One of Us: The Story of Anders Breivik and the Massacre in Norway

by Åsne Seierstad

  But nobody could find a property to suit the Norwegian.

  He put the farm project on the back burner for a while; there was so much else to do. Above all, he had to finish his book. The book was the most important thing of all.

  It was crucial for him to take control of the narrative of his own life. Where should he start?

  He devoted a few lines to his childhood. ‘I had a privileged upbringing with responsible and intelligent people around me,’ he wrote in the final section of his manifesto under the chapter heading ‘Interview with a Justiciar Knight Commander of the PCCTS, Knights Templar’. Some might consider an interview of this kind irrelevant, he wrote, but personally he would have appreciated the opportunity to read such an interview with a resistance fighter.

  So there he sat in the fart room between the Coderock artwork and the IKEA shelves, posing questions and thinking up answers. He had no negative childhood experiences at all, he wrote. ‘I guess I came from a typical Norwegian middle-class family.’

  But the idealised picture soon shattered, the fragments strewn all over the short account of the people he grew up with.

  First his father.

  ‘I have not spoken to my father since he isolated himself when I was fifteen (he wasn’t very happy about my graffiti phase from thirteen to sixteen). He has four children but has cut contact with all of them so it is pretty clear whose fault that was. I don’t carry grudge but a couple of my half-siblings do. The thing is that he is just not very good with people.’

  He went on to libel his stepfather: ‘Tore, my stepfather, worked as a major in the Norwegian military and is now retired. I still have contact with him although now he spends most of his time (retirement) with prostitutes in Thailand. He is a very primitive sexual beast, but at the same time a very likeable and good guy.’

  Then his sister. ‘My half-sister, Elisabeth, was infected by chlamydia after having more than forty sexual partners […] Her chlamydia went untreated and she became one of several million US/European women who were suffering from pelvic inflammatory disease caused by untreated gonorrhea and chlamydia which leads to infertility. As she lives in the US, costs relating to this were not covered by the state.’

  Finally his mother, and his stepfather again: ‘My mother was infected with genital herpes by her boyfriend (my stepfather), Tore, when she was forty-eight. Tore, who was a captain in the Norwegian Army, had more than five hundred sexual partners and my mother knew this but suffered from lack of good judgement and morals due to several factors.’ He thrust the knife in deep and twisted it. ‘The herpes infection went to her brain and caused meningitis’, so she had to have an operation to insert a drain in her head because the infection kept recurring. He wrote that his mother had to take early retirement as a result, and her quality of life had been drastically reduced. ‘She now has the intellectual capacity of a ten-year-old.’

  His mother had not only brought shame on herself, she had brought shame on him and on the whole family – ‘a family that was broken in the first place due to the secondary effects of the feministic, sexual revolution’.

  Morality’s executioner was ready at the guillotine. The members of his family had each been assigned their share of blame for society’s decline and now it was his childhood friend Ahmed’s turn.

  His classmate, the Pakistani doctor’s son from the wealthy neighbourhood of Oslo West, never became truly integrated, ergo integration was not possible. Ahmed had Urdu classes as a child and started attending the mosque when he was twelve. Berwick described how one of the boys he played football with, who later became a business partner, was robbed and beaten up by Ahmed and his Pakistani gang. The Knight Templar invented a story that Ahmed had been involved in a gang rape in Frogner Park. ‘These people sometimes raped the so-called “potato whores”,’ he wrote. Such things had opened his eyes to the Muslim threat.

  He accused his childhood friend of having cheered out loud every time a Scud missile was fired at the Americans during the first Gulf War in 1991. The boys were not quite twelve at the time. ‘His total lack of respect for my culture actually sparked my interest and passion for it. Thanks to him I gradually developed a passion for my own cultural identity.’

  He boasted of his close ties with the two most powerful gangs in Oslo at that time, called the A gang and the B gang. Everything was framed in Islamic terms. He described the gangs’ raids on Oslo West to impose their authority on the kuffar – the non-believers – and collect jizia – tax – in the form of phones, cash or sunglasses. The Muslim gangs taunted, robbed and beat up the ethnic Norwegian youngsters who lacked the right connections. Anders had ensured his own freedom of movement by entering into an alliance.

  ‘Alliances with the right people guaranteed safe passage everywhere without the risk of being subdued and robbed, beaten or harassed.’

  Why did you have so many non-ethnic Norwegian friends?

  ‘If I ever got in trouble I expected my friends to back me 100 per cent without submitting or running away, as I would for them. Very few ethnic Norwegians shared these principles. They would either “sissy out”, allow themselves to be subdued or run away when facing a threat.’

  Those who stood up for each other were either Muslims or skinheads. Back then, he preferred the Muslims to the militant whites.

  Then they fell out. Anders wrote that he had been knocked down without warning by a huge Pakistani outside Majorstua station and believed Ahmed had ordered the attack. ‘This concluded, for my part, my friendship with him and I re-connected with my old friends. However, this restricted my territorial freedoms, as I was no longer under the protection of the Oslo Ummah. From now on we would have to arm ourselves whenever we went to parties in case Muslim gangs showed up, and we usually chose to stay in our neighbourhoods in Oslo West.’

  Fifteen years after being frozen out of the graffiti community he tidied up his younger years, adding a new gloss. He could finally shine the way he wanted, write over the bits he did not like. ‘At fifteen, I was the most active tagger (graffiti artist) in Oslo as several people in the old school hip-hop community can attest to.’ He called himself one of the most influential hip-hoppers of Oslo West, a focal point, ‘the glue that held the gang together’. He referred to his friends by their tag names and their real ones interchangeably. ‘Morg, Wick and Spok were everywhere. The fact that hundreds of kids our own age all over Oslo West and even Oslo East looked up to us was one of the driving forces I guess.’ He described the way they would go out on graffiti raids at night, their rucksacks full of spray cans, and bomb the city with tags, pieces and crew names. If you wanted girls or respect it was all about being a hip-hopper, he recalled in this reconstruction of his life.

  Girls had in truth played little part in Anders’s youth. He simply was not popular. He had wondered why, his friends remembered. The only time he had a girlfriend in his school years was the summer when he was fifteen. They went swimming, kissed a few times, sat in the sun. But Anders had made the ‘wrong’ choice, a girl the others thought ugly, ‘with a boyish figure and freckles’.

  When the outcast tagger came to present his story to the world, he touched it up with silver glitter and sparkling spray paint. It had to be flawless. That was why, even here in the Declaration of War, he was obliged to explain why he had stopped hanging out with Spok and Wick in Year 9.

  He had wanted to focus on school, and what was more he didn’t want to do drugs. His mates, meanwhile, decided to stay in the tagging community and were drawn increasingly into criminality and drug use – according to the interviewee’s inventions.

  He counted the tagging community among the enemy in the coming civil war.

  ‘Many of these groups claim to be tolerant and anti-fascist, but yet I have never met anyone as hypocritical, racist and fascist as the people whom I used to call friends and allies. The media glorifies them while they wreak havoc across the city, rob and plunder. Yet any attempts their victims do to consolidate are harshly condemned by
all aspects of the cultural establishment as racism and Nazism. I have witnessed the double standards and hypocrisy with my own eyes, it is hard to ignore. I was one of the protected “potatoes”, having friends and allies in the jihadi–racist gangs such as the A and B gang and many other Muslim gangs.’

  The hip-hop movement was hijacked by ‘Marxist-Jihadi youth’, disguised by labels like SOS racism, Youth against Racism and Blitz. Meanwhile, young Norwegians were brought up to be ‘suicidally tolerant’ and thus unprepared for violence from Muslims. ‘This system makes me sick.’

  His next milieu – the Progress Party – received similar treatment. He described himself as one of the stars, about to be added to the party’s list for the city council elections in 2003. But he had been sold down the river by another rising star of his own age.

  ‘At the time I was more popular than Jøran Kallmyr. I don’t blame him for backstabbing me like that, though. After all, he had invested so much more of his time in the organisation than I had.’

  In retrospect it all seemed crystal clear. He had left the Progress Party because he had realised he could not change the system by democratic means.

  He finished with one line about Lene Langemyr. He had once had a dark-skinned girlfriend.

  * * *

  It wasn’t easy. Being editor, publisher, writer, interviewer and interviewee at the same time.

  He copied the style from profiles of celebrities, in which they were expected to answer a series of questions about themselves like ‘describe yourself in five words’.

  Optimistic, pragmatic, ambitious, creative, hardworking.

  Sports: snowboarding, fitness, bodybuilding, spinning, running.

  Sport on TV: only women’s beach volleyball.

  Food: all cultures have excellent dishes.

  Brand: Lacoste.

  Perfume: Chanel Platinum Égoïste.

  * * *

  One day his mother knocked on his door to give him a message, but stopped short when she saw the large weapon propped in the corner of his wardrobe.

  ‘Are you going to keep that shotgun in your room?’ she asked. ‘I really don’t like it.’ He had told her he had also ordered a rifle, and one day he showed her a big black pistol.

  ‘You can’t live here with all those weapons,’ she went on.

  Anders muttered something about an approaching civil war.

  His mother left him to it; life with her son was becoming more and more claustrophobic. She often felt sorry for him, shut in there or messing around talking nonsense.

  What had he got in all those black bags of his, heavy as lead? He was filling the basement storage area with the oddest things. Once she had found two rucksacks full of stones just inside the door of his room, along with four heavy cans.

  Anders got cross when she asked.

  When he told her he was planning to run a farm, Wenche had said, ‘Good for you!’

  But she was surprised. He had always been so impractical. It was nice, all the same, to be able to tell her friends at the café that Anders was finally going to do something with his life.

  All the cans and containers, cartons and boxes were equipment he needed for the farm. He would have to take it there in several stages.

  Once he put on a set of white overalls, which he called a survival suit. Sometimes he went round in a black waistcoat with lots of pockets. ‘For my hunting licence test,’ he answered when she asked.

  One day, when he emerged from his room in a military jacket with lots of emblems on it, she thought: That’s it. I give up. He does so many weird things …

  He had bought the uniform the same month he registered Breivik Geofarm with the register of business enterprises. Using needle and thread, gold braid, ribbon, emblems of various orders, bandoliers and insignias he had made it into a real gala outfit.

  Now it hung in a suit cover in the pale blue wardrobe. He wasn’t taking it with him to the farm.

  The other uniform was ready as well. Some of it was from sportswear shops, some from suppliers of military and paramilitary kit, like the army boots, the helmet with visor, the body armour – inserts and arm guards, a bulletproof vest, a neck protector – a Soviet gas mask and plastic-strip handcuffs. In March 2011 he had sourced the last thing he needed from an internet dealer in Germany: black combat trousers like the Norwegian police wore, at fifty-eight euros.

  A few days before his move to the farm, he came out from his room.

  ‘Mum, I’m scared.’

  ‘Goodness me, what of?’

  ‘I’m scared of doing something I might not master.’

  She wanted to comfort him.

  ‘You’ll be a great farmer,’ she said.

  Not Just an Outfit

  Across the fjord, Bano was sitting at the computer screen, looking for a special costume. She hit the keys hard and fast, clicking from one outfit to the next.

  She had saved up her earnings from her summer job at Food & Beverage at the Tusenfryd amusement park, where she and Lara had spent the school holidays as hamburger chefs. As well as flipping burgers and filling paper cups with cola they had spent their days stealing glances at their handsome boss, who was one of the reasons Bano applied for a job at the café where her younger sister had worked the summer before. At the end of the season, Bano won the Worker of the Year award, selected from among all the employees at the park’s food and drink outlets. She was quick-witted and deft-fingered. When she made up her mind to do something, it was done in a flash.

  Bano smiled more than most, laughed louder and more often. Lara was more reticent. ‘Now I know which one’s which,’ said one boy who had always muddled them up. ‘The one who smiles all the time is Bano. Lara’s the serious one.’

  Lara had spent the money she had earned at H&M, while Bano’s was in a savings account. She was searching for something specific.

  Ever since she first experienced 17 May, Norway’s National Day, as a seven-year-old, she had wanted a bunad, a traditional Norwegian folk costume. She had pestered her mother, who hunted all round town at second-hand clothes shops and finally found two girls’ costumes at the UFF charity shop. The sisters had long since grown out of them.

  Bano wanted a bunad she could wear for the rest of her life and pass down to the next generation, like the ones her friends had. Most of them had been given theirs as presents at their confirmation, and Bano had tried on their costumes and admired them. Having one specially made was far too expensive, so she looked for second-hand costumes among the classified ads on the buyers’ and sellers’ websites. It had to be one she liked and could afford, and the right size for someone who was 1.62 metres tall.

  There was one that caught her eye. From Trysil, it said. It was made of black wool and had garlands of red and yellow flowers embroidered round the hem of the skirt and on the bodice. It came with a starched white blouse, a little brooch, a pair of cufflinks and a small embroidered bag to wear at the waist. The seller lived in the Skøyen district of Oslo.

  Mustafa came with her. From the ferry they could see the silhouette of the whole city, from east to west. Cranes and scaffolding bore witness to the constant expansion of the city on the fjord. The whole side of the fjord was going to be linked together by a promenade several miles long, Bano had read. What a wonderful idea!

  The ferry took them to Aker Brygge. From there they took the number 12 tram to Solli and changed to the number 13. They got off by Hoffsveien.

  * * *

  It was as if the costume had been made for her. Ten thousand kroner changed hands.

  On the ferry home she sat with it on her lap. As usual, she couldn’t stop talking, and as usual, her father listened and nodded. She jabbered on about affording a bigger silver brooch after this year’s summer job, because this one was only child-sized. And then she’d want the special shoes with buckles.

  Bano jogged up the steep slope to the housing area up by the edge of the forest. She went straight to her room on the ground floor, donned the traditional co
stume with its roots in Norway’s nineteenth-century National Romanticism and swept into the living room.

  ‘Mashalla ka joani, Bano!’ her mother exclaimed, her eyes filling with tears. ‘How lovely you look!’

  From then until National Day, Bano repeatedly tried on her costume, turning this way and that in front of the mirror, before she would finally wear it for everyone to see. The teenager declared to her younger sister that it was the sexiest thing a woman could put on. She loved traditional festivals and celebrations. Norwegian National Day, with all its passion and fervour, was her favourite.

  The day before, she polished her shoes and buckles, ironed her blouse and washed her hair. Her costume was hanging up, all ready to put on. She went to bed in a mood of exhilaration, but doubts came crowding in overnight.

  ‘I’ve no right to wear this,’ she said to her mother. She stood on the stairs, half-dressed, as the morning sun struggled to break through the clouds.

  ‘What nonsense! Now come and let me plait your hair,’ her mother said dismissively.

  But Bano stood her ground. ‘A bunad is meant to be from the place you come from. Your history is meant to come from there, your family, you’re supposed to be from there. You can’t just buy it on the internet.’

  Bano leant over the banisters. On the table in the living room stood a vase with some green birch leaves and a Norwegian flag stuck into it.

  ‘The bunad is yours,’ her father asserted, looking down at her. ‘You bought it.’

  ‘What if anyone asks?’ objected Bano. ‘Think if anyone asks where it’s from! And when I say Trysil, they’ll ask why I’m wearing a Trysil bunad. I don’t even know anyone in Trysil!’

  Bano had explained to her parents all about folk costumes. There were lots of rules. You weren’t allowed to change them or jazz them up, or clutter them with jewellery. Ideally you would inherit the costume from your grandmother. The next best way was to be given it for your confirmation.

  An inherited costume was precisely what Bano had bought. The woman selling it had been left costumes by both her grandmothers, and since she had no daughter of her own she thought she might as well sell one of them.