but to keep Viking men inside because they desired Irish women so much. This is also rumored to be where the term “beyond the Pale” comes from. When the men left and did not come back, they had gone “beyond the Pale”. I do no have factual back up for this theory as it is just an age old rumor in Dublin, but current DNA studies done by the Icelandic government have proved while 80% of the original men that came to the island were Viking and 20% were Irish (most likely slaves), the original women who came were 60% Irish and 40% Viking. Most of those women were wives and not slaves. Thus the island while claiming to be Viking the actual original population was 60% Viking and 40% Irish.

Iceland was the only part of Europe that was not directly ruled by a King so a ruling council was set up that met once a year at Thingvillier for two weeks or more that made laws and rulings on how the land would be ruled. The council was only run by the ruling chieftains, but in it way it was the first democracy in Europe since Athens in Greece in 500 BC.

Chieftains decided on a “law giver” or a judge whose word was final. The Law Giver had to learn by heart all the rules and laws of the new land in order to offer fair judgement. So for the first three days of each Althing every year, the Law Giver would recite in public all the laws. It could take him up to three days to do this, and after this the trials and meetings of the council would begin.

Thingvillier was where this took place, but it was also a social and economic gathering as well. Merchants, traders, and slavers would all bring their offerings to buy and trade. In some cases, people would travel for up to two weeks in order to attend this gathering.

Executions and judgements were also handed down and performed at this annual meeting of the island’s people. The executions could be anything from hanging from the rocks, or drowning in one of the ice-cold lakes, or beheading. All in public view, so people saw the laws and punishment carried out.  And the gathering or Althing would go meeting for several hundred years in one form or another.

The current Thingvillier is a park where people come from all over the world to see another very important gathering that takes place every day. This is the only place above ground where the North American and European tectonic plates can be seen. The plates are currently moving away from each other at a rate of 4 meters a year making Thingvillier an ever-changing place of incredible rock formations and water falls and lakes and streams. The water is crystal clear here as it runs off the nearby glacier Langjokull and you can go diving (only in a wet suit because the water is so cold) and actually go inside the rift between the plates.

Thingvillier is also where it was decided by the Law Giver to move from Paganism to Christianity. This was done in 1000 AD at the Althing. Both sides presented their cases to why one religion should lead to the Law Giver, and he decided which one would be the official choice of the people. Christianity won, but the decision was very wise. You would be Christian in public and by law, but if you wished to continue to be Pagan and worship the Norse Gods of Odin and Thor and Loki in private that was totally accepted. This way Iceland avoided the bloodshed that most of Europe was swept up in during this long epic transition.

For that reason, the first church built in Iceland was constructed here in 1000 AD, and the church is still standing. It has been rebuilt and moved around the park because of the tectonic plate shifts, but the symbol is very strong. And the history and place of Thingvillier in the minds of Icelanders is so strong that the ceremonial summer home of the Prime Minister is also located here. IT is only used for official occasions and ceremonies, but this place seems to be the symbolic center of the country.

After an hour, we went to see a nearby volcanic crater, Kerio which was created about 6500 years ago, but now looks like a giant swimming pool (but really, really deep one).

Then we had a very expensive lunch (no surprise) of lamb soup and pizza (surprisingly excellent) at a small hotel restaurant outside of Silfoss . Then we drove along the southern coast back toward Reykjavik through an ancient lava debris field that looked like you on some other world. Movies like Ridley Scott’s movie, Prometheus, and Thor, Dark World and Game of Thrones have used the strange magical environment of Iceland to create their other worlds. It was a very pleasant last day in Iceland and we had beautiful sunshine until the drive back when rain and dark clouds made the lava field even more ghostly.

Note is you are renting a car here in Iceland like everything else here it is expensive, but there are plenty of firms to choose from. Gas or petrol at the moment costs almost 7 dollars US a gallon. However, here they use liters and not gallons.

Enjoy Iceland if you get a chance.