A friend and I drove to Oslo today. On the way back northwest to Modum Bad we stopped to see Utøya Island in Tyrifjorden. I was struck by how close it was to the shore of the mainland, perhaps a quarter-mile, swimming distance if one is not wounded.
The water was calm, as it was that day, 22 July 2011, now burned into the consciousness of Norwegians, the largest tragic loss of life in Norway since World War II. In mid-afternoon Anders Behring Breivik, a 32-year-old Norwegian, self-styled Islamophobe and "cultural Marxist," bombed government buildings in Oslo, the Norwegian capital city, creating havoc and killing eight people. Later that afternoon he was able to drive to the small ferry linking the mainland to Utøya Island.
Representing himself to the ferry man as a policeman, he was ferried to the island where he systematically, carefully and single-handedly carried out a mass shooting at a camp of the Workers' Youth League (AUF) of the Labour Party on the island of Utøya, killing 69 people, mostly teenagers. Many of the survivors were able to swim from the island to the mainland. An armed police SWAT unit arrived from Oslo. Breivik surrendered without resistence, admitted what he had done, saying when questioned that the purpose of his attack was to save Norway and Western Europe from a Muslim takeover, and that the Labour Party had to "pay the price" for "letting down Norway and the Norwegian people."
After two conflicting psychiatric evaluations and an extended trial in which he was allowed to speak for himself and granted defense counsel, on 24 August 2012 Breivik was judged sane and sentenced to "containment"—a prison sentence that can be extended indefinitely—with a time frame of 21 years and a minimum time of 10 years, the maximum penalty in Norway. He is imprisoned in Oslo, has a computer to use but no access to the Internet. I've followed his fate in the Norwegian judicial system, which I've long known as more humane than our own.
Utøya Island in Tyrifjorden
The ferry boat from the Norwegian mainland to Utøya Island