How Anders Behring Breivik brought us closer together

By Siri Linn Brandsøy

In a book by Norwegian author Jon Michelet in 1989, a young man with twisted environmentalist ideas makes his way to an island, just off the coast of Oslo, where he plans to kill several innocent people. If someone had told me something frighteningly similar was about to happen in Norway, I would never have believed them. Until Friday July 22 such a tragic story belonged to fiction.

For some this might sound naïve, but I believe last week’s attack was not only unimaginable and unthinkable for Norwegians, but for all of us who know Norway as a seemingly peaceful country. This is a place where top politicians — and even the prime minister himself — could walk the streets without protection, and where police on patrol never carry guns. The viciousness in Anders Behring Breivik’s actions was also difficult to comprehend. In total, 77 innocent civilians died in the attacks, 68 of them were killed in the shooting at the summer youth camp on Utøya.

It didn’t take long before Norway’s darkest chapter since World War II was all over the international news. Suddenly, we had lost our innocence, our anonymity. An island that I wasn’t familiar with — as a Norwegian — had become world renowned, and what I once remembered as streets safe to walk were covered in grey debris, shattered concrete and broken glass. I saw pictures of survivors being helped out of the ruins in Oslo and the water at Utøya. Some were covered in blood, some were crying, while others struggled to hold back tears. Norway, as I knew it, had become a stranger.

Shortly after the bomb went off, too many people started accusing Muslims of being behind the attack. Even Norwegian Muslims admitted to the media they were surprised when the extremist turned out to be blue-eyed and blond — the quintessential Norwegian man.

July 22 was a wake-up call for all of us, unfortunately a terrible one. Even though it challenged our dividing line between fiction and reality, it also widened our perception of terrorism and extremism. As our Archbishop Desmond Tutu put it: “The attacks in Norway are a grim reminder that extremism knows no national, cultural or religious bounds.”

Tutu also made another significant point that we should all take to heart. “We are not doing enough to close the gap on prejudice and intolerance, and to foster broadmindedness, acceptance of one another and love.” This is a universal challenge. Just think of South Africa and how many of us still struggle to break away from stereotypes connected to someone’s shade of skin or cultural origin. Belonging to a certain category should never dictate how we understand or treat one another. This is something that we all have to remember. Even Norway, said to be one of the world’s most tolerant countries, was not tolerant enough.

Breivik believed that “his holy war against multiculturalism” would create a platform for those who want to undermine our tolerance. But rather than causing a greater divide between people, he seems to have brought us closer together. Worldwide we’ve showed our compassion with minutes of silence and memorial gatherings. In Norway, people have swarmed into the streets, churches and mosques to light candles and leave flowers in commemoration of the survivors, the heroes, the victims and their families. Everybody has been mourning in spite of cultural, national and religious differences.

In one of his speeches to the Norwegian people, Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg said: “The warmth that I feel from all of you makes me sure that though evil can kill a human being, it can never defeat a people.” I hope that we will take this with us, that we will not forget as time goes by, because reality has showed that we need to be more aware. We need to be more broadminded, more compassionate, and not only when times are tough. I cannot think of a better way to remember those who lost their lives and their loved ones than by treasuring what Breivik wanted to take away from us, our multiculturalism and our togetherness. Unity does not mean we all have to be the same, but that we all stand together.

Siri Linn Brandsøy is a writer and freelance journalist from Florø, Norway. Her first visit to South Africa was in 2008 as a social anthropology student at the University of Cape Town. Ever since South Africa has been her second home.

Brandsøy finished her BA diploma in Social Anthropology at the University of Bergen, Norway in 2009. Shortly after, she returned to South Africa, where she studied journalism at CityVarsity, School of Creative Arts and Media, in Cape Town.

She currently travels through and fro Norway and South Africa.