Treasures of the World Series
The Santa Laura Saltpetre Mine

The Santa Laura saltpetre mine in Chile.

Lying just below the sandy and stony surface of the Chilean high
plateau are the world’s richest deposits of sodium nitrate: saltpetre.
Trucks transport different goods along the desert highway to Iquique, the port on the Pacific.
When they pass the slag heaps, a salitrera, or salt mine, suddenly comes into view, the Oficina Santa Laura. 
The salitrera’s chimney towers are like an exclamation mark up above the dilapidated production sheds. It’s an unusual treasure on UNESCO’s World Heritage list. 
The salitrera is one of 136 industrial islands which, from the mid19th century onwards, shaped people’s lives in this corner of Chile and brought prosperity to the country.

Treasures of the World Series
Thingvellir National Park

Iceland, its landscape and landmarks, notably its first parliament, the Althing, now in the Thingvellir National Park.

Iceland is an island at the edge of the Arctic Circle, between Norway and Greenland. During the Ice Age it was completely glaciated.
Countless glaciers still cover more than 10% of Iceland’s surface today. 
Iceland is the home of the Vatnajoköll calves, a glacier almost the size of Corsica.
It’s famous for its huge icebergs that drift peacefully into the sea.
The first permanent settler in Iceland is said to have been a Norwegian chieftain named Ingólfur Arnarson.
He built a farm in a place he called Rejkjavik which eventually became the island’s capital and today is home to 300,000 people.
Þingvellir (Thingvellir) is the National Park where the Althing – an open-air assembly, which represented the whole of Iceland – was established in 930 and continued to meet until 1798.
Over two weeks a year, the assembly set laws – seen as a covenant between free men – and settled disputes. The Althing has deep historical and symbolic associations for the people of Iceland.