Medieval Europe
Road Trip Through History: The Settlement Center
As I’ve mentioned before, Iceland is a small place and much of it is mountain desert–think the Rockies without the pines. In what passes for arable land, the present lives on top of and alongside the past. Dig the foundation for a new building and the odds are that you will find the foundation of…
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Road Trip Through History: The Althing, or Medieval Democracy (More Or Less) In Action
We visited the national park at Thingvellir, aka the Assembly Plains, on what our Icelandic hosts assured us was a rare perfect day: sunny and warm enough that we peeled off not only our rain coats but our heavy sweaters. Located in a geologically unstable rift valley where the American and European tectonic plates meet,*…
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Road Trip Through History: Reykjavik
My Own True Love and I started and ended our Viking history adventure in a city no Viking ever saw: Reykjavik, literally Smoky (or perhaps steamy) Bay. It is fundamentally a grey city, built of concrete, stone and glass in an array of textures and shapes that save it from bleakness and livened by shots…
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