One of Us

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

I would like, however, to make you a counter-offer. I have enough insight to realise that ‘The Breivik Diaries’ will be boycotted by the established publishing houses, and therefore want to offer you the chance of selling the book as a package within your project, that is, that you top and/or tail your book with a quick hack job by me, with or without your name on the book, and that you in addition get all the income (the author’s share). So you will gain financially, while those you want to impress will still congratulate you on a great character assassination. I can live with my story coming out in this form, provided that the book is removed from the boycott lists of at least some of the major distributors

The roses, rainbows and democracy that were supposed to defeat the perpetrator only increased their sadness. It made them sick to hear party leaders say that Labour was the victim of the massacre. They were upset by AUF members’ talk of ‘reclaiming Utøya’ before the murder victims had even been buried.

They could not forget AUF leader Eskil Pedersen’s words on the first day of the trial: ‘The pain is less now

Holden was a stickler for aesthetic impression in the courtroom. He wanted all the posters, all the graphs, everything that the forensic technicians, the expert witnesses and the pathologists brought with them to be linguistically correct and to be proofread one last time before they were shown. Holden insisted that everything be in the same black type in a font offering as little distraction as possible: Times New Roman.

In conversations with the pathologists, Holden came up with the idea of a dummy they could point to. They would need a gender-neutral dummy and a pointer.

All right. They would order a dummy.

But where was it to be positioned? On the floor? On a stand of some kind? On a turntable? The dummy had to represent seventy-seven different people. It was important that it be handled in a dignified way.

And what should the dummy look like? What colour would its skin be?

It could not be white. How would the parents of the non-white victims react?

Nor could it be black; that would create the wrong impression too.

They reached a decision.

The dummy would be grey.

Bejer Engh had moved on from the dead to the living.

It brought no relief. Amputations. Projectiles in the body. Injuries to internal organs. Damage to the optic nerve. Extensive tissue damage. Cerebral haemorrhage. Open fractured skull. Removal of the colon. Removal of a kidney. Projectile fragments in the chest wall. Skin transplant. Fractured eye socket. Permanent nerve damage. Shrapnel embedded in the face. Stomach, liver, left lung and heart damaged. Removal of fragments from the face. Arm amputated at the elbow. Amputation of arm and leg on the same side.

These were war injuries.

The events on Utøya generated a huge amount of fear in sections of the Norwegian population. The accused has committed extremely serious crimes on a scale not previously experienced in our country in modern times.

Just a couple of days before the trial, the new report was presented. This pair of psychiatrists concluded that Breivik suffered from dissocial personality disorder with narcissistic traits. He had a ‘grandiose perception of his own importance’ and saw himself as ‘unique’. He had a vast appetite for ‘praise, success and power’ and was totally lacking in ‘emotional empathy, remorse or affective expression’ vis-à-vis those touched by the acts he had committed.

In legal terms, a narcissistic personality disorder means that a person is criminally responsible, because the disorder is not considered to be based in psychosis. Tørrissen and Aspaas concluded that Breivik was not psychotic either at the time of the acts of which he was accused, nor during the observation. He could therefore be held criminally liable.

All over the island, sounds were ringing out. The opening notes of a symphony, a Justin Bieber song, the signature tune of The Sopranos, or just standard ringtones. Many of the phones were set to silent, because their owners had been trying to hide and did not want to be given away by their phones. Now their mobiles were lighting up soundlessly in the darkness. Some through a blanket, in a pocket, in a stiffened hand

, but here … it was grotesque, it was simply incomprehensible.
Who on earth were they dealing with here?

Norway owns a single police helicopter. And in July, the helicopter service was on holiday.