Snæfells-this / Snæfells-that... What does it mean?

It's no wonder that people have a hard time with our Icelandic words and names. The language can be complex and is often difficult to learn.

I wanted to take few examples and clarify how some of our words are formed.

Let's start with "Snæfell" - It's a place name and its direct translation is "Snow-mountain". The name of the glacier on the peninsula is Snæfellsjökull, which would translate to snow-mountain-glacier (jökull=glacier). Now Snæfellsnes is then the name of the peninsula (nes=peninsula), so Snæfellsnes would directly translate to snow-mountain-peninsula. Snæfellsbær is the name of the municipality of the outer part of the peninsula, includes places like Ólafsvík, Rif, Hellissandur and Arnarstapi. "Bær" directly translates to "town", but its roots can be traced to "farm", "home" or "homestead".

Similar connections can be found in Icelandic language everywhere. I've already mentioned "jökull", which means "glacier". So if you see anything on the map that ends with "jökull" that means it's a name of a glacier. Same with "foss" which directly translates to "waterfall".
Few more examples:
"hóll" = "hill"
"dalur" = "valley"
"fjörður" = "fjord"

"vík" = "cove"
"fjall" / "fell" = "mountain"