Golden Circle

Before coming to Iceland I knew aobut Geysir, namesake of geysers around the world, and Gullfoss, the largest waterfall in Europe, but I had no idea about Þingvellir. I mean, how could any historical site compare to those two wonders, right? It's even written with the Icelandic letter thorn (Þ), which corresponds roughly to 'th' in English. Thorn was a letter in in Old English (Anglo-Saxon), along with that other weird letter eth, but it's certainly not part of modern international English. How can something be internationally famous if most people think it's Pingvellir, right?

Þingvellir is by far the most amazing of the sights on the Golden Circle. Hot springs and geysers are cool, but I've seen them in Yellowstone, New Mexico and California. Gullfoss is impressive, but Niagara falls is literally an order of magnitude larger. Þingvellir is something like I never seen before. Iceland is the place in the world you can stand atop a mid-ocean ridge, and at Þingvellir it's literally a cleft in the Earth with Europe on one side and America on the other. If that's not incredible enough, the world's oldest parlaiment started meeting here in 930 in the valley cleft between continents. When Iceland chose Christianity the argument was held here and turned on the subject of lava flows. It met here until the propitious year of 1789 when an earthquake widened the cleft making it's floor unsuitable for tents and such, and the Alþingi relocated to Reykjavik. Probably not until I see the Rift Valley in Africa with it's place in hominid origins will I be similarly awed.