Iceland in Pictures

The Icelandic Prime Minister’s Official Summer Residence

To celebrate the 1000 year anniversary of Iceland’s parliament, Alþingi, this building was built for the festivities at Þingvellir in 1930. The building has served as the official summer residence of the Prime Minister since 1974. He doesn’t hang around there much for barbecues, but it is where foreign heads of states and official visitors typically have lunch with the Prime Minister.

Photo by Willum.

(Source: glevum-isca)

Iceland’s best known landmark collapsed

You never know what is going to happen in Iceland. One of Iceland’s best known tourist destinations is the Þingvellir National Park. One of the things that everybody explores when they visit is Almannagjá, a large crack in the ground created by the two continental plates moving apart. Nearly every tourist who’s visited Iceland has walked along the bottom of the crack. Now the crack has been closed to the public, since we just discovered we weren’t really walking on the bottom. A small crack in the path began appearing in March. It began growing slowly until recently when it has literally become large enough to swallow a truck.

It seems that people have actually been walking on top of a very thin layer of soil, with quite a void below them. By some stroke of luck, it has not collapsed with anybody walking along the top. The main road went down along the crack bottom until 1967. However the last person to be allowed to drive along the bottom was the President of China in 2002. It would have been quite interesting if the ground would have swallowed him and his escort.

Now people are debating how to tackle the situation. The quick and simple solution is just to fill the new crack up with gravel and it will look just like it looked before and when the Vikings held their first parliament gathering here? Or should we accept that Þingvellir is a very interesting and active volcanic area and find a way to show this deep crack to people? I vote for the second option, make some sort of bridge across the crack and see how it develops.

Submitted by Cheungster.

Venturing between two plates 

Underwater Proposal in Iceland

John Kullvik from Sweden proposed to his girlfriend Elin Hedlund at the bottom of the world famous Silfra rift in Iceland. The divespot, considered one of the most beautiful divespots in the world, has never before seen a proposal. Needless to say, Elin said Yes or actually wrote yes as you can’t speak underwater. The pair was diving with Dive Iceland.

This is the official summer residence of the Icelandic Prime Minister at the ancient parliament site in Þingvellir National Park. It is mostly used for official receptions for foreign visitors. Behind the church, which you may visit, is the “state cemetery”. It is intended for national heroes of Iceland. It only has a few inhabitants and space for many more.

(Source: Flickr / pdottir, via earthalbum)