Songfacts®:

• This was issued as a single in the UK after becoming ubiquitous on BBC in late Spring 2006. It was used as the background music for the trailers for Sir David Attenborough's natural history series, Planet Earth, for the closing credits of the BBC's coverage of the 2006 FA Cup final, and to promote their coverage of the 2006 soccer World Cup.
• Some of lyrics are in Icelandic and some in Hopelandish, the language invented by the band's songwriter, Jon 'Jonsi' Birgisson.
• Georg Holm explained on musicomh.com the meaning of "Hoppipolla": "We like to play with words a lot, put two words together for example, and make a new word out of it. It means jumping into puddles. It should be two words but it's almost like a name now. The lyrics describe an atmosphere, a memory or something, like being a kid jumping into puddles, falling down and getting a nosebleed, getting back up... It doesn't really matter when you're a kid."
• Takk means "thanks" in Icelandic. When asked in the same interview for what they were thankful for, Georg replied: "What does the word mean to you? When you read the word Takk, or thank you, it could be a good reminder of people to be thankful to, I guess. It's not just us saying thank you to somebody, it's... I don't know... a word."
• Keyboardist Kjartan "Kjarri" Sveinsson, when asked the same question on Pitchfork Media replied: "We're thankful for we've been able to do, and for the appreciation we get. We really love where we are."
• In the UK, television producers can license music for their programs via recording rights collecting society PPL, and don't need to get permission from artists and/or labels every time they use music in their programs. Birgisson told Gigwise that this song has been overplayed on British TV. He said: "'Hoppípolla' has been raped on British TV. In some weird way, the national TV here in Britain doesn't have to ask permission to use songs if it's in the background of TV shows or whatever. So they can just take it and use it and that happened a lot with 'Hoppipolla'. The David Attenborough show [Planet Earth] was cool though. We're all big fans of his".
• Though this is now considered to be Sigur Ros' best-known track, at the time it created friction within the band. Keyboardist Kjartan Sveinsson recalled to Uncut:
  
  "We had loads of arguments about that song, actually. We never argued so much about any song. I wasn't happy with the length of the loop; the other boys wanted it a couple of beats longer than I did. In the end, I won!"