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

by Åsne Seierstad

  And then, when he woke up properly, he realised before they said it. So he said it himself.

  ‘I know Anders would have been here now, and Simon, if…’

  Viljar looked at Martin.

  ‘They would at least have sent some kind of message, if they…’

  Martin nodded. The tears flowed.

  ‘… had been … They’re dead, aren’t they?’

  Viljar had missed Anders’s and Simon’s funerals. They were held the week Viljar turned eighteen. Jens Stoltenberg attended Simon’s funeral. At Anders’s funeral, Lars Bremnes performed his song ‘If I Could Write in the Heavens’.

  Viljar stayed down in Oslo for a series of operations. It was only in October, three months after he had been shot, that they let him travel back to Svalbard.

  He slept a lot. It was a real effort to regain his strength. He was a skinny teenager to start with, and had now lost twenty kilos. A red scar ran from the top of his head and down one side. His eye socket had been rebuilt. He had been fitted with a glass eye and a prosthetic hand.

  Life was anguish and loss. Fear of death could paralyse him without warning. Often he felt like half a person. Not because of what had happened to him, but because he had lost his best friends. So many unlived dreams!

  Over the winter he got the letter summoning him to give evidence at the trial.

  He lay awake at night thinking about what he ought to say to make it right. He tested out phrases on his classmates the next day.

  ‘You can shoot me as many times as you like! But you didn’t get anywhere!’ he tried. ‘I’m damn well going to show this ABB that I can pull through all right!’

  One evening Johannes Buø’s family came round to see the Hanssens. Johannes, the fourteen-year-old judo enthusiast and Metallica fan, Torje’s best friend, was killed in the woods by the schoolhouse. Johannes had lived on the island for the past few years with his parents and brother Elias, three years his junior. His father was the director of arts and culture on Svalbard.When Johannes’s autopsy report was presented to the court at the beginning of May, the family went to Oslo to be there. Their places were behind the glass partition, so they found themselves staring at the back of the perpetrator’s head. Elias suddenly moved from his seat to sit on his own at the far end of the front row. When the court rose for a break the freckled little boy with corkscrew curls got to his feet and went right up to the glass wall in the corner. There he stood waiting. He had noticed that when Breivik left his place among the defence lawyers and made his way out, he had to look in that direction. He would have to walk straight towards Elias. They would be separated only by the glass. Then, as Breivik approached, the little brother was going to fix him with the foulest look he could muster. And so he did.

  In the Hanssens’ living room, the Buø family did a sketch map of the courtroom for Viljar. ‘He’ll be sitting there,’ they indicated. ‘With his defence team. And you’ll sit here.’

  They drew a square in the middle of the room. The witness box. They put in the judges, the prosecution and the public.

  ‘He’ll be sitting two metres away from you, can you handle that?’

  ‘The closer the better,’ said Viljar.

  He would have to rehearse what he was going to say if he wanted to get through this. He had to leave his feelings out of it or he would not be able to pull it off. That was why he was practising, so he did not find himself faced with anything that would throw him, anything he could not to tackle, anything that might make him break down. He would not afford ABB that satisfaction.

  He was trembling as the plane landed in Oslo. But he was ready now. He must not let them down – this was for Anders, this was for Simon, it was for what they had believed in. As so often before, he wondered what they would have said now. What advice they would have given him. Anders on the content, Simon on the style. Once when he had got stuck, he started dialling Anders’s number when he— Fuck! Anders is dead!

  He had to do this alone. And he had to pull it off.

  * * *

  On 22 May, Viljar dressed in a black shirt and black trousers as befitted the gravity of the occasion. Over the shirt he wore a jacket in a dark blue. Around his right wrist he had a thin leather strap. He had stylish glasses with black frames. Nothing was left to chance when Viljar Robert Hanssen went to Oslo to give evidence.

  He walked down the central aisle to the witness box with light steps. Breivik looked at him, as he always did when someone came in. Viljar caught his eye with a searing look, held it, focused, still held it.

  ‘Hah,’ thought Viljar. ‘Empty. Just like Johannes’s little brother said: “You won’t find anything in his eyes.”’

  A gentle voice addressed him from the left. It was Inga Bejer Engh.

  ‘Can you start by telling us what happened to you on Utøya?’

  Yes, he could.

  ‘I was at the campsite. My little brother was asleep in the tent. I went to the meeting in the main building to find out what had happened in Oslo. I remember talking to Simon Sæbø. I remember he said if this is something political, we aren’t safe here either.’

  He said they had gathered up everyone from Troms. Then they heard bangs. So they started running.

  ‘We ran across Lovers’ Path. My little brother and I made our way down a sort of slope, cliff-edge thing. The bangs were getting nearer, and in the end they were really, really close.’

  The prosecution asked to see a map of the steep slope. Viljar did his best to point. ‘Whether I was hit when I was jumping – here – or when I landed, I don’t know, but I ended up down there and my brother was close by.’

  At times while Viljar was giving evidence Breivik whispered little comments to one of the trainee lawyers in his defence team.

  ‘Then I heard this crazy whistling sound in my right ear and I found myself by the edge of the water. I tried to get up several times, I was a bit sort of Bambi on the ice, you know, and I called out to my brother. But then I decided the best thing was just to lie down in the foetal position somewhere. I curled myself round a rock on the shoreline and stayed there. I was conscious the whole time. It was very strange being shot, it didn’t hurt – it was just unpleasant. A new kind of pain. I lay there and started trying to get my bearings. I looked at my fingers and saw they were only hanging on by scraps of skin. I realised I couldn’t see out of one eye and that something must be wrong there. I started running my hand over my head and eventually I came across something soft and then I touched my brain; I was feeling my own brain. It was a weird so I took my hand away pretty quick. I remember Simon Sæbø was lying there, but I didn’t know then that he was dead. I remember I talked to him, said it would be all right and we’d get through it together.’

  ‘Did you know him well?’

  ‘Very well.’

  ‘And you only found out later that he was dead?’

  ‘Yes. I think I just didn’t want to take it in … at the time. I remember it vividly, lying there, that … well, I’ve seen lots of bad American films about how important it is to keep breathing and stay awake. So I tried to go on talking, came out with lots of strange stuff. In the end I think I was burbling on about pirates or something.’

  ‘Did anyone talk to you?’

  ‘They shushed me. He must have come back again, I think, without me realising. So then they shushed me, like, “Please shut up!”’

  ‘Your brother, what happened to him?’

  ‘I lost track of him. The last thing I saw was him moving away from me. Like I was trying to get him to. I didn’t see him again after that, and that was the worst bit for me. I tried to distract myself by thinking about things I enjoyed in everyday life. I thought about going back home to Svalbard, and driving the snowmobile and girls and other things that are really great. I thought about all sorts of things except where my little brother was. For me, dying wasn’t an option and that was smart. Well, in a way I didn’t realise how badly injured I was. I remember I started to feel freezing and ge
t spasms. I was shaking like mad. I remember, though I don’t know how long it lasted, that I passed out. I don’t know when that happened but I think it must have been a little while before they came for us.’

  From that point, Viljar could not remember anything until he was taken aboard a boat. ‘The waves were knocking my back quite hard. There was a man beside me, asking, “What’s your name? Where do you live?” to keep me awake. I remember asking if they’d seen a small, red-haired boy. And he said no.’

  ‘Where did the bullets hit you?’

  ‘I was hit in the thigh, just a slight graze. And then there’s my fingers here, you can’t miss that, I was shot in the hand, and then it was my shoulder, all this up here was pulverised. Then I was shot in the forearm, this little scar, and then I was shot in the head. If that makes five, then that’s it.’

  ‘And the shot in the head, how has it affected you since?’

  ‘I lost this eye, but that’s useful: it means I don’t have to look over there.’

  Viljar nodded towards the defendant, who was sitting to his right. It took a second or two, as if Breivik needed a little time to appreciate what the boy in the witness box had said before starting to smile. The whole room smiled.

  ‘But as for my brain and that…’ Viljar went on, ‘I’ve still got my wits about me.’

  There were chuckles in the courtroom. A few people laughed out loud. A sense of release. Breivik was still smiling.

  ‘So we hear,’ said Beijer Engh. ‘And are things going to continue that way?’

  Viljar had decided in advance what he was willing to share and what he was not. ‘Reasonably terribly, decently badly,’ he replied when asked how he was getting on at school. He could talk about phantom limb pain, operations on his head, the eye he could take in and out like a marble. But he wanted to keep what went on inside his mind to himself. The hell – he would not share that with ABB and the rest of Norway. He replied briefly to the prosecutor’s questions about how things were for him now.

  ‘Quite a challenge, all the anxiety and nerves,’ he said. ‘I only feel safe in a moving car. Anxiety and paranoia. I still seem to find things difficult. Not on Svalbard and maybe not in Tromsø, but I find it unpleasant being in Oslo. Being here now.’

  He paused. ‘I had to cancel my place at an AUF event because I got too scared to go. It’s hard. Life has really changed,’ he said, and told the court about everything he had had to relearn: holding a pen, tying his shoelaces. He who had been so active, played football, drove snowmobiles, went skiing, loved everything that was fast and exciting, now he could do none of that. He still had fragments of the bullet inside his head. They were too close to vital nerves to be removed. If these bits moved even a millimetre, it could be lethal. He had to avoid any risk of a blow to his head. For the rest of his life.

  ‘I can’t just wax my skis and set off any more…’ he said, and paused before he went on. ‘We’re all dependent on having self-confidence and feeling at ease. It does something to you when your whole face has changed and…’

  At that, Breivik looked down.

  Viljar had no more to say.

  He had shared enough.

  ‘I think you’ve finished, then,’ said judge Arntzen.

  ‘Fabulous,’ said Viljar.

  He stood up, spun on his heel and went. Out.

  It was almost summer.

  He had his life in front of him. He could walk, sit and stand. He had his wits about him. And many people to live for.

  Psycho Seminar

  ‘It’s insulting!’ cried Breivik. ‘It’s offensive!’

  ‘Breivik, you get your chance to speak later!’

  ‘It’s ludicrous that I’m not allowed to comment here. This is being broadcast. It’s insulting!’ Breivik was bright red in the face.

  ‘NRK must stop the broadcast!’ ordered judge Wenche Arntzen.

  The transmission faded out, away from Breivik’s indignant face, to a picture of the main doors of the Law Courts, while the drama played out in courtroom 250.

  The clash was about Breivik’s life. For Breivik, it was about the right to a private life. For the court, it was about making the correct diagnosis.

  Breivik had constructed his life story as a shining suit of armour. In the lustreless courtroom, within those matte grey walls, a pack of professionals had descended to try with a variety of tools to push, worm and force their way inside his defences.

  It was Friday 8 June. The day before, the court had not sat.

  Wenche Arntzen had been at her father’s funeral. Supreme Court counsel Andreas Artzen had died two weeks earlier. The funeral was arranged for the first day the court was not in session.

  The two professional judges in the 22 July trial came from the legal aristocracy. Wenche Arntzen’s grandfather, Sven Arntzen, was Director General of Public Prosecution in 1945, and it was he who prepared the charges against Vidkun Quisling. John Lyng, grandfather of Arntzen’s fellow judge Arne Lyng, was the public prosecutor in the legal purge of collaborators in 1945 and prosecutor in the case against the Nazi Henry Rinnan who, like Quisling, was condemned to death.

  Lyng and Arntzen had with them the three lay judges, who had been selected at random from a list at the courthouse. A young, pregnant teacher of Colombian descent, a retired family counsellor in her seventies and a middle-aged consultant in the Department of Education. On the first day the court sat, there had been another lay person on the bench, but it emerged in the evening that just after the massacre he had posted on Facebook that ‘The death penalty is the only just outcome of this case!!!!!!!!!!!’ He was obliged to stand down, and the elderly family counsellor who was the reserve moved up to take his place.

  These five judges were now observing Breivik’s outburst.

  He had sat there so quietly for eight weeks. Now he was completely freaking out.

  The week before he had been quite satisfied. The defence had called witnesses who stressed that Breivik was not alone in his thinking. Historians, philosophers and researchers in the fields of religion, terrorism and right-wing extremism took the witness stand and set out where Breivik stood in an extremist, but not unknown, ideological landscape. Representatives of Stop the Islamisation of Norway and the Norwegian Defence League were also invited to present their political views.

  The court heard from a variety of standpoints about a world in which Breivik’s ideas were familiar. His thoughts were not bizarre distortions, but were in fact shared by many.

  The defence had also wanted to call Breivik’s ideological lodestar Fjordman, whose actual name turned out to be Peder Are Nestvold Jensen. Forced out from behind his Fjordman shield, a rather short man in his mid-thirties, with a rounded face and dark curls, appeared. He worked as a night watchman at a nursing home in Oslo and was an anti-jihadist blogger in his spare time. He refused to accept any responsibility for having inspired Breivik.

  Breivik had made Jensen’s ideas his own. The difference was that Breivik put this thinking into action.

  Jensen did not want to give evidence and moved abroad, where the Norwegian police had no legal authority to compel him to come to court.

  One other individual who did not attend was Wenche Behring Breivik. She had spent part of the autumn as an in-patient at a psychiatric clinic. When she asked to be excused taking the witness stand, the District Court gave its consent. She was considered ‘unable’ to appear as a witness.

  * * *

  Ulrik Fredrik Malt, professor of psychiatry, was an elderly gentleman who gave the impression of being used to holding forth. He was the first of a dozen experts who were to brief the court on psychiatric matters, to help it reach the correct verdict. Healthy or sick. Accountable or not. Sentence or treatment.

  The grey-haired man took his place in the witness box and regarded the various parties. He spent the first hour on an introduction to the correct use of the handbooks on which the court would rely, before going on to the particular instance sitting a few metres away from h
im. ‘The Commander. The messiah aspect,’ he said. ‘Life and death. I’m thinking of the executions. There’s clearly something tending in the direction of notions of grandeur, but are they delusions of grandeur?’

  No. Breivik had given in too easily. In the case of delusions, one became aggressive when ousted from one’s elevated role. One was prepared to fight tooth and nail for the throne, whereas Breivik had simply toned down the significance of the Knights Templar and dropped the uniform as soon as someone told him it looked ridiculous.

  Malt went on through the diagnosis chart.

  ‘Let us look at dissocial personality disorder – cold indifference to the feelings of others. Marked, persistently irresponsible attitude to social norms and duties. Lack of ability to sustain lasting relationships. Low tolerance of frustration, low threshold for aggressive outbursts, including use of violence. Lack of ability to experience guilt or learn from punishment. Marked tendency to generate feelings of guilt in others or to rationalise conduct that has brought the patient into conflict with society.’

  Many in the room had now mentally ticked off all the criteria. But – the criteria had to have been in place before 22 July if they were to count. ‘I have not seen it said in any of the witness statements made by his friends that he was an ice-cold bastard. He did a little tagging, but so do a lot of people. He had some dubious accounts abroad, but those of us familiar with Oslo West circles know a fair amount of it goes on there. If that is a criterion, the number of people with the disorder will have to be adjusted radically upwards. Low threshold for outbursts of rage. No indication of that before 22 July. Lack of ability to experience guilt and learn from experience or punishment. It is possible there was a problem there.’