Bridge Between Continents

At Sandvík on the Reykjanes Peninsula, the Mid-Atlantic Ridge comes ashore, and a short steel footbridge spans one of its fissures — the sand-floored Álfagjá rift. Built in 2002 and nicknamed Leif the Lucky's Bridge, it links the North American and Eurasian plates, which drift apart by about two centimetres a year. The bare lava on either side makes that slow stretching visible. Climb down to the rift floor and you stand in the gap itself.