Thingvellir
In Thingvellir, time seems to stand still. It is a barren place where the wind blows with a tenacity that must have made it clear to people even a thousand years ago that there is no room for vanity here.
From the year 930 onwards, the free men of Iceland gathered here for the Althing, the world’s oldest parliament. At Lögberg, the Law Rock, where the white flagpole stands, the Law Speaker recited a third of Icelandic law from memory every year – there was no written text; the law lived on in the recitation. Here, matters were debated and justice was administered. The Althing sat at this spot until 1798.
The world is drifting apart imperceptibly but inexorably in the Almannagjá Gorge. In this fissure, the Eurasian and North American plates are separating – two centimetres a year, measurable, documented.
I photographed a photo essay on the Vikings for GEO Epoche magazine. As I was taking photographs one day in November, a silence hung over the place that was not empty, but filled with the spirit of Thingvellir. One of my favourite photographs.
