Girls had in truth played little part in Anders’s youth. He simply was not popular. He had wondered why, his friends remembered. The only time he had a girlfriend in his school years was the summer when he was fifteen. They went swimming, kissed a few times, sat in the sun. But Anders had made the ‘wrong’ choice, a girl the others thought ugly, ‘with a boyish figure and freckles’.
When the outcast tagger came to present his story to the world, he touched it up with silver glitter and sparkling spray paint. It had to be flawless. That was why, even here in the Declaration of War, he was obliged to explain why he had stopped hanging out with Spok and Wick in Year 9.
He had wanted to focus on school, and what was more he didn’t want to do drugs. His mates, meanwhile, decided to stay in the tagging community and were drawn increasingly into criminality and drug use – according to the interviewee’s inventions.
He counted the tagging community among the enemy in the coming civil war.
‘Many of these groups claim to be tolerant and anti-fascist, but yet I have never met anyone as hypocritical, racist and fascist as the people whom I used to call friends and allies. The media glorifies them while they wreak havoc across the city, rob and plunder. Yet any attempts their victims do to consolidate are harshly condemned by all aspects of the cultural establishment as racism and Nazism. I have witnessed the double standards and hypocrisy with my own eyes, it is hard to ignore. I was one of the protected “potatoes”, having friends and allies in the jihadi–racist gangs such as the A and B gang and many other Muslim gangs.’
The hip-hop movement was hijacked by ‘Marxist-Jihadi youth’, disguised by labels like SOS racism, Youth against Racism and Blitz. Meanwhile, young Norwegians were brought up to be ‘suicidally tolerant’ and thus unprepared for violence from Muslims. ‘This system makes me sick.’
His next milieu – the Progress Party – received similar treatment. He described himself as one of the stars, about to be added to the party’s list for the city council elections in 2003. But he had been sold down the river by another rising star of his own age.
‘At the time I was more popular than Jøran Kallmyr. I don’t blame him for backstabbing me like that, though. After all, he had invested so much more of his time in the organisation than I had.’
In retrospect it all seemed crystal clear. He had left the Progress Party because he had realised he could not change the system by democratic means.
He finished with one line about Lene Langemyr. He had once had a dark-skinned girlfriend.
It wasn’t easy. Being editor, publisher, writer, interviewer and interviewee at the same time.
He copied the style from profiles of celebrities, in which they were expected to answer a series of questions about themselves like ‘describe yourself in five words’.
Optimistic, pragmatic, ambitious, creative, hardworking.
Sports: snowboarding, fitness, bodybuilding, spinning, running.
Sport on TV: only women’s beach volleyball.
Food: all cultures have excellent dishes.
Brand: Lacoste.
Perfume: Chanel Platinum Égoïste.
One day his mother knocked on his door to give him a message, but stopped short when she saw the large weapon propped in the corner of his wardrobe.
‘Are you going to keep that shotgun in your room?’ she asked. ‘I really don’t like it.’ He had told her he had also ordered a rifle, and one day he showed her a big black pistol.
‘You can’t live here with all those weapons,’ she went on.
Anders muttered something about an approaching civil war.
His mother left him to it; life with her son was becoming more and more claustrophobic. She often felt sorry for him, shut in there or messing around talking nonsense.
What had he got in all those black bags of his, heavy as lead? He was filling the basement storage area with the oddest things. Once she had found two rucksacks full of stones just inside the door of his room, along with four heavy cans.
Anders got cross when she asked.
When he told her he was planning to run a farm, Wenche had said, ‘Good for you!’
But she was surprised. He had always been so impractical. It was nice, all the same, to be able to tell her friends at the café that Anders was finally going to do something with his life.
All the cans and containers, cartons and boxes were equipment he needed for the farm. He would have to take it there in several stages.
Once he put on a set of white overalls, which he called a survival suit. Sometimes he went round in a black waistcoat with lots of pockets. ‘For my hunting licence test,’ he answered when she asked.
One day, when he emerged from his room in a military jacket with lots of emblems on it, she thought: That’s it. I give up. He does so many weird things…
He had bought the uniform the same month he registered Breivik Geofarm with the register of business enterprises. Using needle and thread, gold braid, ribbon, emblems of various orders, bandoliers and insignias he had made it into a real gala outfit.
Now it hung in a suit cover in the pale blue wardrobe. He wasn’t taking it with him to the farm.
The other uniform was ready as well. Some of it was from sportswear shops, some from suppliers of military and paramilitary kit, like the army boots, the helmet with visor, the body armour – inserts and arm guards, a bulletproof vest, a neck protector – a Soviet gas mask and plastic-strip handcuffs. In March 2011 he had sourced the last thing he needed from an internet dealer in Germany: black combat trousers like the Norwegian police wore, at fifty-eight euros.
A few days before his move to the farm, he came out from his room.
‘Mum, I’m scared.’
‘Goodness me, what of?’
‘I’m scared of doing something I might not master.’
She wanted to comfort him.
‘You’ll be a great farmer,’ she said.
Not Just an Outfit
Across the fjord, Bano was sitting at the computer screen, looking for a special costume. She hit the keys hard and fast, clicking from one outfit to the next.
She had saved up her earnings from her summer job at Food & Beverage at the Tusenfryd amusement park, where she and Lara had spent the school holidays as hamburger chefs. As well as flipping burgers and filling paper cups with cola they had spent their days stealing glances at their handsome boss, who was one of the reasons Bano applied for a job at the café where her younger sister had worked the summer before. At the end of the season, Bano won the Worker of the Year award, selected from among all the employees at the park’s food and drink outlets. She was quick-witted and deft-fingered. When she made up her mind to do something, it was done in a flash.
Bano smiled more than most, laughed louder and more often. Lara was more reticent. ‘Now I know which one’s which,’ said one boy who had always muddled them up. ‘The one who smiles all the time is Bano. Lara’s the serious one.’
Lara had spent the money she had earned at H&M, while Bano’s was in a savings account. She was searching for something specific.
Ever since she first experienced 17 May, Norway’s National Day, as a seven-year-old, she had wanted a bunad, a traditional Norwegian folk costume. She had pestered her mother, who hunted all round town at second-hand clothes shops and finally found two girls’ costumes at the UFF charity shop. The sisters had long since grown out of them.
Bano wanted a bunad she could wear for the rest of her life and pass down to the next generation, like the ones her friends had. Most of them had been given theirs as presents at their confirmation, and Bano had tried on their costumes and admired them. Having one specially made was far too expensive, so she looked for second-hand costumes among the classified ads on the buyers’ and sellers’ websites. It had to be one she liked and could afford, and the right size for someone who was 1.62 metres tall.