Sunday, September 2, 2012 — Þingvellir

The Law Rock at Þingvellir

I was dri­ven direct­ly to Þin­vel­lir by Ingi Bjar­na­son, a geo­physi­cist who has done con­sid­er­able work on Iceland´s man­tle plume. If you are going to study plate tec­ton­ics, you could hard­ly pick a bet­ter spot than this, where the Amer­i­can and Euro­pean tec­ton­ic plates are simul­ta­ne­ous­ly sep­a­rat­ing and shear­ing.  Ice­land is built up from the many lay­ers of lava erupt­ing from this crit­i­cal spot along the mid-Atlantic ocean ridge. This vio­lent action is why vol­canos are con­stant­ly erupt­ing here. The Surt­sey erup­tion cre­at­ed a new island in 1963. Eld­fell buried part of a town in lava and ash in 1973, events that fig­ure in Yrsa Sig­ur­dard­ót­tir’s excel­lent mys­tery nov­el Ash­es to Dust. Eyjafjöl­l’s ash plume paral­ysed Europe’s avi­a­tion in 2010. In 2011, Grímsvöt­n’s erupt­ed under­neath the Vat­na­jökull glac­i­er. An erup­tion of Kat­la could be a mon­u­men­tal dis­as­ter, on the scale of the dis­as­ter at Laki in 1783, which killed a quar­ter of Ice­land’s pop­u­la­tion and approx­i­mate­ly six mil­lion peo­ple world­wide through its effects. Kat­la has been show­ing some men­ac­ing behav­iour through satel­lite imagery. How­ev­er, Alain told me that anoth­er erup­tion of Hekla, which pops off on a reg­u­lar basis, is the most imme­di­ate and like­ly dan­ger. Hekla is in tra­di­tion the “gate­way to Hell”, and fig­ures in the works of Her­man Melville and William Blake.

Alain was a charm­ing guide to the feast of geol­o­gy that rolled past my eyes, answer­ing all my ques­tions and guess­es expertly.

Two con­ti­nents at Þingvel­lir. To the left is the North Amer­i­can Con­ti­nen­tal Plate. To the right is Europe.

In the broad val­ley of Þingvel­lir, you can plain­ly see the crack between the West­ern Hemi­sphere and the East­ern. A long, solemn wall of lava forms the east­ern side, crenelat­ed like a cas­tle. At one spot, a round boul­der is frozen, pinched between two cres­cent arms of rock. A low­er, more bro­ken up wall forms the west­ern wall. The trench between the two is the his­toric site of the Alþin­gi (Allth­ing), Ice­land’s medieval par­lia­ment. Here, the con­tentious Ice­landers of the Sagas gath­ered annu­al­ly to leg­is­late and try legal cas­es, with­out any King rul­ing over them, for three cen­turies. While the medieval Ice­landic state was not demo­c­ra­t­ic in the same way as a mod­ern elect­ed gov­ern­ment, it is nev­er­the­less impor­tant as an impor­tant land­mark in the his­to­ry of the demo­c­ra­t­ic idea. Giv­en the sub­jects of my writ­ing, it would be impos­si­ble for me to vis­it Ice­land with­out see­ing Þingvel­lir, and I was deeply moved by the experience.

A dra­mat­ic water­fall pours over the cliff at the west­ern end. There’s a pic­turesque church near­by, in the sim­ple, unadorned Ice­landic style. There was a group of nuns pick­ing berries, and a sprin­kling of tourists, but noth­ing like a crowd. A few sheep wan­dered about. Sun­light flood­ed the val­ley, and all was qui­et. Moun­tains and glac­i­ers in the dis­tance in every direc­tion. To the east, the bright blue of a large lake, Þingvel­lir­vatn. Across the lake, a string of geot­her­mal plumes were clear­ly visible.

I saw no sign of exploita­tion or vul­gar­i­ty at Þingvel­lir. A foot­path, some wood­en steps, a dis­crete ser­vice build­ing, a few explana­to­ry plaques, and a flag­pole on the Law Rock com­mem­o­rat­ing where Ice­land’s inde­pen­dence was declared con­sti­tute the only human med­dling in the scene, and these were all prac­ti­cal and jus­ti­fi­able alter­ations for a place of such his­toric importance.

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