Bergmann studied Russian at Moscow State University and received his Master of Arts from the institution in 1962.
Most of his translations are focused on works from the late nineteenth and first half of the twentieth century and include, for example, novels by Nina Berberova and Valentin Katayev; short stories by Anton Chekhov, Nikolai Gogol, Daniil Kharms, and Mikhail Sholokhov; poems by Osip Mandelstam, Vladimir Mayakovsky, and Boris Pasternak; and essays by Ilya Ehrenburg and Viktor Shklovsky, among many others.
[2] His wife was Lena Bergmann (1935–2008), born Elena Rytsjardovna Túvína in Ryazan, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union, the eldest child of Soffía (née Mishon), a dentist, and Ryszard Tuwim, an engineer.
Lena and Árni met while both were studying Russian at the Moscow State University and were married in the fall of 1958.
[4] Bergmann has never taken a drivers test and bicycling has been his primary means of transportation since returning to Iceland form Russia in 1962.