{"id":321,"date":"2023-04-22T12:18:54","date_gmt":"2023-04-22T12:18:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/iceland2023.local\/?p=321"},"modified":"2023-05-23T17:08:33","modified_gmt":"2023-05-23T17:08:33","slug":"golden-circle-part-i-pingvollum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/iceland2023.local\/golden-circle-part-i-pingvollum\/","title":{"rendered":"Golden Circle Part I: PINGVOLLUM"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

We had to be out of the hostel room by 10am which was way too early for Jakobi who did not get out of bed until 9:59AM. The rest of us had been up for awhile packing up. Outside the sunny weather of the past two days was gone replaced by gray overcast and drizzling rain. We vacated to the camper kitchen for breakfast while the hostel maintenance man Vincent had tasked with finding me a sleeping bag showed up with a thin flimsy beige blanket bag I think he took from the homeless tent in the campground. He said he would wash it for us and it would be ready in an hour. He apologized on behalf of the hostel for what had happened and said that 10 years ago you could leave anything unlocked in Reykjavik but not these days. We thanked him and said we were heading out to RUMFATALAGERINN to see if they had any sleeping bags and if they did not we would be back.<\/p>\n\n\n

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We loaded up and headed out. The store was right near the Whale Museum and we drove the route Jakobi and I had walked 2 days ago and found the store. It was a bed and bedding store by the looks of it and they had one \u201cExtreme Mummy Bag\u201d for sale. 9,995K or about 73$. We then went next door to a local outdoor outfitter and their bags were twice as expensive and didn’t look to be as warm. We returned to RUMFATALAGERINN and bought the sleeping bag; it will make a nice bag for the treehouse back in Vermont, definitely not a backpacking bag as it was the size of a small backpack but it would do the job here in Iceland where we were car camping. We also picked up a 120V to 240V converter for 600K Colleen had looked at one at the gas station yesterday when getting fuel for our stove but that one was 10x as much at 6800K.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Properly equipped we emailed the hostel thanking them for all they had done for us and said we had found a sleeping bag so would not be back. We then gassed up the car, using a credit card with a PIN. Gas is 329K per liter making it and headed North out of Reykjavik under rainy skies towards PINGVELLIR NATIONAL PARK; the first stop on our DIY Golden Circle Tour. The Golden Circle is the name given to the tourist loop most visited in Iceland. I had made a Bjork playlist for the road trip but no one wanted to listen to it but me. We made a compromise that I could listen to it now<\/strong> and then never <\/strong>again. Outside the car the landscape we were rolling through was all vast empty grassy plains rising to uplands obscured by low hanging clouds not a house in sightonce we cleared the outskirts of Reykjavik. <\/p>\n\n\n

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We drove for 45 minutes to the National Park and parked in the visitor center parking lot. In preparation for our trip I had downloaded a bunch of apps to make our traveling easier: a Reykjavik Bus app that we never used because the city was so small we walked everywhere and some parking apps so as Colleen, Ambiana & Jakobi headed into the visitor center I checked the parking apps but they did not include Pingvellir National Park parking so I headed to the parking kiosk and scanned the QR Code and paid for parking on the website that came up.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Inside the visitor center they had a scale topographic model of the park which was cool to look at to see where we were among the scope of the surrounding landscape. The exhibits you usually see in a park visitor center were cordoned off and called a museum. It was 1300K per person to enter but Jakobi got in free because she’s under 17 so she checked it out and shared with us what she learned. The park is geologically active and is where the North American and European Tectonic Plates are pulling apart. It includes a big lake with mountains ringed all around and the Icelandic Prime Minister has their Summer House inside the park. Jakobi also told us the park is where they filmed some of Game of Thrones<\/em><\/strong>; the scenes where Aria and the Hound are approaching the Aerie in the Vale.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Outside there was a big deck overlooking the lake and the rift valley. It was in the 40’s with a slight wind and overcast, the mountains shrouded in misty clouds. Lots of people taking pictures along with me. One young lady was flying a drone over the drop below us. It zipped up and hovered as she and her companion posed and smiled up at it then it turned and flew off and I lost site of it in the distance over the stream below. I watched but I never saw it come back. Reading reviews of drones on Amazon I saw written more than once that someone had fired up their drone only to have it fly up and out of site and never return. The couple did not look concerned, they were both looking at the screen on the controller. Maybe they were exploring the park via drone.<\/p>\n\n\n

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A gravel path led off the deck down through a gorge with the European Plate to the East and the North American Plate to the West and we joined all the people heading down; promenading through the rift valley on our way to a waterfall.<\/p>\n\n\n

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The Icelandic Flag above Logberg<\/em><\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

Along the way we came to Logberg (Law Rock), site of the ancient Viking Councils held in the dramatic setting of the gorge. It was here on June 17th 1944 at 13:30 (Fun Fact: Iceland uses a 24 hour clock; no AM or PM) that Prime Minister Bjorn Podarson (Fun Fact: Icelanders do not have family names; their last names is the first name of their father followed by “son” or “dautter. Ambiana and Jakobi’s Icelandic names are Ambiana Mikaldautter and Jakobi Mikaldautter). So at 1:30P Mon 17\/o6\/1944 Bjorn, son of Podar, in front of thousands of people packed into the gorge, signed the decree that severed Iceland’s subjegation to Denmak and made it a sovereign nation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The site has been a political gathering place for over 1000 years. The Althingi (Assembly) was the supreme judicial and legislative authority of Iceland meeting here for over 300 years from 930 until 1271. Pingvellir means assembly fields. Viking chieftens from all over the Iceland gathered here in the summers. They built large camps erecting tents and stacking rock to make dwellings called whose scattered remains are still visible in the area to this day. During the Althingi the attendees held council, made laws and passed judgement. The laws were not written down but were memorized by the Logsogumador, an elected Lawspeaker who served for three years and recited the law at the Logberg during the annual summer assembly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not many people stopped at Logberg, it not being as Instagramable as the waterfall but this a place of power with a lesson for all of us. People coming together to make their own governance something we need badly right now back in the US where we are divided by and dictated to by a political establishment mostly made up of members of the multi-national corporations doing their bidding and putting the profit of the few above the needs many.<\/p>\n\n\n

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We continued on along the path through the gorge past some cascades towards the waterfall along with everyone else. The vast open space was beautiful, the gorge dark and craggy with crumbling volcanic rock and as we were walking the clouds lifted some revealing the mountains.<\/p>\n\n\n

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We arrived at the first of the many beautiful Icleandic waterfalls that we would see. There was a nice deck built across from it full of people milling about taking pictures and selfies. Jakobi was asked to and took a picture of a large group of young Italians. It was fun to be part of the tourist horde. I liked seeing all the diverse nationalities and hearing them speak in their languages with the four of us tying to guess where they are from and also checking out all the different traveler fashionwear; puffies are in. <\/p>\n\n\n

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I look at peoples shoes, see what they were wearing on their feet, wishing I was in anything but my Extra Tuffs and my wool pants which are not comfortable at all to hike in and too heavy for the weather. Watching weather reports before we arrived I was prepared for colder wetter weather and am relieved, yet overdressed, that the climate is so mild at this time of year at 60\u00b0North. We shot one of our dance videos in front of the falls for our Icelandic Family Dance Video project then had a leisurely walk back making a loop through the valley.<\/p>\n\n\n

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We had to be out of the hostel room by 10am which was way too early for Jakobi who did not get out of bed until 9:59AM. The rest of us had been up for awhile packing up. Outside the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/iceland2023.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/iceland2023.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/iceland2023.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/iceland2023.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/iceland2023.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=321"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/iceland2023.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":414,"href":"http:\/\/iceland2023.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321\/revisions\/414"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/iceland2023.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=321"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/iceland2023.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=321"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/iceland2023.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=321"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}