How to read Icelandic place names (and pronounce a few)

Why do Icelandic place names describe the landscape?

Because the settlers named things for exactly what they were. A waterfall was a foss, a glacier a jökull, a bay a vík — so the name is really a label stuck on the map. Once you know a dozen of these endings, Iceland stops looking like a wall of consonants and starts reading like a description of what is actually there.

That is genuinely useful on the road. See -jökull on a sign and you know there is ice ahead; see -sandur and you are about to cross a flat black-sand plain; see -fjörður and the road is probably about to wind a long way around water.

What do the common Icelandic name endings mean?

These are the ones you will actually meet on the Ring Road, each with a real example:

Ending	Means	Example
-foss	waterfall	Skógafoss, Gullfoss
-jökull	glacier	Vatnajökull, Snæfellsjökull
-vík	bay, cove	Vík, Reykjavík
-fjörður	fjord	Seyðisfjörður, Ísafjörður
-dalur	valley	Laugardalur
-nes	headland, peninsula	Stokksnes, Reykjanes
-ey / -eyjar	island / islands	Vestmannaeyjar, Flatey
-á	river	Jökulsá, Þjórsá
-vatn	lake	Mývatn, Þingvallavatn
-hver	hot spring	Hveragerði
-bær	farm, town	Kirkjubæjarklaustur, Garðabær
-fell / -fjall	mountain	Skaftafell, Kirkjufell
-sandur	black-sand plain	Sólheimasandur, Skeiðarársandur
-hraun	lava field	Eldhraun

The endings also stack. Jökulsárlón is jökull + á + lón (lagoon) — a “glacier-river lagoon”, which is precisely what it is. And on the coast you will meet -fjara (beach), as in Reynisfjara.

What does the first part of the name tell you?

The front of the word usually adds a colour or a feature. A few repeat everywhere:

• Reykja- means “smoky” or “steamy” (from reykur, smoke). Reykjavík is literally “smoky bay” — the settlers named it for the steam rising off the hot springs.
• Blá- means “blue.” Bláfjöll, the ski hills above the capital, are the “blue mountains”; Bláa lónið is simply “the blue lagoon.”
• Svart- means “black.” The basalt-column waterfall Svartifoss, up in Skaftafell, is the “black waterfall.”
• Gull- means “golden” (Gullfoss, and the Gullni hringurinn — the Golden Circle).
• Ís- means “ice” (Ísafjörður, “ice fjord”).

Put the two halves together and most names explain themselves: Reykja + nes is “smoky peninsula”, Mý + vatn is “midge lake”, Svarti + foss is “black waterfall.”

How do you pronounce the letters you don’t recognise?

You do not need to sound Icelandic — just close enough to be understood. Five things get you most of the way:

• þ (“thorn”) is the “th” in thing — Þingvellir is roughly “THING-vet-lir.”
• ð (“eth”) is the softer “th” in this or breathe, and it never starts a word (Seyðisfjörður).
• j is a “y” — jökull sounds like “YÖ-kutl”, Reykjavík like “RAYK-ya-veek.”
• ll is usually a “tl” sound, which is why Eyjafjallajökull tripped up every news anchor in 2010 (“AY-ya-fyat-la-YÖ-kutl”).
• Stress always lands on the first syllable. Every time.

The accented vowels are separate letters, not louder versions of the plain ones: í/ý = “ee” (Vík = “veek”), ú = “oo” (Húsavík), ó = “oh”, á = “ow” as in cow, ö = the “u” in fur, and æ = “eye.” Get those and a local will know which waterfall you mean.

How does reading the names make trip planning easier?

It tells you what a place is before you have opened a single photo. Scanning a route, you can read the terrain straight off the map:

• A run of -foss names means waterfall country — that is most of the South Coast, from Seljalandsfoss to Skógafoss.
• -jökull and -sandur together — as around Skaftafell and Jökulsárlón — mean glaciers and flat outwash plains: big, cold and exposed.
• -vík, -nes and -fjörður mean coast: bays, headlands and the long drives around fjords.

So when you are mapping out a day in, say, July, the names do half the sorting for you, and you can guess what waits at each stop without a guidebook. For the wider list of what earns a stop, see things to do in Iceland.

See also

• Skógafoss and Seljalandsfoss — the classic -foss pair on the South Coast
• Jökulsárlón — jökull + á + lón stacked into one name
• Vík and Stokksnes — a -vík and a -nes you can stand on
• The South Coast route and Iceland in July