I’m going to try to write something sensible, probably mostly just a diary for my own future reference or something. So much great has been blogged and tweeted in the last two days in response to the horror that happened on Friday afternoon, it’s overwhelming, and it makes me proud to be Norwegian.
I was with my girlfriend at a friend’s cabin, on our last day of three weeks of summer-holiday. It was my first extended holiday at the “Sørland” (Norway’s south coast) since I was an adolescent, and I’d seen more of it than I’d ever done before, first staying with my parents, later visiting various friends along the coast, enjoying being a tourist in my own country. We were just packing up when I got a phone-call from my mum, telling me there’d been an explosion in Oslo. I instinctively looked up on Twitter for more updates, the regular news sites would hardly load, but the headings were clear. Something bad had happened. And for every bit of information that came through the bad became worse. Sadly this has been one of the constants this weekend.
We sat glued to the TV for about 1 hour before the footage and reporting became to repetitive, and got in the car. We still had to get home after all. At this point nobody knew who or what exactly had happened. It was clearly a terrorist attack, but we didn’t yet know who or why. Foreign media were already blaming Muslim extremists, but local media kept their cool and stuck to what little facts we had, which pointed nowhere, and weren’t afraid to report that. Fear-mongers: 0. Common sense: 1. I admit I hoped that it wouldn’t be muslim terrorists behind it, because I didn’t want Norway and Norwegians to turn into scared anti-Muslims. As it turned out I’m supposed to fear tall blond men, if I was to follow that rhetoric.
Then came the first tweets about shots at Utøya. The radio caught up within minutes. We were stuck in a que at the freeway.
For the first time in my life I made a decision based on fear of terror. Having now idea of the scale of the attacks, and the seemingly randomness of a bomb in Oslo and shooting at Utøya, I suddenly felt like a sitting duck being stuck in the que at the freeway. I took the first exit.
My suburb is pretty far from downtown where the bomb went off, so coming home everything seemed very normal. But it didn’t feel normal, to much listening to the radio I guess. I went to my neighbour to pick up the mail she’d collected while we were gone. She’d been in town, but hadn’t understood the seriousness of it until a shop clerk told her about it, which naturally scared her. And having her son about to board a plane didn’t do much good for her nerves either.
We watched the news getting increasingly worse as it got later.
I wanted to do something to help. I heard they needed blood donors, and was considering getting back in the car and driving into town. Luckily I found out that only already registered donors could give blood before I headed down. I signed up as a donor online instead. Hopefully they get me in the system soon enough. I also naively thought that I could head into the city on Saturday and help with the clean-up. I didn’t think about the military guarding the entire perimeter. Eventually I got to sleep at 3am. At this point there were hardly any confirmed dead at Utøya.
I was woken up the next day by my girlfriend getting a call from a friend, and the first thing I heard was the number 91. I was immediately awake. The number was tenfold of what I’d fallen asleep to, which was more then bad enough. I got so engulfed in the news that I didn’t even eat breakfast until somebody on Twitter had the sense to remind us all to eat. Or maybe it was a retweet. I’ve never seen so much beautiful supporting words been offered in 140 characters as I have these last two days. I’ve never had so many people write to me on Facebook, nor send me support on Twitter. I wish they wouldn’t have had to.
I eventually had to turn off the fire-hose of news and do something normal. I mowed the lawn and went for a long nice walk with my girl. It felt really good.
Back home the unreal world was continuing, but it still felt like it didn’t quite affect me. Yes, I had a small lump in my throat, and my brain was getting fried, but it wasn’t until I read the first eyewitness blogpost that I burst. What a nightmare those poor people went through. And what troopers they are.
We spent Saturday night at home watching a movie. It annoyed me that it had a terrorist plot, but it turned out to have a happy love ending. Typical Hollywood stuff, but I’m way more emotional than usual, and the happy ending did me good.
Today I eased of all the media a lot more, and I noticed both my Facebook and Twitter stream has calmed down quite a bit. The longer essays about how could this happen etc. are out. Some very good articles, some horrendous ones. It’s become to much to cover. We chose to go and do something normal instead, and spent the afternoon at the rock-climbing gym. The gym was full of people, everybody seemed quite upbeat. I think everybody was there for the same reason as us, and were happy to just get out and be with friends.
I was also happy, even though I felt tired and climbed like shit, which normally would’ve annoyed me. There’s no way I could bring myself to feel like I have any reason to complain about anything whatsoever.
And I went into town. To look. I just had to. Not to see the damaged buildings, but I needed to feel the atmosphere. And I’m glad I did. The flowers are beautiful. People are friendly. It’s this sense of a communal being. Nobody knows exactly what to do, but we’re in this together, and we will do the right thing.
So now what?
I’m afraid it is just a matter of time before I find out that I know somebody that’s been lost. Norway is to small a country for something this big not to affect everyone.
But the response makes me immensely proud to be Norwegian. The official response is that we will fight terror with democracy and humanity, and we the people have taken this to heart. I’ve seen the prime-minister cry. The King patiently stand in line to light a candle. Armed soldiers in my town. A sea of flowers, candles and kids’ drawings. And a cold calculated mass-murdering terrorist getting appointed a lawyer and a civilised trial. Because that’s how we do things.
I received, opened and read the
But it’s clearly a popular book, because I’ve been trying to get it of Amazon before, where it’s been sold out. Then I forgot about it. Then I remembered again as I stumbled across a link to the publishers own website (