Þingvellir is a national park and a historic site, and it is one of the most popular and most spectacular places to visit in Iceland. The exhibit at the visitor center explains very well the historic significance and how this unique landscape formed.
It’s one of the places where the effects of plate tectonics are directly and spectacularly visible, as the entire valley is riddled with deep cracks and fissures, many filled with glacial melt water, and all the direct result of the North Atlantic plate and the Eurasian plate pulling away from each other by a couple of centimeters every year. It is also the location of the historic Alþing, the parliament of Iceland from the 10th to the 18th centuries. Every year representatives of all communities in Iceland used to gather here to discuss and decide all manner of important questions.
