While I was in Iceland last month, I took a tour of the Golden Circle, a famous tourist route that encompasses some of the country’s most spectacular scenery. Here are a few of the highlights.
Once you get outside Reykjavik, Iceland is a young and fierce land, still being shaped by the natural forces that birthed it: an endless topography of dark highlands, impossibly steep mountains and fantastic volcanic formations. In the midst of the magnificent isolation, there are occasional little farms and other human outposts, seeming as if they were placed there only to emphasize the immensity of nature.
A wide view of Thingvellir National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage site. Thingvellir is a rift valley, the physical location where the North American and Eurasian continental plates are pulling apart. It was also the location of the Althing, the Vikings’ historic parliament dating back to 930 CE, where chieftains from all over Iceland met to settle laws and hear legal cases.
Gullfoss, the Golden Falls: one of Iceland’s most spectacular waterfalls, where the Hvรญtรก river plunges over a rock staircase into a canyon.
The geologically active valley of Haukadalur, strewn with hot springs, fumaroles and geysers – including the original, Geysir, from which the English word derives. Geysir no longer erupts regularly, but another nearby geyser, Strokkur, erupts every five to ten minutes.
Strokkur erupts!