Thingvellir Rift Valley

The Thingvellir Rift Valley lies within Thingvellir National Park in southwestern Iceland and marks a section of the divergent boundary between the North American and Eurasian tectonic plates, where the plates are pulling apart at a rate of roughly 2 centimeters a year. This ongoing separation fractures the crust and causes the valley floor to subside gradually, producing a widening, down-dropped rift bounded by parallel fault scarps, most prominently the Almannagjá gorge along the valley's western edge. Thingvellir is also the site of the Althing, one of the world's oldest parliamentary assemblies, founded there in 930 CE, and the site was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2004 for combining a rare place where mid-ocean ridge spreading is visible on land with major historical significance.