ALTHING AND LÖGBERG FROM BEHIND THE CHURCH.
The Althing is a long sloping ridge of lava, about 200 feet long and from 30 to 50 broad, covered on the top with the most tender herbage and flowers. At the end next the church it is low and approachable, by climbing over a few stones among and below which one can see water, but it is entirely separated from the surrounding plain by two deep perpendicular rocky fissures or chasms running parallel on either side and joining at the further end. Only at one place is the chasm so narrow—16 feet—that, once on a time, Flosi, leader of the burners of Njal’s house, made his escape from justice by taking a desperate leap. These chasms contain clear water, so that the Althing is in fact a narrow peninsula, which with the entrance guarded was as secure as a fortress. One looks sheer down, say 20 or 30 feet, to the surface of the water in the chasms; while the water itself is from 80 to 90 feet deep, and in some places said to be unfathomable. These fissures run S.W. to the lake which is about a mile distant. Through the water, one sees huge blocks of lava of a whitish blue colour and dark masses of basalt gleaming from the green depths. Beautiful tender fairy-like ferns grow on the edges and in the sheltered crevices of the rocks; and I gathered specimens of grasses, mosses, violets, butter-cups and forget-me-nots, from the soft verdant carpet which covered the surface. Here, the Icelandic Parliament, such as it was, continued to meet, down to the year 1800, when the seat of government was finally removed to Reykjavik.
In the old palmy days, prior to A.D. 1261 when the island became subject to Norway, the Althing was the scene of many a spirited debate; affairs of the greatest import were here freely discussed, and finally disposed of, in open assembly. Thus, in the year A.D. 1000, after a stormy debate, it was determined that Christianity should be introduced as the religion of the island. Here, measures of general interest were proposed, taxes levied, law-suits conducted, the judgments of inferior courts revised, subordinate magistrates impeached for dereliction of duty and dismissed from their office; while criminals were tried, and if found guilty of capital offences were summarily executed. Criminals were beheaded on the little Island of Thorlevsholm in the Oxerá; in a pool of the same river, female offenders, sewed in a sack, were drowned; and those condemned for witchcraft were precipitated from the top of a high rock on the east side of the Almannagjá.
The Althing commonly met in the middle of May and sat for 14 days. Every freeholder had a right to attend and express his opinion on measures under consideration: thus, at Thingvalla, friends and acquaintances from distant parts of the island—members and friends of both sexes—annually availed themselves of this opportunity of meeting each other. The people pitched their tents on the banks of the Oxerá and in the plain around the Althing; so that a wild lone scene usually silent as the grave, for the time became quite a busy one, enlivened by the presence of nearly all the elite of the island.
LAKE OF THINGVALLA FROM THE LÖGBERG.
Gazing from the Althing, so as to take in the general aspect of the wondrous scene around us, the whole valley seems obviously to have sunk down en masse to its present level. The tops of the two extreme wall-like boundaries, with chasms at their base, on either side of the vale, respectively called the Almannagjá and the Hrafnagjá, show the original height of the whole, and also exhibit a section of the rock. This view of the matter is proved by the fact, that the numerous cracks, rents, or fissures, such as those around the Althing, with which the valley is intersected, when examined are found exactly to correspond in their sections—trahytic trap capped by lava—with the edges left standing as they were before the subsidence of the valley and now bounding it like a black rampart. The pastor’s dwelling, from where I stand, presents the appearance of a few grass hillocks or potato-pits. The site of each erection is partly excavated from the side of a little slope, to protect it from the storm. Grass-turf covers the roofs, and the whole group of buildings is surrounded by a three-foot turf-wall; consequently, like many other Icelandic farms we have seen, little more than the roofs appear above ground. At midnight I made several sketches of the lake of Thingvalla; the river Oxerá as it fell thundering over the dark rock-wall in a sheet of white foam; and the bare heights to the north-east, purple in the evening glow and mottled with snow patches.
