Þingvellir

Þingvallavatn is the largest natural lake in Iceland. Its maximum depth is 114 meters, but its average depth is 34 meters. From an historical standpoint Þingvellir is the most important place in Iceland. The Alþing general assembly was founded there in 930 and convened every year for more than 850 years, up to the year 1798. Þingvellir at Öxará and its environment is a protected national shrine for all Icelanders and a national park. Because of its unique cultural value for the world, Þingvellir is on the UNESCO list of world heritage sites. Two kinds of monuments are given a place on the list: human structures and natural phenomena. Cultural heritage comprises historical edifices, buildings and particular historical landscapes that contain historical, artistic, scientific or ethnological qualities. With their geological, biological or ecological phenomena, natural heritage sites are places of value on account of what they reveal about life on earth, as well as because of their particular beauty or role in providing a home to rare animal species. As awe-inspiring natural phenomena that create atmosphere and have symbolic meaning, lakes and waterfalls play a large part in many landscape paintings. As they belong to the country’s most famous historical landmark, a place that boasts impressive natural beauty and a unique ring of mountains, Öxará and Þingvallavatn are among the natural phenomena that have most often been depicted in painting.

Þórarinn B. Þorláksson is one of many painters inspired by Þingvellir. His works belong to a pioneering period in Icelandic art history, which ideology relates to the independence movement and the establishment of a new society at the beginning of the 20th century. The interest in Icelandic landscape is considered to originate in the national-romanticism that dominated Iceland’s cultural discourse in the late 19th century. In his work, Þórarinn remained faithful to the romantic naturalism he had become familiar with in Copenhagen, while he built his practice on the academic training he received during his studies. In 1900, Þórarinn became the first Icelandic painter to hold a solo exhibition in Iceland, exhibiting work from the previous summer. Amongst these was a painting of Þingvellir where he captures the magic of the bright summernight, the blue-tinged light and smooth surface of the water, thus evoking an atmosphere of stillness and a sense of the sublime.