Cairns in Iceland

A cairn is a pile of rocks.  It's a Gaelic word.  In Scotland cairns can be built as a grave, especially if a body cannot be buried due to lack of soil.

There are cairns everywhere in Iceland.  There certainly is not a lack of rocks to build them.  You see cairns all along the roads.  Some mark the old horse paths that were used before there were roads.

We came upon a hill of cairns built by travellers just like us, called Laufskalar Cairn.  It was on a lava mound created at the site of an old farm that was destroyed during an eruption in 894.  The sign says "Everyone passing by it for the first time is supposed to add a stone to bring him good luck on his journey".  The Public Works Department continuously supplies the mound with loose stones.  So we built our own little cairn on the side of the hill (one of those "out in the middle of nowhere" hills). 

Laufskalar Cairn

The cairn we built on the side of the Laufskalar.

We also saw one with a Union Jack and then a little further away there was one with a little Canadian flag sticking out!  I would love to know which fellow Canadians built that little cairn with the flag.  Unfortunately, we had no flag to plant in ours so it's anonymous.

These cairns were supposedly built in the 1200's by the bishops to demarcate their appropriate districts.  They still stand today.