That's Carol sitting at the monument on the site of his farm in what is now the heart of downtown Reykjavik.
Arnarson is the first permanent human settler on the island of Iceland. He set up shop here one thousand, one hundred and eighty six years ago.
Iceland is a small country with only about 350,000 residents...two-thirds of whom live in the capital.
By the year 930, one century after Ingolfur Arnarson started farming here, Lief Ericsson departed Iceland and became the first European to set foot on North America...fully 562 years before Columbus "discovered" America.
This statue was presented by the United States government to Iceland in 1930... on the millennial
anniversary of Ericsson's exploit.
It's a wonder any of the Norse settlers stayed in Iceland once they discovered what Mother Nature had in store for them.
Iceland is a land of volcanoes...more than 300 of them.
One hundred thirty are still active.
One erupts on average every four years. (Sorry, none are erupting now, so we have no pictures)
The landscape is littered with volcanic domes...like the one at the left.
Thirty percent of the island's surface is lava bed.
What you don't see is very many trees. Each year, the government plants more than 5 million trees. After years of doing this, trees cover only 2% of the island.
The lava flows right down to the ocean, cools quickly, creating strange rock formations and black sand beaches.
All this volcanic activity super-heats any underground water it comes in contact with.
Almost all of the homes and businesses in Iceland are heated with geothermal power.
Much of the rest of it blows off steam in the form of geysers.
In fact, the word geyser comes from the Icelandic "Gesyir," which is the name of the place this photo was taken.
Iceland is so far north and has such a short growing season, most of the vegetables Icelanders eat are grown in greenhouses...where the plants are both kept warm and exposed to "sun" with geothermal power.
After lava beds, more of Iceland is covered by glaciers than anything else...about 10% of the land mass, making it the most glacier-covered country in the world.
This glacier, Sohleimajokull, looks dirty. The black is volcanic ash from the 2010 eruption of Mt. Eyjafjnallajokull.
In case you doubt global warming, this glacier has receded more than 500 meters since the year 2000.
As the water from the glaciers melts, it creates hundreds of waterfalls.
Some are remarkably beautiful, like the one at the right.
Some are simply huge...
This falls powers five hydroelectric plants.
What electricity Iceland doesn't get from geothermal power, it gets from hydro dams...making it the leading renewable power producer in the world.
As if volcanos and glaciers weren't enough....
...Iceland is the place where the North American tectonic plate...
...and the European tectonic plate collide...
...making it earthquake central.
It's a very active place, geologically
speaking. The walking path pictured above is steadily sinking 2/3rd's of an inch a year.
It's also a historically significant place.
In the year 930, citizens (as opposed to serfs) from all over Iceland trekked here to hold the world's first parliament.
In the picture at the right, Carol is standing at the site of the first meting, where the laws of the land were read out for all to hear.
They were read out every time the parliament met thereafter...making Iceland the country with the oldest continually-meeting parliament in history... almost eleven-hundred years.
Nowadays, the 63 members of Parliament no longer have to trek half-way across the country to meet outdoors in an active earthquake zone.
Instead, they meet in this building, just a few blocks from the harbor in downtown Reykjavik.
In our next blog post, we'll look at some of the quirky customs Icelanders have adopted...and are very proud of.
Great information and good pictures, too.
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