Found his father after 20 years

“I feel very fortunate to have found my father alive after all that I’ve been through. He’s also the source of so much treasure. Now I have in my life, two half brothers and their families as well as my father and his wife Ingibjörg. I’m so pleased to see that our hobbies are surprisingly similar and look forward to learning more. Now I can put the final puzzle into the Icelandic heritage data web and it gives me quite a lot of information because now I know where I came from.”

It is a man of over fifty, Hilmar Þór Guðjónsson, who is speaking. His father was not registered at Guðjónson’s birth, but as he grew older, the need to know more about his paternity grew. Twenty years ago, the search really began, and with the help of technology and chance, Guðjónsson finally succeeded in finding his father, Guðjón Sigurðsson.

Hilmar describes their first encounter in an interview in the Sunday paper of Morgunblaðið.

“I would have accepted anything after having been looking for my father all this time. Of course, I had created a picture of this man that I had never seen before and then he was finally there. He stood in front of me, a handsome man taller than I was, and he clearly had everything together. What I saw was so much better than I expected after all this searching. The feeling was really strong, and maybe it’s best described as like falling in love. You’re looking forward to getting to know your people but at the same time not quite sure how the relationship will develop. But it all looks good and they’ve accepted me with open arms, even though I shot up like out of the blue,” Guðjónsson says and smiles.

Surprise entrance

Of course, Guðjón Sigurðsson says that it took some time to register all of this. “It was such an unexpected entry into our family’s life. The issue was brought to light, so I was playing bridge at a competitive club last year for Easter and was in a vulnerable position when the phone growled in my pocket. A message came from someone I did not know, but he wanted to contact me about a matter close to him. He lived in Norway but said he would be in Iceland over Easter and asked if he could see me.

“Guðjónsson then wrote me a letter telling me about his situation, and we resolved to meet him in a café when he came home. I completely lost the game I was playing when the message came in,” Sigurðsson says with a smile.