A recent trip to Europe ended up flying us through the far northern island country of Iceland.  I had wanted to visit this country since hiking about in the tundra and mountains of Norway back in the early years of the 1980s.  The vast treeless moors of the Hadangervidda and the Jotunheimen served as magnificent introductions into the immense beauty to be discovered in the subarctic.  Iceland figured to take the natural beauty up a notch or two. The tundra also provided a bridge between magical nature with the political past at Þingvellir.