Photos

Þingvellir (pronounced Thingvellir) National Park has been a national park since 1930, and since 2004 UNESCO World Heritage site.

This is also one Iceland`s most important historical sites. The parliament was founded here in 930 AD, and assembled each summer until the end of the Old Commonwealth in the 13th century.

The Rift Valley is situated on the tectonic - Eurasian and North American - plate boundaries of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. At Þingvellir they break apart and the land between subsides. The drift activity is fairly constant, about 2.5 cm a year in an east-west direction. The junction of the plates is more clearly visible here than anywhere else in the world. The two plates are constantly diverging, causing fissures and gullies through the zone.

During the last glacial period, a layer of ice, more than a 1000 metres thick, covered the land. Despite the cold, there was widespread volcanic activity under the glacier. Some of these volcanic eruptions managed to melt through the glacial shield and ended in lava flows. The lava collected murky glacial run-off water south of the Þingvellir depression. All the water from the north drained through the lava and re- appeared below as clear spring water. Others melted only a cavity under the ice and formed palagonite mountains or long palagonite ridges.

The river Oxara flows in the eastward part of the Rift Valley into the lake Þingvallavatn and its underground water network extends as far as Langjökull glacier. It has beautiful deep blue water and large brown trout can still be seen during the autumn spawning season.