‘Mum, I’ve got to ring off now…’ Anders Kristiansen had told his mother that Friday afternoon. As a duty supervisor he had kept the two-way radio on. Messages were crackling in non-stop. ‘… because a policeman’s just arrived to brief us. In fact I can see him coming over the hill. I’ll have to go. Bye Mum!’
That was the last Anders’s parents had heard from him. They had left Bardufoss early on Saturday morning, still knowing nothing about their son. Initially their elder son, Stian, was told that his brother was in Ringerike hospital, but it turned out not to be him after all. Stian was obliged to tell his parents they had been misinformed. He heard a scream down the phone line. Gerd could not stop howling. Calm, steady Gerd.
‘My child!’
Gerd and Viggo could not face staying at the hotel with the other desperate, grief-stricken families at Sundvolden, so they stayed with Stian in Oslo. Some friends rang to comfort them, and said Anders was bound to be hiding somewhere. Perhaps he had swum to one of the little islands near by and was lying low there, not daring to come out.
‘No, my boy wouldn’t be lying low,’ replied Gerd. ‘It wouldn’t be like him.’
A relation rang too. ‘This is a sign from God!’ said the devout Pietist. ‘Anders had to die to make you open your eyes!’ This member of the family said Gerd would have to find her way back to faith, the true faith. Losing her son was the sacrifice she had to make.
Gerd slammed the phone down.
It was Sunday, and time for church. The Kristiansen family had been invited to a remembrance service at the cathedral. They could not bring themselves to attend. Gerd did not want God mixed up in this.
The cathedral was full to the rafters. Outside there was a sea of flowers: roses, lilies, forget-me-nots. The city was in shock, the country in mourning.
Jens Stoltenberg was faced with the most difficult speech of his life. There in the cathedral, he struggled to hold back his tears.
‘It feels like an eternity,’ he said. ‘These have been hours, days and nights filled with shock, despair, anger and tears. Today is a time for sorrow.’
As the leader of the country he could not just dwell on that sorrow, but also had to urge people to come together. ‘In the midst of this tragedy I am proud to live in a land that has been able to stand upright at a critical time. I am impressed by all the dignity, consideration and determination I have encountered. We are a small country, but we are a proud people. We are still shaken by what has happened to us, but we will never relinquish our values. Our answer is more democracy, more openness and more humanity. But never naivety.’
That last line became the mantra – Norway’s response to the tragedy. Overnight, Jens Stoltenberg went from being a Prime Minister from the Labour Party to being the leader of a nation.
Answering hate with love was the image of how Norway tackled that initial period. Stoltenberg’s words tapped into people’s feelings. He had been braced for the reaction to be one of hatred and revenge. But the opposite happened. People held hands and wept.
Viljar was in a coma, so Torje had to be the big brother.
Over the weekend, the doctors at Ullevål decided they would have to amputate Viljar’s left arm. The main nerve had been shot to pieces. But they wanted to wait until he came round, if he came round.
When Torje heard this, he tucked his left arm up inside his sweater.
‘I’ve got to find out what it’s like, so I can teach him when he wakes up,’ announced the fourteen-year-old. It was tricky to cut anything, impossible to do up his shoes, and thoroughly impractical all round.
‘I’ve heard you can get a sort of one-handed tool that’s a knife and fork combined,’ said his father. ‘We’ll go out and buy one tomorrow.’
If Viljar was to wake at all, it was critical that it be soon. The longer he remained in a coma, the more serious the damage was likely to be.
Sunday night was the third night to pass without Viljar waking up. His parents took it in turns at his bedside, falling asleep with their heads on his blanket.
Sunday night, the man who had fired five shots into Viljar’s body was secretly taken to the same hospital. The police wanted him X-rayed to make sure he did not have any kind of bomb trigger concealed inside his body.
Large numbers of detectives and analysts in the police and the intelligence services were combing through the manifesto and everything the perpetrator had left behind him in the way of papers, tools, chemicals and electronic trails. They were also looking for hidden codes and references in what he had written.
X-rays and scans did not detect any kind of detonator implanted in the body of the accused and he was sent back to the central detention unit just as the main police station was waking to a new morning. It was to prove a hectic day. Three intense days of interviews were over, and now the accused was to be officially charged. He wanted to be present in person and he wanted to wear uniform.
At the Law Courts, judge Kim Heger was preparing for the hearing. The police had sent him the accused’s request to be in uniform for the proceedings.
Heger refused point-blank.
When the reply was communicated to Breivik, he complained that it was breach of promise. Nor had he been given pen and paper in his cell to enable him to prepare for the hearing, he objected.
‘If you do not want to come to the committal hearing, your defence counsel will attend without you,’ said the police.
‘If my defence counsel does that, I shall appoint a new one, so the hearing will have to be postponed in any case.’
Then he changed his mind. He would attend the committal hearing after all, as long as he could have a printout of the manifesto. He wanted to read out a few pages of it to the judge.
‘Since I’m not allowed to appear in uniform, I want to wear my red Lacoste jersey instead.’
This was permitted.
‘And I want to shave.’
‘We haven’t got the facilities for that in the detention unit, but you can wash your face and clean your teeth.’
The crowd of reporters and curious onlookers began to grow in front of the Law Courts. The police judged there to be a high risk of an attempt on the life of the accused, and were out in force.
At about half past one, two armoured Mercedes SUVs drove up from the garage under the police headquarters. In one of them, the accused was sitting in the back seat, handcuffed and shackled. Some young people in the crowd at the courthouse had just attacked a grey Volvo on its way into the underground garage. They believed it to be transporting Breivik.
The two heavy black cars with uniformed motorcycle outriders in front and behind drove into the Vaterland Tunnel, which had been closed to all other traffic. Emerging from the tunnel, the cars swung across to the opposite carriageway, straight into the multi-storey car park known as the Ibsen House, and from there into the garage of the Law Courts.
The accused was accompanied into the lift, which took him to level eight, where the hearing was to be held. There were seven people sitting in room 828.
The accused looked around him in surprise as he entered. His handcuffs were attached to the shackles and he was finding it difficult to stand up properly.
‘You may sit down,’ said Kim Heger.
Breivik scanned the room.
‘Where is everybody?’