In a moment of national tragedy, people tend to huddle together. That instinct, the need for community to gather and console one another in a moment of collective shock and pain, was Anders Behring Breivik's most insidious weapon in the arsenal he carried onto the tiny island Utoeya, a wooded retreat in Tyrifjord lake about an hour's drive from Oslo.
Breivik, a handsome 32-year-old Norwegian with blue eyes and a short crop of blonde hair, arrived at the lakeside pier dressed as a Norwegian police officer. Hours before, a car bomb that police believe Breivik planted and detonated in the heart of the Norwegian government quarter ripped through the neighborhood, killing at least seven people and injuring many more. It now seems that the Oslo bomb was a murderous distraction, a meticulously planned bit of midsirection. The apparent attempt on the life of Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg, at first thought to be the work of Islamist extremists, kept Norway's crack anti-terror squad pinned down in Oslo while Breivik drove to Utoeya. He flashed his ID — fake, but good enough to fool the security guards at the lake. And they wave him in. "He gets out of the car and shows ID, says he's sent there to check security, that that is purely routine in connection with the terror attack (in Oslo)," Simen Braenden Mortensen, one of the camp guards, told the daily Verdens Gang. "It all looks fine, and a boat is called and it carries him over to Utoeya. A few minutes passed, and then we heard shots," he said.
(See the aftermath of the shooting and bombing in Norway.)
When he arrived at the island, Breivik found people hurrying into the main house at the retreat. Some were crying, walking arm-in-arm as they tried to make sense out of the images of devastation filling TV screens in the aftermath of the Oslo bombing, which by now was being described as Norway's 9/11 moment. The guests on the island had particular reason to be rocked by the events in Oslo's government quarter. Each year for as long as anyone can remember, the youth wing of the Norwegian Labor Party has gathered here. Founded in 1887, Labor is Norway's largest political party and has been the major force in the country since the Second World War, giving up power for only brief periods to the Conservative Party. Gathered at the retreat of the Labor Party's youth wing were the country's future leaders, the teenage children of the ruling elite. By the time Breivik approached the main house, witnesses recall, about 80 people had gravitated there. "We had all gathered in the main house to talk about what had happened in Oslo," a survivor, a 16-year-old called Hana, told the Aftenposten, an Oslo daily.
Breivik, in his policeman get-up and and now wearing earplugs, urged the people to move into the main house. "I'd like to gather everyone," he said, according to Hana. Then, Breivik, brandishing an automatic machine gun, ran into the main house and opened fire on the crowd.
With the eyes of the world on Oslo, it took more than an hour for Norwegian police to comprehend and respond to the massacre that was unfolding at this idyllic island retreat. Children ran screaming out of the house and across the grounds, only to be gunned down in their tracks. Breivik, according to witnesses, remained calm, methodically seeking out his victims as they ran, into the hollows and behind the stones and bushes where they attempted to hide. He chased them to the shores of the island, a thin, 500-yard strip of land in a gray lake in the Norwegian woods. Children jumped into the water, attempting to swim away. Some managed to reach boats that began to appear to rescue survivors.
(See how police determined the two events were linked.)
Khamshajiny Gunaratnam, a 23-year-old student who survived the Utoeya attack, wrote about the incident on her blog. She describes being terrified, crouching on the floor of the toilets in the main house to hide from the killer who was busy hunting down her friends who were still out in the open. Seizing an opportunity, Gunaratnam and a few of her friends made a dash for the lake, jumped into the icy water and swam frantically to a waiting boat. "Even when we had reached the boat, I could not relax," she wrote on her blog. "He could still hit us with his machinegun!"
People who live near the island describe horrific scenes as scores of teenagers rushed for the water in an attempt to swim to safety as the shooter fired on them. "They were so young, between 14 and 19 years old," said Anita Lien, a 42-year-old resident who lives near the lake.
By time he was arrested Friday evening, Breivik is believed to have killed 84 people on the island of Utoeya and at least seven in the Oslo bombing. On Saturday, police were still combing the woods and searching the lake for bodies. A van containing undetonated explosives was found near the lake. As Norwegians seek to understand what happened, a few details about Breivik are emerging that suggest he sought to make his rampage more similar to the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing by Timothy McVeigh, in which 168 people were killed, than the Al Qaeda attacks on September 11, 2001.
Norwegian police describe Breivik as a conservative, right-wing extremist and a Christian fundamentalist. Norwegian media have reported that he attended the Oslo Commerce School and describe him as a conservative and nationalist. His views are hard to characterize. He appears to hate communists and Muslims and harbors right-wing views. But he is not a neo-Nazi. Breivik was a regular reader of right-wing Web sites and blogs such as the Gates of Vienna, and a follower of the blogger Fjordman. On a Facebook page that Breivik set up days before the attacks, he cites an eclectic group of heroes that include Winston Churchill, Dutch right-wing populist Geert Wilders, and Norwegian anti-Nazi resistance fighter Max Manus. Breivik appears to see himself as a mercenary in a war against the spread of Islam in Europe as well as against Socialism and foreign domination of Norway. Like the contributors to Gates of Vienna, Breivik appears to be an adherent of the right-wing conspiracy theories about Eurabia, the idea that Muslims are infiltrating European society with the goal of domination. The Gates of Vienna website, for example, carries a picture of old Vienna with the caption: "At the siege of Vienna in 1683 Islam seemed poised to overrun Christian Europe. We are now in a new phase of a very old war."
(See why Breivik bought six tons of fertilizer.)
"No one knows exactly what triggered him," Magnus Ranstorp, a terrorism expert at the Swedish National Defense College, told TIME.com. "But he seems to see himself on an apocalyptic mission to warn Europe about the dangers of Eurabia."
Ranstorp has sifted through hundreds of Breivik's blog postings to try to learn more. In 2003, he says, Breivik was inquiring online about a Baretta handgun, but it is unclear from the posts whether he wanted to obtain the weapon or ever did so. Although the attacks in Oslo and Utoeya were precisely planned and executed, Breivik does not appear to have ever had military training. On his Facebook site, which has been shut down, Breivik says he enjoys playing computer games such as
World of Warcraft and
Modern Warfare 2. Other hobbies include hunting. He lists his hometown as Oslo.
Breivik planned his Oslo attacks with the same care he applied to his Utoeya ambush. He needed three tons of fertilizer to construct his car bombs and Norwegian authorities believe he obtained it without raising suspicion by moving from Oslo to a small rural town called Rena in June or July, where he set up a farm under the name "Breivik Geofarm". He is believed to be the sole proprietor and may have used the farm as a cover to obtain the bomb material.
(See what can be done to prevent senseless violence.)
Just as police have turned up no evidence of an Islamic plot, authorities have also failed to find evidence linking Breivik with a specific right-wing group. Norway and Sweden experienced a surge of neo-Nazi violence in the 1990s, but programs set up to defuse the situation were quite successful, one reason even Europol in its latest report on right-wing extremism in Europe failed to see any warning signs that such an attack was possible. Police can only speculate as to Breivik's motives and the full extent of the operation, but the evidence so far points to him as a lone, perhaps deranged attacker with right-wing views who set out to target a symbol of the government.
"There is an Oklahoma comparison," Hagai M. Segal, a terrorism expert with New York University in London, told TIME.com. "That could be an incredibly serious development. I am skeptical that there is a larger right-wing group connected to this, but it wouldn't surprise me if you had a small cell. It is extremely hard to do something like this by yourself."
In travel guides, Norway is often described as the most beautiful place on the planet, a tiny nation of 4.8 million with an enormous country of natural beauty, icy mountains and deep, dark fjords, northern lights and the midnight sun. As they come to count their losses in the bitter days and months ahead, Norwegians will long for a more innocent past. Utoeya is now a symbol of what has changed, says Prime Minister Stoltenberg: "A paradise island has been transformed into a hell."
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