Blue Sky! Sunshine! Alert, Alert, Alert! We've been sleeping with the blinds open on the off chance the northern lights dance for us. The by-product of this is that the sunrise wakes us up between 6.30 and 7 am every day. Today was officially, freezing. Actually minus freezing at around minus 6 degrees. We had the compulsory hot tub and breakfast then rugged up and headed out to defrost the car with bottle after bottle of cold water. It was so cold, the water was freezing on the windscreen as fast as we could scrape it off. Eventually on the road and crunching through the snow with our 4WD we headed to one of the big-ticket items on Iceland's Golden Circle - Thingvellir National Park. This place also goes by the moniker "National shrine of all Icelanders on the UNESCO World Heritage List". So a big deal in these parts. Iceland was settled from about 870 AD by people essentially fed up with the monarchies of neighbouring countries. They wanted to go their own way and they did. Plans were made very early in the period of settlement for a formal government structure and the general assembly came together for the first time at Thingvellir shortly before 930 AD. Until 1264 this was the legislature and also Iceland's highest court. It was in fact the first parliament in the world. There is one particular spot in Thingvellir called the Logberg (or Law Rock) and it was here that the laws were spoken aloud. It was open to all and anyone could get up and address the assembly from this rock. Parliament or the Assembly convened each year in Summer when people could travel the ancient overland routes to attend and they would essentially camp in temporary shelters for the duration of the session. In 1000 AD it was also the spot where Icelanders adopted Christianity. It all came to a grinding halt in 1662 when Iceland swore an oath of loyalty to the King of Denmark and self-government was wiped out. The site however continued to have symbolic importance for Icelanders through the 19th and 20th centuries and also for the campaign for independence from Danish rule. When the modern Icelandic Republic was founded on 17 June 1944, the moment was marked on the ancient Logberg in Thingvellir. Aside from the history, Thingvellir is a part of the mid-Atlantic Ridge - the junction of the American and Eurasian tectonic plates. The park is at the end of a rift valley and it was incredible to walk along this ridge knowing the earth is slowly moving apart... obviously 3 mm average per year is not noticeable - but is apparently freight train speed in geological terms. In fact over the last 10,000 years the plates have diverged 70 metres and the valley floor has subsided 40m! We were in the park nice and early and had a peaceful walk along the rift to Oxarafoss - a stunning waterfall cascading over ice - small but perfectly formed. We drove from parking lot to parking lot (there are 5 in total) checking out the views and features at each one. At the main visitors centre coach loads of tourists were being decanted and the minus 6 degrees was obviously hurting a few folk. Even we were feeling it - it seemed much colder than the occasional minus 20 odd we experienced in Romania. We saw what there was to see then hoofed it to the 4WD and headed to our next, albeit brief, stop - the Kerid Crater. This is one of the few places in Iceland where there is a fee to see a natural wonder (can only presume it's private land). Probably the fasted $10 we've ever spent - we were in and out in less than 5 minutes. They believe this crater was formed by a small magma chamber beneath the crater being emptied towards the end a major eruption, then the crater collapsed. The lake within Kerid never actually drains - it just rises and falls along with changes in the water table. It was formed around 6500 years ago and is 55 m deep with the water at the bottom varying between 7 and 14 metres. There were some exceedingly hard core types dressed in ski gear making the most of their entrance fees and walking the circumference of the oval crater... we felt that a couple of photos more than justified the fee and high tailed it home for lunch and a hot tub. Thank heavens for self-catering cabins!