Almannagjá

Almannagjá is a long fissure in the lava plain of Þingvellir in south-west Iceland, where the ground has been pulled apart along the boundary between the North American and Eurasian tectonic plates. Its western wall is a high cliff of dark basalt; walking along the floor of the rift between its broken rock faces, you are moving along the edge of the North American plate, here the Mid-Atlantic Ridge runs across dry land.

The chasm is also the backdrop to the beginning of Icelandic history. From 930 until 1798 the Althing, the general assembly of the island's free men, met each summer at Þingvellir — the name means "assembly plains". The Lögberg, or Law Rock, from which the elected lawspeaker recited the law and where anyone could address the gathering, stood close by; its exact position is uncertain, and one of the suggested sites lies against the rock wall of Almannagjá itself. The river Öxará tumbles over the western edge of the rift as the waterfall Öxarárfoss; local tradition holds that the river was diverted into the chasm in early times to supply the assembly with water, and the course of the river is known to have shifted around 1500.

In the 19th century Þingvellir became a symbol of the Icelandic national movement, and the painter Ásgrímur Jónsson returned to it in well over a hundred works. It was declared Iceland's first national park in 1928 and was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2004. Until the 1960s the old road from Reykjavík to Þingvellir ran along the floor of Almannagjá itself.

Getting there

Almannagjá is in Þingvellir National Park, about 40 km north-east of Reykjavík, on the route known as the Golden Circle. The nearest airport is Reykjavík Domestic Airport (RKV), about 42 km away; international flights use Keflavík International Airport (KEF) on the Reykjanes peninsula.