by Armin
Two weeks after speaking to the river at Mt. Hecla, Armin returned to the Icelandic countryside and came instead upon Lake Þingvallavatn — the great rift-lake at Þingvellir, where the Eurasian and North American tectonic plates meet, and where the Icelandic parliament (the Althing) was established in 930 AD. He had gone looking for a river. He found ruins instead.
What follows is a meditation on landscape as living archive. Armin moves through a single afternoon touching five centuries in as many miles: medieval turf ruins, a cross for a bishop dead in 1720, the hill named for a man who killed his wife in 900 AD, and Krosslaug — the hot spring where Icelanders were baptized in the year 1000 when the Althing voted to Christianize the nation. Each site speaks to him as a "living symbol," though he confesses he cannot yet read all their messages.
The piece sits at the intersection of shamanic listening practice and the particular weight of Icelandic historical memory, where saga-age violence, pagan water rites, and Christian conversion are all physically present in the landscape, sometimes within walking distance of each other.
Last weekend I travelled a lot in the countryside. I wanted to find me a river and have a little chat. I didn't find a river but what I found was astonishing. I came to Lake Þingvallavatn and there were some old ruins there, and then I realized that this would be the topic of the day: ruins and memories of old. I have always been enchanted by ruins. They speak to me of pain and desperate memories. I never knew how to communicate with them, and for the first time I listened with attention. I seemed to hear myriads of voices whispering in the cold winter air. Thousands of human voices — but there were other voices too, but I was not able to discern between them. I am still a beginner and will be for a long time, maybe always.
From the lake I drove into the mountain and came to a big cross, made of aluminium, commemorating the death of a famous bishop and scholar in 1720. There were strange hills there — Hallbjarnarvörður, named after a young man who executed his own wife around 900 AD (he hewed her head off in one stroke) and was himself killed there by her father. The past was everywhere, alive and kicking!
Next I found a hot spring, called Krosslaug, where heathens were baptized in the year 1000 AD, when Christianity was legalized in Iceland. The spring was kind of walled in and the water was comfortably hot, about 40° C. I dipped my hand into the water, which is supposed to have healing powers. It was a strange spring, a slow and almost deliberate movement in the water. I felt the power but again I could not read the message.
A lot of living symbols in one day, don't you think? A great pity that I am unable to read all the messages around.
Colophon
Written by Armin, an Icelandic practitioner, to the newsgroup alt.religion.shamanism on 28 February 2006. Original Message-ID: <[email protected]>.
Krosslaug (the Cross Pool) at Þingvellir is the spring where Þorgeirr Ljósvetningagoði, the lawspeaker who brokered Iceland's Christian conversion in 1000 AD, reportedly baptized the first converts. Þingvallavatn is Iceland's largest natural lake, lying in the rift valley between the tectonic plates. Hallbjarnarvörður is a named topographic feature in the Þingvellir area whose saga associations remain part of local memory. The bishop's cross Armin describes likely commemorates Árni Magnússon (1663–1730), the great manuscript collector, though the identification is uncertain. Each of these sites is historically attested; Armin moved through them in an afternoon, listening.
Preserved from the Usenet archive for the Good Work Library by the New Tianmu Anglican Church, 2026.
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