This promoted another anecdote from Astor. The actor who played ‘The Mountain’ is an Icelandic actor. He tweeted a picture of himself squashed in a loo on Icelandair. Iceland Air tweeted back saying sorry, we were designed to fly over mountains not transport them!

 Þingvellir National Park

The first ‘Game of Thrones’ related stop was the scene where the goat herder is throwing rocks and Danaerys Targaryen’s black dragon swoops down and roasts some of them! Later, the goat herder accuses the dragon of killing his son, and consequentially, the dragons are later locked up.

At this point, Astor split the group into two halves, those who had seen the Game of Thrones up to date and those who hadn’t. We thought he was going to reveal some plot line or something, but then he started to take our half (the fans!) back to the bus and said, “the rest of you not up to date…you’re on your own from here!!!!”

Driving past the Old Icelandic Parliament

We next passed the location where the Icelandic parliament was formed in 930AD, and drove past the biggest lake in Iceland – aptly called the Lake of congress. The hot springs underneath mean that it’s not frozen over in winter.
Two thirds of this area of Iceland (South West) is wasteland. The highlands are completely Barron and uninhabitable.

Rift Valley – The Entrance to the Bloody Gate

The next ‘Game of Thrones film site was the rift valley, AKA the entrance to the Bloody Gate. The rift valley that marks the edge of the North American and Eurasian tectonic plates.

Here’s what the rift valley looked like head-on, with slight snow and ice coverage in the approach of spring…admittedly, there’s more snow at this time of year (April) compared to when they filmed season 4 here in the middle of summer (do you know what scene it is yet?)

We made a 40 minute hike down some slippery surfaces to walk through the rift valley, and at the end of it, came to this phenomenal waterfall…

In season 4, episode 5,  the rift valley walk is made by Sansa Stark and Lord Baelish.  Approximately 50,000 – 100,000 years ago the two walls would have most likely been together!
On the way to the next location, Astor warned us about the curse of Sean Bean! Any fictional character played by him is doomed to die! In the case of Game of Thrones, this character was Lord Eddard Stark.
We had a brief stop before heading to the reconstructed Viking camp.

Reconstructed Viking Camp – Þjórsárdalur Valley

Our third and final Game of Thrones filming site was the reconstructed Viking camp in Þjórsárdalur Valley. This is the camp that the Wildings invaded! They spent four days of shooting here. The first day was the plot, the second day was setting up and days three and four were filming. Some actors were even asked to sleep in their prosthetics to save time at this location!