Reykjavík Grapevine - 21.06.2013, Page 46

46The Reykjavík Grapevine Issue 8 — 2013
Vera Illugadóttir and Helgi Hrafn are editors of an Icelandic web magazine called Lemúrinn (Icelandic for the
native primate of Madagascar). A winner of the 2012 Icelandic Web Awards, Lemurinn.is covers all things strange
and interesting! Go check it out at www.lemurinn.is.
Celebrating One Thousand Years Of Alþingi In 1930
by Vera Illugadóttir & Helgi Hrafn Guðmundsson
In the summer of 1930, 28-year-old Swedish photographer
and scholar Berit Wallenberg travelled to Iceland where she
spent a couple of weeks. She was a member of the Wallen-
berg dynasty, a prominent Swedish industrialist and bank-
ing family. The most famous Wallenberg is Raoul, who is
believed to have saved tens of thousands of Jews during the
Holocaust, but Berit became well known in her own right,
particularly for her archaeological research and work in the
field of photography.
In a collection of 25,000 photos that she gifted to the
Swedish National Heritage Board are the ones she took in
Iceland on the remarkable occasion in June 1930 when Ice-
landers gathered at Þingvellir to commemorate the thou-
sand-year anniversary of their national parliament Alþingi.
Founded in 930 at Þingvellir (“the parliament plains”),
Alþingi is considered the oldest extant parliamentary in-
stitution in the world. Although parliament no longer con-
venes there, Þingvellir remains a popular tourist destination
located about 45 km east of Reykjavík.
The church at ÞingvellirReykjavík as seen from the tower of the Landakot
Catholic Church.
Stylish visitors from the Faroe Islands
Horse fighting was a popular sport in Iceland during
the Saga age, but had completely disappeared by the
seventeenth century. An enterprising Icelander decided
to revive this tradition for the 1930 festival. It was con-
troversial though and newspapers articles at the time
decried it as cruel to the animals and "un-Christian."
Festival guests resting in a tent
Young women wearing the national costume
Oddur “the strong” Sigurgeirsson was a local ‘charac-
ter’ in the capital at the time. When his friends gave him
this costume for the festival he liked it so much that he
kept wearing it regularly on the streets of Reykjavík.
Guests watch a plane land on Þingvallavatn
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