A Norwegian Tragedy Anders Behring Breivik and the Massacre on Utya [Hardcover]

On 22 July 2011 a young man named Anders Behring Breivik carried out one of the most vicious terrorist acts in post-war Europe. In a carefully orchestrated sequence of actions he bombed government buildings in Oslo, resulting in eight deaths, then carried out a mass shooting at a camp of the Workers’ Youth League of the Labour Party on the island of Utøya, where he murdered sixty-nine people, mostly teenagers.

How could Anders Behring Breivik - a middle-class boy from the West End of Oslo - end up as one of the most violent terrorists in post-war Europe? Where did his hatred come from?

In A Norwegian Tragedy, Aage Borchgrevink attempts to provide an answer. Taking us with him to the multiethnic and class-divided city where Breivik grew up, he follows the perpetrator of the attacks into an unfamiliar online world of violent computer games and anti-Islamic hatred, and demonstrates the connection between Breivik’s childhood and the darkest pages of his 1500-page manifesto.

This is the definitive story of 22 July 2011: a Norwegian tragedy.

Preface vii

1 The Explosion 1

2 Bacardi Razz 7

3 A West End Family: Anders Behring Breivik’s Childhood 25

4 Morning on Utøya 45

5 Morg the Graffiti Bomber: Anders Behring Breivik’s Youth 59

6 The ‘Mother of the Nation’ Returns to Utøya 94

7 Andrew Berwick and Avatar Syndrome 111

8 The Safest Place in Norway 148

9 The Book Launch 161

10 Survivors 181

11 Rescuers 197

12 What Is Happening in Norway? 210

13 Anders Behring Breivik’s Seventy-Five Minutes on Utøya 226