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The main western fault line, 8 km long (5 miles)
and 5 km (3 miles) wide,
is divided by many prominent landmarks. Each part is named
differently. The most renowned one, Almannagja, is a part of the
assembly area of the ancient parliament. To the east of the
Parliamentary Plains one of the thousands of chasms of the rift valley
was used to burn sorcerers and witches at the stake during the late
middle ages, and was named accordingly The Fire Chasms.
The former
main road through the Almannagja fault crossed a bridge, which still
stands, across the Axe River. The so-called Drowning Pool by the
bridge was much deeper before the natural separation under the bridge
was lowered with explosives. There women, who were sentenced to death, were put
into canvas sacks, weighed down with stones, and thrown in.
The capital punishment was introduced late in the 13th
century and abolished in 1929.
Many of the almost innumerable chasms
of the Graben, a very young natural phenomenon, are filled with slow
flowing, clear fresh water with constant temperature (3-4°C), which
prevents it from freezing over. The water volume of those chasms, the
Axe River and another stream spilling into the lake, only supply it
with about 10% of the volume of its discharge, the
Salmon River
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