The joy of watching children build with Lego is one all parents can relate to; the silence, the concentration and then happiness as they admire what they’ve created and excitedly show it off.

But for one young boy from Iceland, his love of Lego became a lifeline.

At 3 years old Brynjar Karl Birgisson stopped talking and became a very unhappy little boy.

“All at once, the words I wanted to say slipped away. Everything I had learned vanished into a thick fog. I went from being a happy boy to feeling lonely and sad,” he said.

“I felt stuck, lost in that fog… unable to string words together.”

At the age of five, his parents took him to a specialist, who diagnosed him with autism.

As he grew older, he learned more easily through images than words. He developed a deep passion for ships and Lego, and by the time he was ten, he knew everything there was to know about the Titanic.

“I studied ships constantly—the bigger they were, the more I knew about them,” he said.

He decided to build a replica of his favorite ship out of Lego. With the help of his grandfather—who used the original Titanic blueprints to create custom building instructions—and funds raised through crowdfunding, Karl gathered everything he needed to bring his vision to life.

“It took me 11 months and 700 hours to build my dream ship,” he said. “It’s 6.5 meters long—about 21.3 feet—and made from 56,000 Lego bricks.”

He said three things helped him achieve his dream: believing in himself, having a strong support team—his family—and never giving up.

Karl was just 11 years old when he completed the world’s largest Lego replica of the Titanic, becoming a world record-holder.

His incredible achievement took him around the globe, where he stood on stages and shared the story of his creation with audiences far and wide.

“As The Guardian reported, Karl reflected on how much had changed since he began the project: ‘I was totally unable to communicate when I started, and now I’m standing on stage and giving interviews,’ he said.

‘It has given me confidence. When I started building, I needed support for every step I took at school. Today, I study independently. This journey has given me the chance to travel, explore, and meet amazing people.’”

His creation has been exhibited in Iceland, Sweden, Norway, and Germany. In 2018, he traveled to the United States, where his Lego Titanic was showcased at the Titanic Museum in Tennessee.

Karl has no plans to build more large-scale Lego creations for now. Instead, he’s focusing on his passion for ships—with hopes of becoming a captain one day.