Ingunn Snædal qualified as a teacher from the Iceland University College of Education, and has also studied Irish at Galway University and Icelandic studies at the University of Iceland. She has lived in Ireland, Costa Rica, Mexico and Denmark, and worked, amongst other things, as a teacher, a proof-reader, a housekeeper, a waitress, a postman and a seasonal worker in the herring fishing industry.
Her first book of poetry, Á heitu malbiki (On Hot Asphalt) came out in 1995. Since then she has published three more volumes of poetry: Guðlausir menn (Godless Men), Í fjarveru trjáa (In the Absence of Trees) and Komin til að vera, nóttin (Come into being, the night).