Þingvellir and Land of Njál's Saga

November 10, 2009

The earth splits open here, Þingvellir, geological conveyor belt where we see tectonic faultlines at the surface--Iceland spreads out in each direction from the fissure, land of lavafields, land of volcanoes. You can dive, drysuited, into Þinvallavatn, the largest natural lake in Iceland, and set eyes on newly-forming earth.

Jeramy's professor took us on another class trip--this time to Þinvellir, site of Iceland's earliest parliament, and then to visit some of the landscapes of Njál's Saga. My map might not be entirely accurate--we took back roads and I lost track of our direction a few times... but the black line traces our general route. Jeramy drove the Archaeological Institute's "Red Devil" over the gravel ruts.

For lunch, we stopped at Njála Museum in Hvolsvöllur, where we had soup, bread, and salad in a Viking-style hall. Some of Jeramy's classmates dressed up in the museum's replica medieval clothing and wielded replica weapons. Jeramy took a thousand pictures of images from the saga, of the taxidermic animals, especially the numerous ravens, and, of course, of Viking miniatures going about their daily routines. (We're each cool in our own way.)

We stopped to look over the glacial plains that Njál would have gazed at every day from his home on the hill. The landscape is peaceful but there's an underlying violence lurking. Here are the imagined gravemounds of the sagas' warriors, and geological time is spiriting the earth away. A short distance northwest and a bubbling new earth emerges where the ghosts of Viking chieftans try to smooth out a new country.