One Very Cold Day at Þingvellir
Martin Sammtleben, 20. December 2009
While the rest of Europe was blanketed in snow five days before Christmas, Þingvellir was still looking distinctly autumnal, however don’t be decieved by the soft ambient light in these images, this was an incredibly cold and windy December day, we only took a few pictures as taking off our big over-mitts rendered our fingers pretty useless in just a couple of minutes!
The Þingvellir area is part of a fissure zone running through Iceland and is situated on the tectonic plate boundaries of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. A water filled fissure in the Þingvellir lava can be seen in one of the images, essentially Iceland is gradually splitting in two and the whole area is surrounded by volcanoes, one of the most active being Hengill, a fine location to photograph geothermal activity.