Here it's worth exploring the topic in more detail. The thing is, Thingvellir isn't just a national park, it's an incredibly remarkable place. On the one hand, it's historical to the extreme, and on the other, it's a "place of power" where the world's energy lines converge. An attentive reader can't help but notice that the latter phrase coming from me can only sound ironic. That's true, but in this case, it's a respectful kind of irony.
So what kind of dish am I trying to cook up from all this verbal pasta?
A dish that isn't particularly spicy or flashy, meaning it lacks sensationalism, but instead is hearty and rich, meaning it impresses me personally quite deeply.
So, Thingvellir is primarily known for two things.
The first is that the continental rift between the Eurasian and North American tectonic plates runs right through here. In case anyone has forgotten their entire middle school geology course, allow me to remind you: the official prevailing theory tells us that all our continents are situated on more or less cold and solid tectonic plates of the lithosphere, beneath which the planet's matter is much softer, hotter, and more plastic, and is called the asthenosphere. And these very plates float in the asthenosphere like an iron crowbar in mercury.
In some places, the plates end and rub their edges against each other, causing earthquakes, tsunamis, and other imagination-capturing things. This happens in Iceland too, but in this specific place, you can also observe a clear boundary — where one ends and another begins.
That very rift; on the left is Europe, on the right is America
And here Europe is on this side, and America is on the other
We left the bikes at the campsite and went for a walk. Where to — the info center suggested that to us (they are quite useful and good over there), plus our fellow tourists from all continents and countries were always quick to make friends with us and supplied us with valuable info throughout the whole trip. My advice to you is never to be shy about talking to anyone, and show your route asking for advice — people are always interested in chatting, and they can share quite a few amusing and edifying facts.
I hope you remember that we barely closed our eyes that night, and it was already starting to show. The walk turned out to be not that close at all, and soon moving our legs became really difficult, as if they were in jelly rather than on solid rocky ground.
Germans shooting a movie on the newest Nikon camera, Andrey was impressed
Forgot to bring water with us, had to drink from the river
As you can see, I didn't croak.
The second aspect of Thingvellir is the Althing, the oldest active parliament in Europe. It convened in 930 AD on the shores of Lake Thingvallavatn, and was the most absolute democracy of a chauvinistic kind: all free men participated. The Althing wasn't so much a legislative body as a judicial one: it resolved disputes and settled quarrels. Priests handled laws in detail in a separate body — the Lögrétta. By the way, the law banning the import of horses, which I mentioned in the previous part, was passed in 982 and is still successfully in effect today.
Info plaque about punishments
In 1000 AD, Icelanders at the Althing decided to adopt Christianity. They didn't exactly pull this off easily. Before that, the Norwegian King Olaf Tryggvason had been pressuring them for several decades: first he sent missionaries who didn't hold back in their methods, killed a few elders, and thereby failed to gain any popularity. But the king was a tough nut to crack and didn't even consider backing down. He used economic pressure levers: he banned Icelanders from entering Norwegian ports, which for the islanders was equivalent to an economic collapse, since Norway was their main trading partner. As you can see, nothing changes on this earth: embargoes, quotas, and economic blackmail, which the US and EU use in full force today, were used in exactly the same way by the Norwegians a millennium ago, and the situation was surely exactly the same three or four thousand years ago in China.
Now national holidays are held here, so it's been made cozy and tidy
As a result of all this political squabbling, Icelanders from the camps of monotheism's supporters and opponents agreed that the final decision would be made by a moderate-minded, sensible speaker of the parliament named Thorgeir Thorkelsson, and the people, so as not to sow discord, would agree with the decision, whatever it turned out to be.
Covering himself with a warm plaid blanket, Thorgeir pondered day and night, and then made a truly Solomonic decision. They adopted Christianity, but kept three important points from their traditional culture: private worship of idols (not in public), the consumption of horse meat (forbidden in most European countries), and the most fun one — infanticide, the killing of extra children.
Once again, knowing history is useful, otherwise excessive sensitivity develops, and castles in the sky pop up in your head. Contraceptives were in short supply in Iceland back then, life was not easy, the island's resources were limited, so the practice of eliminating extra mouths looks quite understandable. Now, however, the trend in developing countries is the opposite: extra children mean there will be someone to help around the farm, and especially — to feed you in your old age.
We were moving along the rift, me — reading the plaques, despite the fact that my eyes were shutting on their own, and Andrey — sucking on a Chupa Chups. He's always unhappy that people around him don't look at the world with open eyes, yet want to learn new things, but he himself, naturally, doesn't live by his own precepts, carefully observing the principles of double standards. Maybe he does live by them, of course, but psychological defense mechanisms kick in: like, why read all that boring stuff, it's better to just look. I, naturally, think that running around and staring at rocks without understanding the historical and cultural context is, at best, superficial, and at worst, airheaded. Consumption for the sake of consumption. To me, honestly, it wouldn't make a difference if Andrey didn't constantly accuse others of it himself. However many years I've lived, I still can't get used to double standards. But I'll try, lately I've been doing somewhat better at it.
Our goal at that moment was to find the spot where the continental rift is filled with water — the cleanest and most transparent on the planet, with visibility over 100 meters. We watched a documentary about it, “Scandinavia's Wild Nature” in Full HD, and were very impressed. The Germans in the photo above, by the way, had of course heard of it, and approved of my sincere admiration.
My legs were walking, the fatigue wasn't that massive, but my brain had fallen asleep long ago, and I was moving completely on autopilot, but we finally made it to the goal.
Maybe it doesn't impress you that much, but the water in the rift is very transparent, clean, and tasty, plus the joy of reaching the goal without giving up adds enthusiasm. In the water, by the way, there were scatterings of small silver coins ranging from 10 to 100 krónur: if you fished them all out, it would probably be enough for a couple of weeks of living in Iceland.
This again is one of those little moments that give traveling a spirit of adventure and thrill. At the same time, our hike was a little bit brutal: already the second one for the day, because there was absolutely no strength left to walk the 5 kilometers back to the campsite.
And naturally, an equally small miracle happened: walking near the highway, we spotted a jeep and its owners intending to drive off. Unfortunately, we were quite far away, and the driver and passenger of the jeep looked so trendy and rich that I didn't dare to yell and wave my arms from afar in the spirit of: "stop, wait for some miserable tourists". Andrey, however, out of dread of having to trudge all the way back until nightfall, pulled this trick off, and the car stopped. I came closer at that point, but out of the sheer desire to sleep, I couldn't coherently articulate in English what we even needed. Luckily, the gentlemen inside the car turned out to be friendly, and eventually articulated what we wanted themselves: ”You want us to give you a ride? No problem, get inside”. They turned out to be an Icelandic businessman and his business partner from Switzerland, who had been to Iceland many times before, but only now had ventured outside Reykjavik.
Five minutes later we were already at our dear campsite, where for some reason two parked Porsches were standing. The campsite in Thingvellir is decent, showers and electricity are free, the info center has a cafe with sandwiches for 3-5 lats, and it costs 1100 krónur per person (about 5 lats). This rate is quite standard, but even here it's not without its tricks. What kind — you'll find out in the next parts.