A force of destiny in the lives of many

Árný Aurangasri Hinriksson was among those who received the Order of the Eagle, as it is usually called, from the President of Iceland in Bessastadir on June 17.

She received a Knight's Cross for her work on behalf of adopted children and has helped around 35 Icelanders who have searched for their origins in Sri Lanka.

She moved from Sri Lanka to Ísafjörður in 1983, and there she is often called Auri. She then moved to Iceland with her husband Þóri Hinriksson, but he died in 2017. 

"It was not a conscious decision on my part to pour myself into looking for parents of adopted children in Iceland. Thirty years ago, people came to me and asked me for help in finding the parents of their daughter they had adopted from Sri Lanka. Little by little, this started to happen and there were more issues that I came to. To begin with, I was asked about this by people who had adopted the children, but later, when the adopted children grew up, they themselves started asking me for help when they wanted to know more about their origins," says Auri in an interview with Sunndagsblaðir Morgunblaðinn adding that over time the inquiries she received came from more countries. 

"I have not been able to attend to everyone who has come to me. On the one hand, this takes a lot of time, and on the other hand, it is costly. I tried to handle a few cases a year, but when I stopped working, and had finished my studies, I took on more cases. It also played a role in the fact that I began to spend more time in Sri Lanka and being there, more results were also achieved. I have done all this at my own expense, and of course you have to think about how much time and money you spend on this."