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

by Åsne Seierstad

  I was not prepared.

  * * *

  I sat in room 250 for the ten weeks of the trial. Within those walls we were drip-fed the details of the planning and execution of the act of terrorism, day by day. The testimonies were short, concise, tailored to the purposes of the trial. Sometimes they went deep, sometimes they broadened out. At times they supplemented each other and gave new perspectives while at others they stood alone. A witness could be in the box for ten or fifteen minutes, to be succeeded by another witness. These were drops of stories.

  After the trial had finished, I realised I had to go deeper to find out what had really happened, and I started searching.

  I found Simon, Anders and Viljar. I found Bano and Lara.

  This is their story.

  * * *

  One of Us has come about thanks to all those who told me their stories. Some have chapters devoted to their childhood and youth while others appear as part of a background canvas of friends, neighbours, teachers, classmates, boy and girlfriends, colleagues, bosses and relations.

  Parents and siblings have shared their family histories. Friends have spoken of comradeship.

  We collaborated on a continuous basis. They all read their texts along the way. Still, I was met with great understanding that this is my book and my interpretation.

  Some of the conversations went on for days and nights, others were short phone calls. We talked on the way down from a steep mountain, on long walks along the Bardu River, in bars in Tromsø or over Kurdish chicken stew in Nesodden.

  I offer heartfelt thanks to those who shared the most. Bayan, Ali, Mustafa and Lara Rashid. Gerd, Viggo and Stian Kristiansen. Tone, Gunnar and Håvard Sæbø. And Viljar Hanssen and his family. They have told me about the worst thing of all: losing someone they loved.

  Whether the stories are cut down to a few lines or cover several pages, it is the multitude of conversations that have made this book possible. Thank you all so much. I know what it cost you.

  * * *

  Most people are given their full name in the book, while some are referred to by their first names, like Marte and Maria. I felt it was right to use first names for the scene when the two childhood friends are holding hands, lying on the path. Their full names are Marte Fevang Smith and Maria Maagerø Johannesen. Marte was the only survivor of the eleven who were shot on Lovers’ Path. The bullet did not cause any major injuries to her head, only to her balance nerve. She can’t dance like she did before, while her best friend Maria died. What I have written about events on the path before and during the killing is based on what Marte remembers.

  The first time I mention someone, I have usually put down their full name. Some people do not appear in the book until ‘Friday’ – the chapter about 22 July – and disappear from the account the moment they are killed. These were the most painful parts of the book to send to their families. I asked all the parents affected to read the sections about their children and choose for themselves whether they wanted their child to be part of the book. For me, it was important to describe for posterity exactly how that day was. In the end, no parent objected that I wrote about their child’s moment of death. I am very grateful for that.

  The surviving young people who contributed to the book were also sent their texts to read through and correct.

  * * *

  The other strand of this book is that man. A man many are reluctant to refer to by name. The perpetrator, the subject under observation, the accused, the defendant and finally: the sentenced prisoner. I do use his name. When writing about his childhood it was natural to use his first name; from 22 July onwards I use his surname or full name.

  In journalism, it is important to go to the sources. This was the reason for my request for an interview with him. Its refusal obliged me to base my account on what others say about him. I talked to his friends, members of his family, classmates, colleagues and former political associates. I read what he himself had written: in the manifesto, on the internet and in letters. I also paid attention to what he had to say during the trial, and what he subsequently wrote in letters to the press and in official complaints.

  Many of those close to him were unwilling to say anything. Some slammed down the phone. Others replied, ‘I’ve put him behind me. I’m through with him.’

  I was not through with him, and eventually I found people who would talk, most of them anonymously. Very few of his former friends and classmates are named in this book. It is as though having known him leaves one branded. Even so, a number of people made important contributions to my understanding of what Anders Behring Breivik was like in childhood, adolescence and adult life. In the chapter about his time as a tagger, those described are given their actual tagging names and will thus be recognised within their own circles. In the chapter on the Progress Party, no one demanded anonymity. I have given two business partners and two childhood friends new names.

  I tried for a year to secure an interview with Wenche Behring Breivik but her answer, through her lawyer Ragnhild Torgersen, was always the same: No.

  In March 2013, I called her lawyer again. She said she would talk to her client one more time. Torgersen rang back: ‘Can you come to my office tomorrow?’

  I was allowed to meet Wenche Behring Breivik on the condition that she and her lawyer be allowed to read through the interview afterwards. The agreement was that if Wenche Behring Breivik were incapable of reading through it herself – her cancer had entered its final phase – her lawyer would do it. This she did, and approved the use of the interview. Torgersen was also present during our conversation, and both of us recorded it. Parts of the interview appear in question-and-answer format; other parts are used to shed light on her son’s childhood in the chapters about his early life.

  Several times I also requested a meeting with Jens David Breivik, the perpetrator’s father, but he would not be interviewed. I therefore had to restrict myself to what others told me about him. It was only when I sent him, in its entirety, what I had written about him that I was able to enter into a dialogue with him, in which he corrected items he felt were wrong and gave me new information about his son.

  Reports from the Centre for Child and Adolescent Psychiatry were an invaluable source of information about Anders Behring Breivik’s childhood. I also talked to the professionals who observed him in that period. I judged this case to be so much in the public interest that it justified using information from confidential reports.

  In addition, reports from the expert psychiatrists associated with the trial, Synne Sørheim and Torgeir Husby, Terje Tørrissen and Agnar Aspaas, were extremely helpful. The accounts of what took place in their meetings with Breivik are taken from their reports. Parts of these reports have appeared in the media in printed form; I worked from the uncensored versions.

  I also made extensive use of the police interviews in the case. I had tens of thousands of pages of interviews, witness statements and background documents to read through and select from. In some instances I have used direct quotations from the interrogations. This applies to the interrogations of the perpetrator on Utøya and at police headquarters in Oslo, and to the interviews with his mother when she was brought in on 22 July, both in the police car and later that same evening at the police headquarters. The conversations between Anders and his mother in the months leading up to his move to the farm, and later on in the wake of 22 July, are reconstructed from what Wenche told investigators during the autumn of 2011. I have elected to make use of these documents that are not publicly available because I consider it justified by the vital importance of casting light on this terrorism case.

  I have also used the police interviews of some witnesses who knew Breivik. In these instances, I have given no names.

  The couple with whom Anders Behring Breivik was placed on several occasions when he was two years old did not wish to contribute to the book. The information I provide about them is taken exclusively from their police interviews.

  Other than that,
I largely used the police interviews as background information and to check the facts of Anders Behring Breivik’s life.

  * * *

  In a number of places in the book, I refer to the perpetrator’s thoughts or judgements. Readers might want to know: How does the author know this?

  Everything is taken from what he himself said in police interviews, at the trial or to the psychiatrists.

  I would like to give a few examples. In the chapter entitled ‘Friday’, I write in detail about Breivik’s thoughts during the first killings. In that sequence, various sentences are lifted directly from the trial transcripts. Breivik described his feelings and thoughts both to the police in the days after the terror act and in court nine months later, as follows: ‘I don’t feel remotely like doing this’ and ‘Now or never. It’s now or never.’ These sentences are used as direct quotations. In some places his statements are turned into indirect speech: ‘His body was fighting against it, his muscles were twitching. He felt he would never be able to go through with it. A hundred voices in his head were screaming: Don’t do it, don’t do it, don’t do it!’ It was Breivik who talked about his body and his muscles, and referred to the hundred voices screaming in his head. I have used his own words. That is how I have worked throughout the book. His thoughts set out here all derive from what he said in police or court documents.

  My statement that it was easy for him to go on killing after the first assassinations is taken from what the gunman explicitly told the police and the court. He spoke at length about how difficult the first shot was and how easy it all felt once he broke through the barrier, an almost physical barrier. He said that initially it had felt unnatural to kill.

  So the next question is this: Can we trust his account?

  A journalist must constantly evaluate and bear in mind the degree of veracity in any statement. In Breivik’s case, a number of his stories seem rather far-fetched. This applies particularly to his accounts of his childhood and youth, the positive gloss he puts on them and on his own popularity, and his claim to have been a king in hip-hop circles and a rising star in the Progress Party. My doubts about his portrayal of these sections of his life stem from finding a large number of accounts that contradict the idealised picture he attempts to convey. These testimonies largely agree with each other and they diverge markedly from his own version of events.

  The other point at which he appears to be making things up is in his account of the Knights Templar organisation. The Norwegian police never found anything to verify his claims that the organisation existed or that he was a commander or leader of it. Nor could the prosecution discover that the organisation had any basis in fact.

  These were the two subjects on which he declined to elaborate in court: his childhood and adolescence, and the Knights Templar. He said that the former was irrelevant and that his refusal to talk about the latter was to ‘protect the identities of others in the network’.

  The question of the Knights Templar was central to the discussion of whether Anders Behring Breivik was of sound mind. If the network did not exist, was it a delusion or a lie? The court’s verdict affirmed the latter.

  Regarding the day on Utøya, the terrorist explained in detail and on several different occasions what he did, the order in which he did it, and what he was thinking as he did it. He discussed this the same evening, on the island, and the next morning at the police station, and on a later site visit to the island, and to the psychiatrists and the court. He spoke in an easy, unforced way; he elaborated, made associations, thought over what he was not sure about and revised his account accordingly, and admitted that there were some things he could not remember. It did not appear to be difficult for him to repeat things, to respond to the same questions over and over again, as it can be when one has constructed a story. The police made a thorough check of his log claims and timings. Thus far they have found nothing in his Utøya account that does not tally with the statements of the young people who were there – in terms of the conversations he had, the words he shouted, or the concrete situations in which killings took place. The police have stated that in regard to his preparations and his implementation of his attack, they have not uncovered a single direct lie or misinformation.

  However, there is some disagreement about when Breivik began the planning for his attack. The perpetrator claims it was back in 2002. Neither the police nor the prosecution think he started that early. My job is not to speculate, but to look for information. What we know from the police logs is exactly how long he spent on every website, and when. We know that he played hardcore computer games after moving back in with his mother in 2006 (for example, he played for seventeen hours one New Year’s Eve). He gradually turned from the games to anti-jihadist and right-wing extremist websites. In the chapter ‘Choose Yourself a World’ I restricted myself to well-founded facts about how the game he was playing was constructed, and external elements such as what his room looked like and the fact that he tapped away at the computer keyboard. I went so far as to conclude that it was ‘a good place to be’, that ‘the game drew him in and calmed him down’ and that he lost interest in real life. I based the first of these statements on what he said, the second on comments from his friends and mother. I also based what I wrote on information from his fellow players, those who knew him as Andersnordic.

  The police data provides an indication of what he was doing online at any particular time. It also indicates that the planning of the terror act came much later than he says, maybe as late as the winter of 2010, when he received the last rejection from the Progress Party and no response from his online anti-jihadist heroes. What we know is that he only started buying weapons and bullets in the spring of 2010. Later that year, he began to purchase ingredients for the bomb.

  In researching his life, my first priority was to find the pieces and fit them together into the jigsaw puzzle of Anders Behring Breivik. There are still many pieces missing.

  * * *

  In August 2012, Norway’s 22 July Commission presented its report. I relied on its account of the course of events during the terrorist attack. I used the commission’s report to confirm the timing of events on that day. I also quoted from it for the telephone tip-off from Andreas Olsen and the conversations between Kripos and the operation manager on the question of issuing a nationwide alert, as well as Breivik’s own calls from Utøya. In the report, these phone conversations are written down word for word.

  I also referred to the report for the dates of Breivik’s purchases of weapons, clothing, chemicals and fertiliser.

  In mapping the course of events on 22 July I was helped by Kjetil Stormark’s book Da terroren rammet Norge (When Terror Struck Norway). I also quoted private emails sent by Breivik that were included in Stormark’s Massemorderens private e-poster (The Mass Murderer’s Private Emails). Stormark also offered important advice during the writing process.

  The scenes in which the lawyer Geir Lippestad is called by the police on 23 July and in which he meets Breivik on 23 December 2011 are taken from Lippestad’s own book Det vi kan stå for (What We Can Stand By). The induction rituals of the order of Freemasons are taken from Frimurernes hemmeligheter (The Secrets of the Freemasons) by Roger Karsten Aase. The quotations from Carl I. Hagen are from Elisabeth Skarsbø Moen’s Profet i eget land – historien om Carl I. Hagen (Prophet in His Own Country – the Story of Carl I. Hagen). The story of Monica Bøsei and Utøya is taken from Utøya – en biografi (Utøya: A Biography), written by Jo Stein Moen and Trond Giske.

  Other books and magazines which provided useful background information but were not sources of direct quotes are listed in the bibliography at the back of this book.

  The terrorist attack received wide and comprehensive coverage in the Norwegian press. Many of these articles proved valuable for my work. I also continually cross-checked with the trial reports of VG (Verdens Gang), NRK (the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation) and the national news agency NTB. Details of the visit from Natascha were borr
owed from Dagbladet, while particulars of Breivik’s complaint to the Directorate of Correctional Service came from VG.

  The log from which I quote in the chapters ‘Poison’ and ‘The Chemist’s Log’ is taken from Breivik’s manifesto. The dates have been correlated with the results of police investigations and appear to tally. The description of the bomb-making process has been studied by the police, who found it probable that he followed the procedure in his account.

  The descriptions of the flat at 18 Hoffsveien were compiled on the basis of pictures and a visit to the premises in the summer of 2013. Descriptions of the areas behind the courtroom for the parties involved in the trial were made possible by a visit in October 2013.

  The interviews with then Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg were conducted on three occasions, the first straight after the terrorist attacks, in connection with the piece for Newsweek, the last the day after the second anniversary of the attacks, in July 2013.

  Gro Harlem Brundtland gave an interview about her time as Prime Minister and the events of 22 July in February 2013.

  * * *

  This book has taken shape in close collaboration with my editors Cathrine Sandnes and Tuva Ørbeck Sørheim. Many thanks for all the suggestions, discussions and corrections. I could never have done it alone.

  I have been ably assisted on the research side by Tore Marius Løiten, and as with all my previous books I want to thank my parents, Frøydis Guldahl and Dag Seierstad, who both know the rules for correct comma use and are my most critical readers.