Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Visitor Centre
& Lookout
Buð Sites
Almannagjá
Lögberg
Buð Sites
(site of ancient
encampments)
2
Poets'
Tomb
Flosagjá
Peningajá
Þingvallavatn
Not to scale
ÞINGVELLIR HISTORIC SITES
Selfoss & Laugarvatn
Flosagjá
and Peningagjá
Moving down into the valley, cross over the Öxará and follow the road back towards
the church. East of here is the splintered wall forming
Flosagjá
, a deep fissure whose
southern end has been flooded by underground springs creating
Peningagjá
, an
exceedingly clear, deep wishing pool; coins glint silver and electric blue at the
bottom. The marshlands between here and the river were once possibly an island
where duels at the Alþing were fought, before the practice was banned in the
thirteenth century.
Þingvellir church
You're now near the
church
, founded in 1018 after the Norwegian king Ólafur
Haraldsson supplied timber for the original building. The current white and blue
structure, from 1859, is misleadingly unpretentious, as by the eighteenth century
Þingvellir church was wealthy, owning a huge swathe of farmland stretching right up
the valley. A raised area behind is reserved for the tombs of outstanding Icelanders; at
present the only two incumbents are the patriotic poets
Einar Benediktsson
and
Jónas
Hallgrímsson
; the latter did much to inspire the nineteenth-century independence
movement and drew great inspiration from Þingvellir.
The rift valley
Þingvellir's valley is covered in the overgrown nine-thousand-year-old lavafield
Þingvallahraun
, product of the up-valley Skjaldbreiður (Shield-broad). Though now
extinct, this was the first
shield volcano
ever to be classified, a type that spews out
high-volume fluid lava in a steady rather than violent eruption, leaving wide, flattened
cones. The valley is beautiful in summer and early autumn, carpeted in patchy dwarf
forest and heathland plants, with the national park covered in a web of marked
walking
trails
- note that some of these cross minor rifts and gorges, which might be
