Hundreds of survivors of the massacre at a youth camp on a Norwegian island that claimed the lives of 69 people have returned for the first time to the scene of the killings.
Psychiatrists and medical staff were on hand to help those overcome by their pilgrimage to the place where Anders Behring Breivik shot dozens of their friends and colleagues during a 72-minute attack. Almost half his victims were under 18. They were attending a summer camp for young supporters of the country’s Labour party.
There were 517 survivors of the atrocity, 66 of whom were wounded. Many escaped by hiding among rocks and vegetation or swimming out into the lake around the island.
Norwegian television footage showed young people, dressed mostly in white, picking their way along Utøya island’s shoreline, possibly revisiting the spot from where they swam to safety or where their friends were gunned down by the water’s edge.
It was the first time, according to local media reports, that many of those visiting Utøya had seen one another since the tragedy on July 22.
Conflicting emotions
Officials said that each survivor was allowed to take one guest. About 400 healthcare workers, police and other officials escorted them across the small island. On Friday, relatives of those killed were allowed to travel to the island and lay candles and flowers to mark where their sons, daughters or siblings were shot. The authorities decided to separate the visits from survivors and relatives following advice that they were likely to experience conflicting emotions.
The visits to Utøya mark a month of mourning following Norway’s worst peacetime attacks. Services of remembrance will be held throughout the country on Sunday. Breivik (32) killed 77 people after detonating a truck bomb outside government offices in Oslo, killing eight people, before his shooting spree on the island, about 40km from the capital.
He has admitted the killings but denies criminal guilt because he believes the massacre was necessary to save Norway and Europe. He said the attacks were aimed at purging the continent of Muslims and punishing politicians who have embraced multiculturalism.
Norway’s general director of health, Bjørn-Inge Larsen, said that he hoped the visits to the island would help the grieving process. Those returning to the island, he said, would have to deal with a “lot of anxiety.” Speaking shortly before accompanying survivors to Utøya, Larsen said: “They were life-threatened on this island four weeks ago in a very traumatising manner, so what we are prepared for is to help them to overcome that anxiety.”
Rebuilding a narrative
Lars Weisaeth, a professor of disaster psychiatry at Oslo University, said: “If you have survived a harrowing experience, you do not have a narrative, a continuous story, to tell. What you remember is a series of fragmented, extremely strong impressions — visual and acoustic, [going back will] link this together.”
One survivor, Adrian Pracon, said that returning to Utøya would be “an extremely emotional day”. Pracon (21) played dead on the shore to avoid being killed — at one point the gun was so close he could feel the warmth of the barrel. Breivik aimed at Pracon’s head and fired. He missed and the bullet entered Pracon’s left shoulder. Pracon said that returning to the island would be “something I really think I need”.
He added: “I need to cry, I need to feel. I think I am still in denial. It will be good for me to do this process of trying to proceed with my life and realise that this has happened. It will help remember what actually happened.”
On Friday, Oslo’s district court extended Breivik’s detention by another four weeks, saying it still does not know if he acted alone and there was a danger that he would tamper with evidence and hinder the investigation. Breivik had told the court that being held in isolation was “boring, monotonous and a sadistic method of torture”. His case is not expected to be heard until next year. –
guardian.co.uk