10 Icelandic words to know before your trip (and one you’ll use every day)

On 16 November, Iceland celebrates Dagur íslenskrar tungu or Icelandic Language Day. The date is the birthday of Jónas Hallgrímsson (1807–1845), the poet and naturalist who spent 1839–1842 travelling around Iceland studying its nature. Jónas was also one of the language’s great word-makers. When Icelandic needed a word for planet, he made one: reikistjarna, a “wandering star”. Others he coined are still in everyday use, from sjónauki (telescope, literally “sight-increaser”) to aðdráttarafl (gravity).

Jónas rests at Þingvellir, one of the three classic stops on the Golden Circle, in the small churchyard beside Þingvellir church. Or so the story goes: his remains were brought home from Copenhagen in 1946, and to this day some Icelanders suspect the bones in the grave belong to someone else entirely, possibly a Danish grocer.

You don’t need to speak Icelandic to visit this country. Most Icelanders speak excellent English. But a handful of words makes the trip easier, earns you a smile, and, once you know how place names are built, turns every road sign into a small description of the landscape.

Takk (tahk) means thanks.

You’ll say it at the bakery, on the bus, at the pool and to your guide.

Takk fyrir (tahk FIR-ir) is “thank you”, and takk kærlega (tahk KYE-r-leg-a) is “thank you kindly”.

Other everyday partners include:

hæ (pronounced exactly like “hi”) to say hello, and bless to say goodbye.

For a slightly more polite hello, try góðan daginn (GOH-thahn DAI-yin), “good day”. This is the greeting you’ll hear frequently when passing people on the street and in shops from morning until late afternoon. At first, this friendly and polite greeting sounds quite the opposite: “Go on dying” but we promise, it doesn’t mean that at all!

1. Skál – cheers

Say it: skowl.

Raise a glass and say skál after a day on the ice, by the fire, or while you wait for the sky to clear.

2. Þetta reddast – it will all work out

Say it: THET-ta RED-dast.

The closest thing Iceland has to a national motto: a shrug-and-smile confidence that things will sort themselves out. It comes from living with weather that changes plans at short notice. One footnote from us: in Iceland, þetta reddast works best alongside a good forecast and a guide who checks the road conditions.

3. Foss – waterfall

Say it: foss.

Once you know it, you’ll see it everywhere: Gullfoss on the Golden Circle, and Seljalandsfoss and Skógafoss on the South Coast.

4. Jökull – glacier

Say it: YUH-kootl (more on that “ll” below).

Iceland’s glaciers all carry it in their names: Langjökull, Sólheimajökull, Vatnajökull and the famously unpronounceable Eyjafjallajökull.

5. Hraun – lava field

Say it: hroyn.

Much of the drive out of Reykjavík crosses moss-covered hraun, old lava flows that have softened into green and grey. Jónas Hallgrímsson himself was born on a farm called Hraun, in Öxnadalur in North Iceland.

6. Norðurljós – northern lights

Say it: NOR-thur-lyohs.

Literally “north lights”: norður (north) plus ljós (light). The season runs from late August to April, and the darker the sky, the better your chances on a northern lights tour.

7. Gluggaveður – window weather

Say it: GLUK-ka-veh-thur.

Bright sunshine, blue sky, glittering snow and a wind that cuts straight through you. Gluggaveður is weather that looks lovely from inside, through a window. Very common in winter, and a good reason to pack proper layers.

8. Sundlaug – swimming pool

Say it: SOON-loyg.

Every town has one, and the pool is where Icelanders meet, chat and warm up all year round, mostly in the hot tubs (heitur pottur). One rule worth knowing: shower thoroughly without your swimsuit before you get in. It’s expected, and attendants do notice.

9. Kleinur – twisted doughnuts

Say it: KLAY-nur (one is a kleina).

Small knots of dough, fried and often flavoured with cardamom. You’ll find them in bakeries and petrol stations, and they go very well with coffee.

10. Pylsa – hot dog

Say it: PIL-sa.

Iceland’s hot dogs are a national institution, usually made from a blend that includes Icelandic lamb. Order eina með öllu (AY-na meth UT-lu), “one with everything”: ketchup, sweet brown mustard, remoulade, raw onion and crispy fried onion.

Icelandic builds long words by stacking short ones, and place names work the same way. Most simply describe what the first settlers saw. Take the volcano that grounded Europe’s flights in 2010:

Eyjafjallajökull = eyja (island) + fjalla (of the mountains) + jökull (glacier) – “the glacier of the island mountains”. Break it into three pieces and it suddenly becomes sayable: AY-ya · FYAT-la · YUH-kootl.

Here’s what you’ll be reading on the signs along our most popular routes:

Learn these and you can decode most of the map:

Icelandic spelling looks fierce, but a few rules get you most of the way:

• Stress the first syllable. Always. GOOTL-foss, not gootl-FOSS.
• Þ / þ (thorn) sounds like the “th” in thin: Þingvellir.
• Ð / ð (eth) sounds like the “th” in this: norðurljós. It never starts a word.
• ll is the famous one. Put your tongue where you’d say “l”, then blow air out around the sides – roughly “tl”. Jökull = YUH-kootl, Gullfoss = GOOTL-foss.
• j sounds like an English “y”: jökull = YUH-kootl.
• á sounds like “ow” in cow, æ like “eye”, ó like “oh”, and ei/ey like “ay” in say. hv at the start of a word sounds like “kv”: Hveragerði.

Skammdegi (SKAM-day-yi) means “short days” – the dark weeks around the winter solstice, when Reykjavík gets only about four hours of daylight. Icelanders answer it with candles, pools and long evenings indoors. The upside for visitors: long, dark nights are exactly what you want for norðurljós.

And when you’re sitting by a window, warm and dry, watching the wind whip snow across a bright blue sky? That’s gluggaveður. Now you have a word for it.

The Icelandic government chose Jónas Hallgrímsson’s birthday as Icelandic Language Day in 1995, and it was first celebrated in 1996. It is now an official flag day. Schools, libraries and cultural institutions mark it with readings and events, and each year the Minister of Culture presents the Jónas Hallgrímsson Award to someone who has done outstanding work for the Icelandic language through writing, scholarship, teaching or translation. In 2025, it went to Dröfn Vilhjálmsdóttir, a school librarian honoured for getting children reading and interested in Icelandic.

If you’re in Iceland on 16 November, look out for flags on public buildings and try out a takk or two.

Put your new words to work: see Þingvellir, Geysir and Gullfoss on a Golden Circle tour, count the fossar on the South Coast, or step onto a jökull on one of our glacier tours. Góða ferð – have a good trip!