Northern Lights Iceland Travel Deals The Blue Lagoon Volcanoes ReykjavikTourist Trip<<>> The northern lights Iceland tourist attractions are one of the many draws to this magical land. If you haven't visited yet. It's time you considered it. It is the least densely populated country in Europe. It is becoming the place to go to, to get away from the crowds. If you visit during the summer the days become longer and longer until midsummer, when the sun dips down to the horizon but never sets. The land of the midnight sun. If you visit during the winter months you will be able to marvel at the amazing display of the northern lights with its undulating green, blue, yellow and pink lights playing in the night sky. Geologically it is a very young country beginning less than twenty million years ago as volcanic eruption on the sea bed caused the island to appear. This is a land still taking shape.
Over the millennia, glaciers, erosion and the tectonic movement of the Earth’s crust have helped to make the landscape what it is today. Ten per cent of the island is covered with glaciers that are constantly changing and in turn changing the land. A land of majestic landscape of lava fields, mountains of pumice and fields of volcanic ash, craters, fossils, minerals, iceland volcanoes, boiling mud pools, spurting geysers, glaciers, great rivers and waterfalls.
There are so many waterfalls that lots of them don’t even have names. The rivers have become a great natural energy resource with hydro power being widely used.
Here the Earth’s crust is much thinner than other regions of the world. So, the inner molten rock of the planet is closer to the surface. This heats up the groundwater deep in the earth, which in turn produces boiling, bubbling hot springs.
While in the Geysir area, Strokkur geyser produces a high column of boiling water every 15 minutes or so.
In many places in iceland there are natural hot pools to swim in and lots of the natural hot water is used for heating buildings and to fill swimming pools.
One of the most photographed sites is Iceland the Blue Lagoon, which is frosty blue in color but has a temperature that averages about 40C (104F). The blue mineral-rich seawater is rumoured to have healing powers and is a popular spa. The lagoon is actually man made from the blue run-off water from the Svartsengi power plant. The plant pumps up geothermal heated water from a mile below the surface to generate both heat and electricity. It is one Iceland’s most visited sites with more than four hundred thousand visitors annually. The lagoon is 5000 square meters and holds six million liters of geothermal blue brine, which is renewed every forty hours. You actually bathe and swim between two continents because this is where the Euro – Asian and American tectonic plates meet The Blue Lagoon is approximately forty minutes from the Iceland capital Reykjavik.
The biological diversity of the country can be seen in its three national parks, each with its own particular points of interest.
Vatnajökull National Park is the largest national park in Europe and covers a total area of 12,000 square km ,11% of Iceland. It has a wide range of natural phenomena as the battle between ice glaciers and volcanic fire still rages within its boundaries. The Vatnajökull ice cap and the Jökulsárlón glacial lagoon are worth a visit. Campsites can be found in Skaftafell and Jökulsárgljúfur.
Thingvellir, is a park and a place that epitomizes the history of the country and its people. Said to be the “symbol of the country's consciousness”, it lies in a rift valley between the American and European geological plates and Lake Thingvellir contains species of fish found nowhere else. The Parliament Plains is where the Alþing general assembly was established around 930 and continued to convene until 1798. Major events in the history of the country have taken place here and therefore the place is held in high esteem by all. Today it is a protected national heritage site.
Snæfellsjökull National Park covers 170 square kilometers and is at the foot of a volcano and glacier. It is the only Park that reaches from the seashore to the mountaintops. Here you will find peculiar rock formations that have been carved out by the surf and a wonderful lava field that is home to some of the most beautiful vegetation in the country, giving shelter to approximately one hundred and thirty species of plants, including eleven of the sixteen special species of fern that are found in on the island.
If you have never considered Iceland travel deals before, perhaps now you will. Here you'll be able to visit a volcano and a glacier in the same day.
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