Iceland Culture Day

We took a circuitous route to get back to Reykjavik from Hrauneyjar to experience a bit of Iceland culture (see the map from a previous post). The first stop was Þingvellir, the place where the Icelandic parliament met at the beginning of the settlement of Iceland. It is also a place where the North American plate and the Eurasian plate have spread creating a large rift valley with fine gorges.

Bethany and Joe on the edge of the gorge enjoying our lunch.



















The site of the parliament. Yay, Iceland!























That's the Eurasian plate way over there...













The next stop was to visit Pals Guðmundssonar - an Icelandic sculptor and stone harp artist...odd, but cool.






















Pals has made a harp out of stone and he played for us. It was quite impressive the range of tones he gets from different slabs of rock!

Sonnet was re-living her band days....















Hraunfossar. The water flows underground from the glacier through basalt until it emerges here.





(Urdhva Dhanurasana) Bridge pose at Hraunfossar.









Barnafoss - Children's Waterfall. the story goes that a stone arch used to go over the falls but one Christmas two children slipped and drowned so their mother had the bridge destroyed.
















Johan, our super awesome bus driver! He had us well trained by the end. When he would turn on the egine of the bus we would all come running. He once started to drive off without Aaron and would slow down as Aaron got close and then tease him by speeding up before he could get on!











Tootsies in Snorri's Pool













Our final stop was the Icelandic Settlement Center in Borgarnes where we took audio tours of a folk-art telling of the settlement of Iceland and the Saga of Egil son of Skalla Grimur. Egil was a real bastard of a guy and not a likeable fellow. He killed a friend at age 8 by chopping his head off, simply because he beat him at ice-hockey. But I gues he was a great poet so the Icelanders let all his violence slide... His father was even worse and was legended to be a shape shifter as he was often know to go "berzerk" in battle. The folk art along the way was interesting and kooky and Vlada and I had a bit of fun taking pictures (even though technically we were not supposed to use cameras in the exhibit, oops).

Vlada and the sword, ready to duel. You can see in in his eyes.











Me going "berzerk" wiht the shape-shifter form of Skalla Grimur. Gar!