Iceland. As football reminded the world about a unique country. A PHOTO

Today ends the European Football Championship. Regardless of who gets the cup, the audience award definitely went to the Icelandic team.

A team of footballers from the villages under the guidance of a dental trainer

Icelanders were surprised by the sincerity, their self, their northern, as if restrained by passion and passion, however, like a volcano under a glacier.

Iceland
Photo: Sergey Loiko

Someone saw on the field strikes the ball, jerks, jumps and tackles, and most of the slightly more attentive viewers could see a volcanic eruption, the discovery of America, the amble of a fairytale lion-maned Icelandic stallion, a whale tail stripping gray, foamy, Atlantic stream Gulf Stream.

The Icelandic star team and the star team at the same time were met by the whole country like the Vikings, returning from a campaign, like Leif Eriksson, who discovered America (Vinland) five centuries before Christopher Columbus.

Iceland
Photo: Sergey Loiko

Who are these guys, where did they come from, what made them like that? This question cannot be answered without traveling to the planet Iceland. This is really another planet. Here everything is different - soil, colors, smells, people ...

You can, of course, tense up and take an insanely expensive multi-day trip to Kamchatka to see the active volcano. It is possible with the same efforts to get to Antarctica or at least to Greenland to see icebergs. You can climb the mountains in different parts of the world to see the glaciers. You can plow the seas and oceans, like a mad captain Ahab, in search of whales. You can see the geysers in America and Kamchatka. You can contemplate waterfalls in Canada and Africa. You can still see a lot of things somewhere.

Iceland
Photo: Sergey Loiko

But it is impossible to see all this in one place anywhere, except Iceland. Iceland is the oldest democracy in Western civilization. Its parliament - Alting - was first convened in 930, our era, 60 years after a group of Scandinavian Vikings landed on this volcanic island and stayed there, having won over hundreds of years of volcanoes and making them work for themselves, eventually.

Iceland is perhaps the only country in the world where people, starting from the first day on the island, all generations of Icelandic residents are numbered and registered. We know all their names - from the first to the last.

Iceland
Photo: Sergey Loiko

Not only people, but also horses. Icelandic horses - this is a miracle that you will not see anywhere else but Iceland itself. For more than ten centuries, no horse from the continent has been allowed and is still not allowed to visit Iceland. If the Icelandic horse leaves the island for an exhibition, a competition or other important matters, there is no way back. Icelandic horses are below normal horses at the withers, but above ponies, of all colors and shades and with lion manes, the purest horses in the world. Viking horses.

Iceland
Photo: Sergey Loiko

For ten days in Iceland, you can drive around the whole island and enjoy the views of icebergs floating under the bridge under your feet, hear, see and feel the volcanoes seething beneath the lava surface, dive into the hot springs, see the whale playing at sea seas of lupins, processing black volcanic sand into fertile soil, see the most powerful in Europe and some of the most beautiful waterfalls in the world, stand right by the mouth of an erupting geyser.

Iceland
Photo: Sergey Loiko

The name of each person, each geyser and waterfall can be found in the unique Icelandic sagas. One of these waterfalls, Godafoss, is directly related to the fact that in 1000, AD, the islanders democratically chose Christianity as their religion instead of paganism.

Iceland
Photo: Sergey Loiko

The saddened speaker of the Althing, returning home, stopped at a beautiful waterfall and, amazed by its power and magnificence, threw all its statues-statues of pagan gods into it. Since then, the waterfall and found its real name - Waterfall of the Gods.

Iceland
Photo: Sergey Loiko

You can endlessly talk about the beauties of Iceland and the amazing people who inhabit it, but it's better to see once than to hear and read.

Iceland
Photo: Sergey Loiko

Today, when many fans and non-fans think about finally visiting this amazing, more like Mars than earth, island, I suggest looking at the album of my photos of Iceland presented here.

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