Sæmundsen directs Thingvellir National Park, the busiest tourist site in Iceland.

I graduated in 1996 as a geographer from the University of Iceland. At that time there was a cooperation between the geography and geology departments of the University of Iceland and the University of Minnesota on summer classes for Icelandic students. I was among few who actually just right out of graduation received a Fulbright scholarship to attend summer classes at the UofM in the summer of 1996. At that time I had decided to do a master of landscape architecture in the U.S. or Canada. I used the opportunity whilst on campus to meet up with Roger B. Martin, the head of the CALA, and had a talk. I decided to apply for the program and was accepted and started in 1997. I graduated in 2000 and moved back to Iceland. I started working at Thingvellir National Park dealing with interpretation but quickly found other projects here to deal with.

I became the director of Thingvellir National Park in 2017 and have been ever busy since. I have had a lot of different responsibilities and amongst some is working with World Heritage and Unesco. At present I am the chair of Nordic World Heritage Association which is a forum of 43 World Heritage sites. Besides this I have worked on construction management, design, and day-to-day admin of Iceland's busiest tourist site, Thingvellir National Park.