Henni finnast hindber betri en ananas, en mér finnst ananas líka góður.

Because this construction uses the dative for the person who has the opinion or feeling.

With finnast, Icelandic often works like this:

• henni finnast... = to her, ... seem / are thought to be...
• mér finnst... = to me, ... seems / I think...

So the person is not in the nominative subject form. Instead, the thing being judged is the grammatical subject.

That is why you get:

• henni rather than hún
• mér rather than ég

This is very common in Icelandic and is worth getting used to early.

In both clauses, the grammatical subject is the thing being evaluated, not the person.

So here:

• In Henni finnast hindber betri en ananas, the subject is hindber
• In en mér finnst ananas líka góður, the subject is ananas

You can tell because the verb agrees with those nouns:

• hindber → plural idea here → finnast
• ananas → singular → finnst

This often feels backwards to English speakers, because English usually puts the person first as the subject: She thinks..., I think... But Icelandic often frames it more like To her, raspberries seem better...

Because the verb agrees with the subject:

• hindber is treated as plural here, so the verb is plural: finnast
• ananas is singular, so the verb is singular: finnst

So the pattern is:

• Henni finnast hindber...
• Mér finnst ananas...

This is one of the biggest clues that hindber is plural in this sentence.

Here it is plural.

Many Icelandic fruit and berry words can look the same in the singular and plural, and hindber is one of those words. So the form itself does not always tell you the number clearly.

In this sentence, you know it is plural because of the verb:

• finnast = plural

So here hindber means raspberries, not a raspberry.

Betri is the comparative form of góður, so it means better.

Since the sentence compares hindber and ananas, Icelandic uses the comparative adjective:

• hindber betri en ananas = raspberries better than pineapple

The adjective agrees with hindber. Because hindber is plural here, betri is the correct form.

A useful comparison:

• singular neuter: betra
• plural: betri

So if the noun being described were singular neuter, you would expect betra, but here plural hindber takes betri.

Because góður agrees with ananas, and ananas is a masculine singular noun in Icelandic.

So:

• masculine singular → góður
• feminine singular → góð
• neuter singular → gott

Since ananas is masculine, the sentence has:

• ananas ... góður

Even though pineapple is an object and not a person, grammatical gender in Icelandic is about the noun, not biological sex.

No. Here líka is an adverb meaning also.

That is an easy thing to mix up, because Icelandic also has the verb að líka, meaning to like.

In this sentence:

• mér finnst ananas líka góður

the word líka means also, not like.

So the structure is roughly:

• mér finnst = I think / it seems to me
• ananas = pineapple
• líka = also
• góður = good

Because Icelandic en can serve both functions, and the meaning depends on context.

In the first part:

• betri en ananas
• here en means than

In the second part:

• ..., en mér finnst...
• here en means but

This is completely normal in Icelandic. English does the same kind of thing with some words in other contexts; you just learn which meaning fits from the structure around it.

Yes, a very natural alternative would be:

• Henni líkar hindber betur en ananas

That would mean something very close in everyday English.

The difference is mainly in structure and nuance:

• Henni líkar hindber betur en ananas = she likes raspberries better than pineapple
• Henni finnast hindber betri en ananas = raspberries seem better to her than pineapple

The first version focuses more directly on liking.
The second version literally presents the raspberries as better in her opinion.

In practice, both can be used for similar real-life meanings.

Because Icelandic does not have an indefinite article like English a/an.

So Icelandic often uses the bare noun:

• ananas
• hindber

depending on context, this can mean something like:

• pineapple
• a pineapple
• raspberries
• some raspberries

If Icelandic wants a definite meaning, it usually adds the definite article to the noun itself rather than using a separate word.

Because repeating the noun is often the clearest and most natural choice.

The second clause could theoretically use a pronoun, but repeating ananas avoids ambiguity and makes the contrast very clear:

• hindber vs ananas
• her opinion vs my opinion

So the repeated ananas helps keep the sentence easy to follow. Icelandic often does this where English might sometimes prefer a pronoun.