11 year old boy gave a 6 year old boy from Grindavík his computer

The  six year old Hlynur Breki Steinarsson moved to Grindavík with his family in November last year. When the family started their new life in Grindavík, they didn’t realise that shortly afterwards they would have to leave their new home due to powerful earthquakes.

The family left for a “quake vacation” on Friday, November 10, just before the town was evacuated. They escaped before Grindavíkurvegur was severed in the earthquakes and badly damaged later that day. On the other hand, the family had none of their belongings when the town was closed and could not go immediately to get the main necessities.

Wanted to have a computer like a friend

On Monday, Hlynur’s family was invited to a dinner party with friends, Íris Hlín Vignisdóttir and her family. Vignisdóttir’s son owns a Nintendo Switch and Hlynur Breki talked a lot about it during this visit that he wanted to have one too. Vignisdóttir decided to do something about this. She called her friend, Hildur Markúsdóttir, the mother of the 11 year old Þór Jónsson, because she had heard that Þór wanted to sell his computer.

“I knew he had stopped using it so I wanted to see if he was willing to sell Hlynur Breki the computer,” says Vignisdóttir.

Hildur then talked to her son about selling Hlynur the computer.

“We had been talking about whether we should sell it someday and then Vignisdóttir contacts me and lets me know that there is a father of one boy from Grindavík who wants to buy such a computer for his son. So I let Þór know that there’s a boy from Grindavík who wants to have it and asks if he’s ready to sell it. Þór knew what the situation was in Grindavík and that they no longer have a home there, so he decided to give him the computer,” Markúsdóttir tells us.

She says she has made it clear to her son that he doesn't have to give the computer, he could just sell it because he had bought it for all his birthday money. It would be obvious that he would get something for it.

“He was adamant about doing it for the boy. He just said that if he could do it for him, that was what he wanted to do. He actually asked me if he could meet the boy himself and give him the computer, which I of course agreed with,” she says.

Mom’s heart melted

Þór turned the computer over to Hlynur Breki on Thursday night and Markúsdóttir tells him that her mom's heart melted over her son's kindness.

“Þór also said when we had met Hlynur Breki that it obviously didn’t take much to make him happy. I told him then that it was still really a big gift. He gave him one game with the computer and a stand for the remote control, but still had the most concerns about the charging device being lost.”

Þór goes to Fossvogsskóli in Reykjavík and Markúsdóttir asks them if they have any connection to Grindavík.

“No, not really. I think Þór has never been to Grindavík,” she concludes.