{"id":806,"date":"2024-10-09T21:53:12","date_gmt":"2024-10-09T21:53:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.littlesontheroad.com\/?p=806"},"modified":"2024-10-09T23:00:25","modified_gmt":"2024-10-09T23:00:25","slug":"hella","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.littlesontheroad.com\/?p=806","title":{"rendered":"Hella Awesome"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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The first day on the road, we elected to skip the touristy spots of the blue lagoon, and golden circle and head north to Thingvellir\u00a0 (\u00deingvellir) National Park. \u00a0From the national park service: No single place epitomizes the history of Iceland and the Icelandic nation better than \u00deingvellir by the river \u00d6xar\u00e1. At \u00deingvellir – literally “Assembly Plains” – the Al\u00feing general assembly was established around 930 and continued to convene there until 1798. Major events in the history of Iceland have taken place at \u00deingvellir and therefore the place is held in high esteem by all Icelanders. Today \u00deingvellir is a protected national shrine. According to the law, passed in 1928, the protected area shall always be the property of the Icelandic nation, under the preservation of the Al\u00feing.<\/p>

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We donned our cold weather gear and paid for our parking, and then made the trek up to our first of many (SO MANY!) waterfalls that we would see in Iceland.\u00a0 We walked up a lava rock and boardwalk trail, about \u00bc mile to the top of the \u00a0Oxarafoss falls landing.\u00a0 From first sight, I thought this was a beautiful and large waterfall. Indeed it was beautiful, but by far not even close to the large waterfalls we saw.\u00a0 The grass and tundra around the falls were damp with mist from the falls and there was a moderate sized group there doing a bus tour.\u00a0<\/p>

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We walked back down after a few pics, and then went to the settlement area.<\/p>

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The Rise of Christianity in Iceland <\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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Paganism was widely accepted from the beginning of the settlement period, though some settlers were almost certainly Christian. Icelanders worshipped the old Gods with sacrifices. At the same time, the practice of Christianity was spreading in neighboring countries.
Prior to the year 1000, various attempts at spreading Christianity to Iceland were made with varying results, but the pagan practices still held fast.<\/p>

Then in the summer of 1000, a great event happened at the Al\u00feing at \u00deingvellir. Chaos threatened the young society as the Parliament was split into 2 groups: pagans and Christians. Each faction had its own Law Speaker and refused to acknowledge the laws of the other side. \u00a0The two Law Speakers agreed that \u00deorgeir Lj\u00f3svetningago\u00f0i, the pagan Law Speaker, should decide which religion all Icelanders should follow. \u00a0\u00deorgeir hid himself away for a night and a day, then walked to the L\u00f6gberg and declared publicly that Icelanders should take up Christianity, though pagans, he said, might continue to practise their religion in secret.<\/p>

\u00deorgeir Lj\u00f3svetningago\u00f0i’s speech marked a turning point in Iceland, and Christianity started making inroads into Icelandic society without resort to weapons or bloodshed.<\/p>

Shortly after Iceland had adopted Christianity King Olaf of Norway sent a bell and timber to build a church at \u00deingvellir, which has been at the same site ever since. According to Gr\u00e1g\u00e1s (“Grey Goose”), the legal code of the Commonwealth, the assembly could meet in the church during bad weather. \u00a0The Al\u00feing was inaugurated with a church service, a custom that continues to this day. Synods were also held in the church until 1799.<\/p>

The present church at \u00deingvellir was consecrated in 1859, and in 1907 the spire was rebuilt and altered. There are three bells in the spire, one of them ancient, another donated by bishop J\u00f3n V\u00eddal\u00edn when he was ordained in 1698, and a third that was made to “ring in” independence in 1944.<\/p>

Among the treasures in the church are a pulpit dating from 1683 and an altarpiece painted by local farmer \u00d3feigur J\u00f3nsson in 1834. The church acquired another altarpiece by the Danish painter Anker Lund in 1896, and both altarpieces are used. The baptismal font was designed by a local farmer, Gu\u00f0mann \u00d3lafsson, in 1962.<\/p>

After leaving Thingvellar, we started making our way toward Hella, where we would have our first farm stay.\u00a0<\/p>

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We saw Kerid Crater, a beautiful volcanic crater with amazingly beautiful blue water in the bottom.\u00a0 There\u2019s a 3Km walk around the rim of the crater and a longer walk down to the water, but we were already a bit tired and trying to adjust to the time change, so we elected to view from the top.<\/p>

Along the way, we found a beautiful independent wool store, where I bought some Lopi (yarn made from Icelandic sheep) for a future knitting project.\u00a0 After looking at and feeling many of the traditional Lopi sweaters, Ray and I decided that we would probably never wear one (both from heat and itchiness) for the cost of the beautiful handmade sweaters (average price is around $250 USD)<\/p>

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Click on any gallery image to enlarge<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t

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Ray had booked us an adorable cottage in the highlands at a farm resort, called\u00a0H\u00f3tel L\u00e6kur<\/a>.<\/p>

. This is the thing in Iceland. Many farmers and large landowners have embraced the tourism culture and added cottages with a restaurant to their working farms. Our cottage was well equipped with a sofa, bed, full bath, desk, coffee maker and seating area, all in very Scandinavian design. It was about 450 sq feet. \u00a0The farm was a working sheep farm and the restaurant used to be the lambing barn, but you\u2019d never know. We dined on lamb and fish, and ice cream for dessert.\u00a0<\/p>

When woke the next morning, the fog was rolling off the mountains; the Icelandic horses (an actual subspecies!) and Icelandic sheep were wandering the hillside and the GIANT geese were wading in the gentle creek running behind the house.\u00a0 Next time we come to Iceland we\u2019ll book a couple of nights here and explore the area more.\u00a0<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t

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The first day on the road, we elected to skip the touristy spots of the blue lagoon, and golden circle and head north to Thingvellir\u00a0 (\u00deingvellir) National Park. \u00a0From the national park service: No single place epitomizes the history of Iceland and the Icelandic nation better than \u00deingvellir by the river \u00d6xar\u00e1. At \u00deingvellir – […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":845,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[9,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-806","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-hers","category-photo_dump"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.littlesontheroad.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/Iceland_2-2.jpg?fit=900%2C1348&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.littlesontheroad.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/806","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.littlesontheroad.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.littlesontheroad.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.littlesontheroad.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.littlesontheroad.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=806"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.littlesontheroad.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/806\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":868,"href":"https:\/\/www.littlesontheroad.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/806\/revisions\/868"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.littlesontheroad.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/845"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.littlesontheroad.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=806"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.littlesontheroad.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=806"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.littlesontheroad.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=806"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}