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

by Åsne Seierstad

  They usually spent several hours examining a dead body; here they could allow themselves no more than half an hour. The dead were lying out in the open. The weather had turned warmer.

  She was gathering evidence in a murder investigation, but the murderer had been caught and had admitted the murders. The case was pretty much solved.

  In the course of Saturday they had examined around half of the dead and put them in the white body bags. Then the bodies were transported on the MS Thorbjørn back to the mainland, where black hearses were waiting to take them to the Institute of Forensics. It did not have enough cold storage, so they had hired refrigerated containers.

  From where Danijela was now, on Lovers’ Path, there was a clear view inland across the island, to the woods and the campsite. The path wound its way along the fence. Behind the wire netting the rocks dropped away sharply. On the wooded side of the path there was a clearing with a few pine trees dotted around it.

  She crouched down beside the dead. That was her working position, kneeling over the bodies. She looked up, and then she understood. Squatting down here, you had the illusion of being hidden. A low rocky outcrop rose about half a metre above the path. If you lay down behind it, you might think you were hidden.

  That was how it must have been, she thought. They believed they could not been seen.

  She took off the first blanket.

  Youngsters almost on top of each other, all together in a row along the narrow path. It pained her to see it.

  First she took pictures of the whole group, then close-ups of each individual, from one side, then the other, from in front and from above.

  She marked the location of the bodies with little flags in the ground. One flag at the top by the head, one at the bottom by the feet. Later on, GPS coordinates would be made of the site. Everything had to be done accurately. The next of kin would be able to know: it was here, precisely here, that we found your child.

  She started from the right. First there was a boy a bit away from the rest, with several bullet wounds.

  Then two almost tangled together. A tall, powerfully built boy had his arm round quite a small girl. Long dark hair protruded from her fluorescent yellow hood. The hair was wet. Her face was half covered. The forensic technician pulled the hood aside. All colour had drained from the face, the skin was shiny, smooth as ivory.

  Danijela examined her wounds. One bullet had entered the back of her head and gone out through her forehead. Another shot had forced its way down through her throat and into her body, where it lay hidden.

  Danijela carefully noted everything down. The girl wore jeans, stuffed into a pair of dark green wellies.

  Danijela gently lifted away the arm of the tall boy holding the girl with the ivory skin. Whereas the others on the path were in jackets and warm tops, he was wearing a T-shirt and shorts. His hair was close-cropped, his face turned to the side. Like the girl, he had two wounds to the head. In his pocket he had a walkie-talkie. It was switched off.

  * * *

  ‘Mum, I’ve got to ring off now…’ Anders Kristiansen had told his mother that Friday afternoon. As a duty supervisor he had kept the two-way radio on. Messages were crackling in non-stop. ‘… because a policeman’s just arrived to brief us. In fact I can see him coming over the hill. I’ll have to go. Bye Mum!’

  That was the last Anders’s parents had heard from him. They had left Bardufoss early on Saturday morning, still knowing nothing about their son. Initially their elder son, Stian, was told that his brother was in Ringerike hospital, but it turned out not to be him after all. Stian was obliged to tell his parents they had been misinformed. He heard a scream down the phone line. Gerd could not stop howling. Calm, steady Gerd.

  ‘My child!’

  Gerd and Viggo could not face staying at the hotel with the other desperate, grief-stricken families at Sundvolden, so they stayed with Stian in Oslo. Some friends rang to comfort them, and said Anders was bound to be hiding somewhere. Perhaps he had swum to one of the little islands near by and was lying low there, not daring to come out.

  ‘No, my boy wouldn’t be lying low,’ replied Gerd. ‘It wouldn’t be like him.’

  A relation rang too. ‘This is a sign from God!’ said the devout Pietist. ‘Anders had to die to make you open your eyes!’ This member of the family said Gerd would have to find her way back to faith, the true faith. Losing her son was the sacrifice she had to make.

  Gerd slammed the phone down.

  It was Sunday, and time for church. The Kristiansen family had been invited to a remembrance service at the cathedral. They could not bring themselves to attend. Gerd did not want God mixed up in this.

  * * *

  The cathedral was full to the rafters. Outside there was a sea of flowers: roses, lilies, forget-me-nots. The city was in shock, the country in mourning.

  Jens Stoltenberg was faced with the most difficult speech of his life. There in the cathedral, he struggled to hold back his tears.

  ‘It feels like an eternity,’ he said. ‘These have been hours, days and nights filled with shock, despair, anger and tears. Today is a time for sorrow.’

  As the leader of the country he could not just dwell on that sorrow, but also had to urge people to come together. ‘In the midst of this tragedy I am proud to live in a land that has been able to stand upright at a critical time. I am impressed by all the dignity, consideration and determination I have encountered. We are a small country, but we are a proud people. We are still shaken by what has happened to us, but we will never relinquish our values. Our answer is more democracy, more openness and more humanity. But never naivety.’

  That last line became the mantra – Norway’s response to the tragedy. Overnight, Jens Stoltenberg went from being a Prime Minister from the Labour Party to being the leader of a nation.

  Answering hate with love was the image of how Norway tackled that initial period. Stoltenberg’s words tapped into people’s feelings. He had been braced for the reaction to be one of hatred and revenge. But the opposite happened. People held hands and wept.

  * * *

  Viljar was in a coma, so Torje had to be the big brother.

  Over the weekend, the doctors at Ullevål decided they would have to amputate Viljar’s left arm. The main nerve had been shot to pieces. But they wanted to wait until he came round, if he came round.

  When Torje heard this, he tucked his left arm up inside his sweater.

  ‘I’ve got to find out what it’s like, so I can teach him when he wakes up,’ announced the fourteen-year-old. It was tricky to cut anything, impossible to do up his shoes, and thoroughly impractical all round.

  ‘I’ve heard you can get a sort of one-handed tool that’s a knife and fork combined,’ said his father. ‘We’ll go out and buy one tomorrow.’

  If Viljar was to wake at all, it was critical that it be soon. The longer he remained in a coma, the more serious the damage was likely to be.

  Sunday night was the third night to pass without Viljar waking up. His parents took it in turns at his bedside, falling asleep with their heads on his blanket.

  * * *

  Sunday night, the man who had fired five shots into Viljar’s body was secretly taken to the same hospital. The police wanted him X-rayed to make sure he did not have any kind of bomb trigger concealed inside his body.

  Large numbers of detectives and analysts in the police and the intelligence services were combing through the manifesto and everything the perpetrator had left behind him in the way of papers, tools, chemicals and electronic trails. They were also looking for hidden codes and references in what he had written.

  X-rays and scans did not detect any kind of detonator implanted in the body of the accused and he was sent back to the central detention unit just as the main police station was waking to a new morning. It was to prove a hectic day. Three intense days of interviews were over, and now the accused was to be officially charged. He wanted to be present in person and he wanted to wear uniform.
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br />   At the Law Courts, judge Kim Heger was preparing for the hearing. The police had sent him the accused’s request to be in uniform for the proceedings.

  Heger refused point-blank.

  When the reply was communicated to Breivik, he complained that it was breach of promise. Nor had he been given pen and paper in his cell to enable him to prepare for the hearing, he objected.

  ‘If you do not want to come to the committal hearing, your defence counsel will attend without you,’ said the police.

  ‘If my defence counsel does that, I shall appoint a new one, so the hearing will have to be postponed in any case.’

  Then he changed his mind. He would attend the committal hearing after all, as long as he could have a printout of the manifesto. He wanted to read out a few pages of it to the judge.

  ‘Since I’m not allowed to appear in uniform, I want to wear my red Lacoste jersey instead.’

  This was permitted.

  ‘And I want to shave.’

  ‘We haven’t got the facilities for that in the detention unit, but you can wash your face and clean your teeth.’

  * * *

  The crowd of reporters and curious onlookers began to grow in front of the Law Courts. The police judged there to be a high risk of an attempt on the life of the accused, and were out in force.

  At about half past one, two armoured Mercedes SUVs drove up from the garage under the police headquarters. In one of them, the accused was sitting in the back seat, handcuffed and shackled. Some young people in the crowd at the courthouse had just attacked a grey Volvo on its way into the underground garage. They believed it to be transporting Breivik.

  The two heavy black cars with uniformed motorcycle outriders in front and behind drove into the Vaterland Tunnel, which had been closed to all other traffic. Emerging from the tunnel, the cars swung across to the opposite carriageway, straight into the multi-storey car park known as the Ibsen House, and from there into the garage of the Law Courts.

  The accused was accompanied into the lift, which took him to level eight, where the hearing was to be held. There were seven people sitting in room 828.

  The accused looked around him in surprise as he entered. His handcuffs were attached to the shackles and he was finding it difficult to stand up properly.

  ‘You may sit down,’ said Kim Heger.

  Breivik scanned the room.

  ‘Where is everybody?’

  ‘We are the only ones here,’ replied the judge. ‘This preliminary hearing is to be held behind closed doors.’

  ‘Who decided that?’ asked Breivik.

  ‘It was my decision,’ answered the seasoned judge, leaning forward to look at the accused over his spectacles.

  ‘I bet it was the Labour Party’s.’

  ‘No, it was my decision, and this is how it is to be,’ the judge said tersely. Breivik started to quibble, but was swiftly interrupted

  ‘We must get on with the hearing,’ said Heger. ‘This is the way it is; we are the only ones here.’ He began to read out the charges.

  Anders Behring Breivik was formally charged under paragraph l47 of the Norwegian Penal Code, the so-called terror paragraph, which carries a maximum penalty of twenty-one years in prison, with the possibility of extension, if the convicted prisoner represents a danger to society.

  The accused did not acknowledge his guilt, and demanded to be set free.

  He expressed the wish to read something from his manifesto, and asked if he could read it in English, as that was his working language.

  ‘No, the language of the law in Norway is Norwegian,’ replied the judge.

  Ignoring this, Breivik started to read out an extract from the manifesto, which the police had printed out for him as requested.

  And what country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? he read, and went on: The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants.

  Then he was told to stop. The judge was not prepared to listen.

  * * *

  A crowd of reporters was also gathering outside a country house at the foot of the Pyrenees in the south of France.

  Gendarmes were guarding the gate. The couple living there had called the local police and asked for assistance.

  On Saturday morning, the man in the house had turned on the computer to find out more about what had happened in Norway.

  He had been working in the garden on Friday when his wife called out to him: ‘We have to turn on the TV! Something has happened in Oslo – an explosion!’

  The couple read about it on the web, watched the BBC, got worried.

  ‘It must have something to do with Islamic fundamentalism,’ Jens Breivik said to his wife. Terror had reached their peaceful home country. They sat in shock following the news, first from the government area and later from Utøya. Then they went to bed.

  The next morning the seventy-six-year-old sat staring at the screen. The only thing he saw was a name written in bold letters: ANDERS BEHRING BREIVIK.

  He understood nothing. There was only one Anders Behring Breivik in Norway. His son. What could he have to do with this?

  He continued reading.

  He read it all.

  He was paralysed. He just sat there. He felt he was fainting. He blacked out.

  It could not be possible.

  * * *

  That Monday, people came together. They felt the need to gather.

  In the capital, over two hundred thousand people assembled on the square in front of the Town Hall, by the quayside. In Salangen there was a torchlit procession, in Bardu and on Nesodden. On that day, more than a million Norwegians took part in a gathering or in a procession, carrying roses.

  On Utøya, all the dead had been recorded. It turned out that fifteen people had been counted twice. The new totals of those lost were sixty-nine killed on Utøya and eight in the government quarter. But few of them had as yet been identified.

  In front of the Town Hall people stood with roses. The Crown Prince said Tonight the streets are filled with love and the crowd sang the national anthem Yes, we love this country as a canon, passing it between them. Then Nordahl Grieg’s ‘To Youth’ – Faced by your enemies, enter your time, battle is menacing, now make a stand. The crowd filled the square, the quays, the whole Aker Brygge area and all the streets around; it extended up past Parliament and as far as the cathedral.

  ‘We have been crushed, but we will not give up!’

  The Prime Minister was on stage. People held their roses aloft.

  ‘Evil can kill a human being, but never conquer a people!’

  * * *

  Hours later, when all the evening’s briefings and meetings were over, the Prime Minister walked quietly up Bygdøy Allé. He had walked from his residence behind the Royal Palace and through the Frogner district, and was now strolling down the middle of the avenue. The air felt pure after the days of rain, everything had turned milder, softer. He was with his State Secretary Hans Kristian Amundsen and the Cabinet Office minister Karl Eirik Schjøtt Pedersen. Security men were walking in front and behind them. Stoltenberg was humming a song from his youth. He searched for the words, and sang them as they gradually came to him.

  I am quite drunk and walking down Bygdøy Allé

  And my only aim is to get home and sleep …

  Amundsen joined in, trying to sound like the lead singer in the Norwegian rock band deLillos.

  But before I do that! I have to see!

  The sun rising and people getting up

  Then I am safe, then I can sleep well …

  Here, in these streets, the Prime Minister had grown up, here in Frogner he had hung out in the same places as that lead singer, Lars Lillo-Stenberg, in the 1980s. It was the time when they partied all night in the large villas in the streets off the avenue, when late arrivals at the after-party would turn up round the Stoltenberg family’s breakfast table, when wha
t was mine was yours and ours, when the hippie era was still not quite over in Norway, when the yuppies hadn’t taken over yet, when life was simple and secure and these streets were his.

  Little Oslo is a planet of its own

  They were singing louder now.

  All the streets are different lands

  Every district a continent

  And we zoom ahead, each and every one.

  These same streets had also been home to Anders Behring Breivik, in the first years of his life. His fashionable Fritzners gate crossed the even more exclusive Gimle Terrasse, to which the three men were now on their way, making for number 3.

  They had been invited to the home of Roger Ingebrigtsen, State Secretary at the Ministry of Defence. Two days earlier he had feared that his partner Lene had lost her only child – fourteen-year-old Ylva. Now her life was no longer in danger.

  They took in the scent of July after rain. ‘Like velvet,’ said Stoltenberg. It was Norwegian summer at its best. Tomorrow was going to be a fine day. They took the steps up the little hill to where Gimle Terrasse lay.

  Hans Kristian Amundsen had called in advance to say they were on their way. A little red-haired boy popped up at the entrance and asked: ‘Are you coming to see Roger?’

  Then he ran up the steps ahead of the security guards, ahead of the Prime Minister, to alert everyone inside.

  The dining-room windows had been opened wide. Roger, himself from Troms, had gathered the families from his county, who had so suddenly been flung together in Oslo. At the long table sat Tone, Gunnar and Håvard, then Viggo and Gerd. Christin and Sveinn Are were sitting with Torje and Ylva’s mother Lene.

  There were four children missing.

  They had no information about Simon or Anders. Viljar was in a coma, and Ylva had just come round from her operations.

  Jens Stoltenberg went in. He wondered how this was going to go and he was afraid of saying the wrong thing.

  ‘You came on foot?’ asked their host.

  ‘I like walking and it’s about the only thing I can do. I haven’t driven a car for six years so I’ve completely forgotten how to do that,’ answered Stoltenberg.