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

by Åsne Seierstad

  She got to the island mid-afternoon, which meant she did not, after all, have to choose between the various seminars on offer, on subjects like refugee integration and drilling for oil in the Lofoten islands, as they were already over. All that was left now was a fashion show featuring the AUF leader Eskil Pedersen and his second-in-command Åsmund Aukrust. They would be on the catwalk modelling the new AUF clothing range of soft-feel T-shirts, sweatshirts and trousers. Then it was time for the football tournament to start and after that there was something in the programme called speed dating, before it was time for a quiz in the café. The late-night cinema started at midnight.

  Lara got changed, ready for Akershus county’s match. They lost.

  She could not be bothered with the speed dating and went to lie down in the tent and read Mornings in Jenin. She wasn’t having such a good time without Bano around. That was often the case. Bano made everything seem so much fun, sometimes even when it wasn’t. How often had Lara found herself doing things because Bano had said they were wicked or awesome, but when she tried them for herself, they were nothing special?

  * * *

  Bano lay in her parents’ double bed. She felt poorly, had earache and was tender all over. Her mother gave her some painkillers and brought warm cloths to hold over her aching ear. Bayan had gone out to the kitchen to make more tea when she heard a crash from the living room. The alarm clock was lying on the floor in pieces. Bano had thrown it from the bedroom.

  ‘Its tick was driving me mad, Mum.’

  ‘That’s all right Bano. It doesn’t matter.’

  Bayan lay down beside her daughter in the bed. Everything was wrong. She was sick, she wasn’t on Utøya and she had failed her driving test twice.

  ‘Bah, I’ve spent so much money on it, and I’ve got to have my licence by the time we’re russ…’

  Bano was in a hurry in life. She wanted it all, right away. The first time she failed she had gone through a red light, the second time she had turned the wrong way at a roundabout. When she was out in the car with Mustafa to practise, they always ended up quarrelling. The last time she had driven was the morning Mustafa was taking Ali and Bayan to Gothenburg, while she was going to work at the Tusenfryd amusement park. Bano was running late as usual, and on the winding section of road just before the Vinterbro junction she found herself behind a lorry.

  ‘I’m going to overtake!’

  She moved into the opposite lane and sped up.

  ‘Are you mad?’ cried her father. Bano pulled into her lane in front of the lorry, but a few seconds more and they would have crashed into the car coming the other way. ‘Your driving will kill us all!’

  ‘You should be like my driving instructor,’ Bano said. ‘He never makes any comments until I stop the car.’

  Once they got to Tusenfryd and she was dashing off to change into her work uniform, she shouted cheerfully: ‘Don’t forget to bring the allowance of four litres of red wine back with you, it’s much cheaper in Sweden!’

  Now Bano asked her mother to bring her laptop to her. There was something she wanted to show her. As she was finding her way to it, her spirits rose. That’s how it was with Bano; it was never far between the highs and the lows. She found what she was looking for.

  ‘Mum, can we go to New York?’

  For the first time, the family was planning to go away in the autumn holidays and her parents were talking about Spain or Greece. The girls preferred the idea of a city break.

  Bano showed her mother the cheap tickets she had found and a hostel ‘that ‘would cost almost nothing for the five of us’.

  Lying there with her poorly daughter beside her, Bayan was in a soft-hearted mood.

  ‘All right Bano. Let’s go. I’ll pay.’

  Bano hugged her.

  ‘But you and Dad will have to tighten your belts and try to save a bit, okay?’ her mother said. ‘And you girls mustn’t have such long showers!’

  Bano stayed in bed on her laptop, looking at sites that told her about New York, the Statue of Liberty, Central Park and all the cool streets in the Village. Her mother wanted to show her some pictures she had taken of her relatives in Sweden.

  ‘Look how lovely your cousins are. Almost as pretty as you, Bano!’ said her mother, pointing. ‘And those are their boyfriends.’

  Bano’s sad expression returned.

  ‘Everybody’s got boyfriends except me,’ she complained. ‘I’ve never had a boyfriend, and now I’m eighteen!’

  ‘There’s a time for everything Bano, I’m sure you’ll find one, of course you will, a beautiful girl like you! And you meet so many people, after all.’

  ‘Yes, but never a boyfriend.’

  ‘Well you’ve got your last year in upper secondary now, and then you’ll go to university and you’re bound to meet somebody there. And what about that nice boy in your class I asked about before?’

  ‘Ugh, don’t bring him up again.’

  Bano rested her head on her father’s pillow. Her delight at the holiday plans seemed to have evaporated, leaving only the sadness, and she turned to her mother.

  ‘Just think, I might never have a boyfriend in my whole life!’

  ‘Stop talking nonsense Bano!’

  ‘Mum, just think if I die single…’

  * * *

  That same Wednesday, the tenant at Vålstua farm had driven the Volkswagen Crafter, laden with explosives, to Oslo. He was on the verge of passing out from exhaustion, having slept so little in recent nights.

  Calm and steady, so he would not be stopped and checked. Calm and steady, so the bomb would be safe.

  It had taken a total of nine hours to dry the last batches of picric acid and DDNP in the oven. He had thought he could do it much faster, now he was even further behind schedule.

  He had also tested the fuse. The most effective method, he had read, was to insert it in a narrow surgical tube. The fuse he wanted to test as part of his final preparations was seventy-five centimetres long. That meant it would take seventy-five seconds before the explosives detonated. The fuse burnt to the end in two seconds. ‘Damn, I’m glad I checked this beforehand,’ he wrote. Two seconds would not have given him enough time to escape the explosion. No tube round the fuse, then.

  Once in central Oslo, he parked the van at the Olsen’s Widow garden centre. He had made a logo for a water-treatment company and put it on the front so people would not wonder about, and possibly report, the bad smell coming from the vehicle. Then he invited his mother out to dinner, and took an early night in the fart room.

  On Thursday morning he dressed in a fawn blazer and dark trousers before taking the train back to Rena. There he rang a taxi company for a cab to take him back to the farm.

  ‘Is that the place where there was a hash plantation?’ asked the driver manning the phone that morning.

  Breivik confirmed this, and in the car he asked the local man if the case was all cleared up now.

  ‘Yes, the police won’t be turning up there again,’ the Rena resident replied.

  This driver had been to the farm many years earlier, when it was under previous ownership; there had been cows in the fields and the place was kept in good order. As he set down the well-dressed visitor from the city, he was taken aback to see how dilapidated and overgrown the farm had become.

  ‘Well, welcome to our valley,’ he said, and drove off.

  I Love You

  ‘I’m very much against it, Bano,’ said Bayan.

  ‘But I’ve GOT to see what it’s like! Last year we were in Kurdistan, remember. Everybody says it’s so cool!’

  Bano had felt a bit better when she woke up on Thursday morning. Even though she had scarcely any voice, and certainly was not entirely well, she insisted on going out to the island.

  ‘But you’re sick, you ought to stay at home. And tomorrow Ali and Dad will be home, so you won’t have to be bored with only me for company. If Ali loses his match today they might even be back this evening! Then we can all be nice an
d cosy here together, and you can get properly well.’

  ‘Mum, I’ve never been to Utøya before, I’ve got to go!’

  Then Lara rang. ‘Jonas Gahr Støre’s coming to speak, it’ll be really exciting! Foreign affairs! There’s going to be a Middle East debate on Israel and Palestine. You’ve got to come!’

  ‘Sounds great!’ exclaimed Bano. With half an eye on her mother she added, ‘I’m better now. I’ll come today.’

  Her mother gave her an anxious look. But Bano had made up her mind.

  ‘Sibay, Daya, sibay Gro det! Tomorrow, Mum, Gro’s coming tomorrow! Just think, getting to hear Gro speak!’

  Bano fetched the bag that Lara had packed for her. She was on her way out the door when her mother came up to her with the photos of their relations in Sweden. ‘Take them to Utøya so Lara can see them too.’

  ‘But Daya, we’ll be back on Sunday,’ laughed Bano. ‘Lara can see them when she gets home. What if I lose them, or they get wet? I’ve got to go now. I have to catch the eleven o’clock boat. Xoshim dawei, Daya! I love you, Mum!’

  ‘I love you, Bano,’ answered her mother and gave her a kiss.

  When Bano had signed up for the summer camp she had volunteered to be part of the working group. That meant you got free food and your fee was waived. It did not occur to her now to ask if she could opt out as she was not really well. She registered on the jetty before she went on board the MS Thorbjørn.

  The sun was finally peeping through. Bano was wearing some thin trousers and a sleeveless blouse. When she arrived on the island the coordinator told her to go down to the outdoor stage and put up some tents ready for the Datarock concert that evening.

  ‘Oh no,’ she exclaimed when she was instructed to hold up the tent poles. Luckily she spotted Lara passing by.

  ‘Lara!’

  Her younger sister came over. ‘Lara, can you hold these?’ she asked. ‘I forgot to shave under my arms, okay!’

  So Lara was roped into the working party as well.

  Once the tents were up, the sun vanished behind the tallest trees. It started to turn chilly. The grassy areas were still wet from the previous day’s rain and the mosquitoes were out in force. The sisters went to the tent to get mosquito spray.

  ‘Shit!’ cried Bano. ‘I’ve lost the key!’

  ‘You locked the tent?’ asked Lara incredulously.

  ‘Well yes, when I was at the Hove festival loads of stuff got stolen from the tents.’

  ‘But this is an AUF camp! Nobody would steal here,’ said Lara.

  Bano went off to look for something to open the big padlock with. Eventually she found a saw but it was really blunt, so she went back to the tool shed and asked the caretaker to see if he had any other suitable tools. She pointed to a chainsaw.

  ‘You’re planning to get into your tent with a chainsaw?’ laughed the caretaker. In the end he found a file that she could use to open the lock.

  ‘Bano, Bano!’ It was just as Lara had been thinking as she lay alone in the tent the day before: there was always so much going on when Bano was around.

  Lara wasn’t in the party spirit. She just wanted to go to bed after the Datarock concert, while Bano and three other girls from the Akershus contingent were keen to do karaoke. One of them, sixteen-year-old Margrethe Bøyum Kløven, was the bass player in the girl band Blondies & Brownies, which had won the Junior Melodi Grand Prix song competition the year before, and she could really sing. You know you love me, I know you care, just shout whenever, and I’ll be there … Now they were practising ‘Baby’ by Justin Bieber in the tent, so they could perform as a quartet in the karaoke.

  The karaoke machine did not have any Justin Bieber songs, but there was lots of Michael Jackson, Margrethe’s favourite. She knew all the words, and if she had brought her guitar she could have played the music too. Bano did the backing vocals in a hoarse voice. The girls came back to the tent in a giggly mood to get some more clothes; there was a cold wind blowing. Their heads were still full of Michael Jackson. Before you judge me, try hard to love me, lalala … look within your heart then ask, have you seen my childhood?

  ‘Have you heard about Lovers’ Path?’ Bano asked the other girls excitedly. ‘It’s a path that goes all round the island, and you can see people groping each other.’

  She laughed out loud at her own suggestion. They all sniggered. It was their first time on Utøya.

  ‘Well girls,’ said Bano. ‘Shall we take a stroll along Lovers’ Path?’

  * * *

  Anders Behring Breivik locked the door of the white farmhouse at Vålstua and drove away.

  In the back of the Doblò, the booster and detonator were packed between bits of mattress. Detonators were extremely unstable, but the boxes were securely fastened. He had first put the fuse in a slim plastic container, then in the IKEA toilet brush holder. It was important to avoid friction or bumps while transporting these, otherwise the whole lot could detonate and blow the van sky high.

  His weapons were all in the Pelican case. He had rebuilt them to make them exactly how he wanted, mounting the bayonet on the rifle and the laser sight on the pistol. With a knife he had carved names onto them in runic script. He called the pistol Mjølnir after Thor’s hammer. Mjølnir hit everything Thor wanted it to and returned to him afterwards. Odin’s spear Gungnir, after which he named his rifle, possessed the same powers.

  His weapons, his uniform, the Knights Templar coin in his pocket: he had made them all his own by adapting and naming them.

  As nightfall approached and dark clouds massed in the sky, he parked the Doblò alongside his VW Crafter outside the locked garden centre with its summer range of fruit bushes, roses and perennials. Behind it was the railway line that ran down to the south coast. On the other side of the road was an upmarket housing cooperative. The trees were quivering slightly in the breeze, a sign of a new weather front on its way in over Oslo.

  He got out and locked the van. Exhausted, he dragged himself across Sigurd Iversens vei, down Harbitzalleen and over the junction at Hoffsveien. It was the hour before midnight.

  His mother was still awake when he let himself in. He went out onto the balcony with her for a cigarette. Anders stood in silence, inhaling the smoke, and then suddenly looked at her.

  ‘Mum, don’t stand so close to me.’

  She moved away.

  He went to bed. The plan was to get up at three o’clock. He would have to, if he were to fit it all in. Gro Harlem Brundtland would start her speech at 11 a.m. To be sure of getting there in time to decapitate her, he had to be up before dawn.

  He would capture the former Prime Minister at gunpoint and force her down on her knees. There, on the ground, he would make her read a text he’d written about her betrayal. She would be forced to beg for her life and ask for forgiveness for destroying Norway. Then he would cut her head off. He would film the deed and put the video out on YouTube.

  But he wouldn’t be able to.

  He realised it would not work. He simply had to sleep. If he was going to be in a fit state to carry out the operation at all, he had to be properly rested. It was going to demand everything of him: alertness, stamina and concentration.

  He set the alarm for somewhere between seven and eight and fell asleep in the narrow bed under the window. Outside, the birch tree rustled its leaves. The wind was gathering.

  * * *

  They did not meet many others on the path; most people seemed to prefer companionship in the crowd at the outdoor stage to romantic trysts this evening.

  They had met the previous year. ‘Say hello to Simon,’ a girlfriend of hers had said.

  So handsome, Margrethe Rosbach had thought. And a little while later, Pity he’s got a girlfriend.

  They had spent quite a bit of time together, even so. Afterwards they had exchanged text messages now and then.

  This year, as Simon stepped ashore on the island he sent her a text: ‘I’m here.’ When she did not reply at once, he wrote ‘You come too.�
�

  Now they were drifting round Lovers’ Path. Simon had his snus tin in one hand. On the side where Margrethe was, his hand was free.

  Simon from Salangen and Margrethe from Stavanger. She had long, soft hair and that burr to her ‘r’s. At the national youth congress in the spring he had tried to kiss her. But no, not then, they both had someone else.

  Simon put another wad of snus under his lip. In the autumn he would be doing his military service at Camp Madla outside Stavanger, near where Margrethe lived.

  What an evening it was!

  They had been standing together at the Datarock concert. He had lifted her up onto the stage. They sang, they danced.

  The July night was darkening. Bewitching, almost spooky, thought Margrethe. They wanted to make a circuit of the island after the concert. Halfway round they went down to the water and sat on some rocks out at Nakenodden. She borrowed his jersey. Midnight came and went, then it was one, then two.

  A murmur went through the woods. The first raindrops wet the rocks out on the point. They pulled their clothes more tightly around them and turned back up to Lovers’ Path.

  A decaying fence ran alongside the path. Below, the Tyrifjord lay in darkness.

  ‘Give me a piggyback!’ said Simon on the slope up to the campsite. ‘I’m done in!’

  She laughed. But she did carry him up the last steep stretch. And dropped him where the northern contingent were based, right at the top of the campsite.

  One kiss. Goodnight. She crept into her tent in the Rogaland camp, where the girl she was sharing with had long since gone to sleep. Simon crept into his.

  The Troms camp had still not fallen silent. In one tent, Viljar was telling stories. As usual, he had not bothered to bring a sleeping bag or tent with him. He always sorted something out when he got there. His younger brother Torje was lying in another tent, listening to Metallica with his best friend Johannes, also from Svalbard. The two fourteen-year-olds had decided to stay up all night. The sound of their singing could be heard through the canvas. Forever trust in who we are, and nothing else matters! Nothing else matters!