I'm a retired American living over here in Norway for my younger children here. On 22 July 2011 we including my ex were driving back east from the excellent pool in Asker west of Oslo. As we came up out of the tunnels east of the city center, I/we started encountering ambulances heading into town at top speed, sirens screaming.
I told my ex something has happened. She dismissed my concern - denial is common here - and as soon as we got home I turned on the TV and found out about the (ammonium nitrate) bomb downtown (which we hadn't heard in the tunnels) and about an attack on an island.
Some background to 22Jul11:
Norway was taken by surprise on 9Apr40, when the Germans launched the first-ever air invasion of a country followed by seaborne landings, albeit temporarily but decisively held up by the Oscarsborg gun and torpedo battery island fortress (now a beautiful park with the guns and a fine museum) which sank brand-new German heavy cruiser Bluecher - see the excellent film The King's No for that great scene.
To deal with a terror attack like Utøya Island, Norway does have a SWAT team, however its recon helicopter could not carry the whole team, and its pilot was on vacation anyway, it being July when everyone is. Local police who arrived fairly promptly at the shore were instead told to just stand by, although they were hearing shots from the island.
The SWAT team *drove* to belatedly arrive on the shore and then waited for its official boat to arrive, although a few small boats were going back and forth trying to get the kids off the island - until stopped by the police in at least one case - and could have gotten the team (or police) out on the island at least 1 or 2 at a time. When the team's boat did arrive, their and their equipment's weight swamped it, so they had to use other boats anyway, giving the (homegrown, Norwegian) terrorist decisively more time to kill more kids.
(The Labour Party youth camp's leader had departed/escaped on/with the island's ferry, and the captain would not help evacuation until the terrorist was apprehended.)
There was a security guard on the island - the Crown Princess's half-brother - but he was unarmed, that being the Scandinavian law enforcement style at that time. The terrorist quickly killed him but not his very young son who was kneeling by his father's body.
77 - young people and a few adults - many were girls - died, and many more were severely and permanently injured by the dum-dum bullets the terrorist used. When the SWAT team finally arrived, he quickly surrendered, apparently hoping to push his rightwing/anti-immigrant political case from jail like Hitler did after his attempted 1923 beer hall putsch.
Regarding the FILM, it shows young people being thrown into a survival situation they never expected and weren't at all prepared for ... and going into panic and shock. The girl who is the principal character is an older sister more and more distraught over what may have happened to her younger sister. She eventually gives away and then leaves a position of safety under the island's shore cliffs, finds her sister who appears to be dead, hysterically wanders out into view, and is cut down.
Most of the youths' first reflexes were to run to a place of temporary safety and then to call parents - in this girl's case, her younger sister also - and/or police on their cell phones. But they don't really think about and then know what to do.
The film follows her in real time with the "jerky camera" resented by others giving greater realism, and it is agonizingly slow and painful to watch, no police arriving, as others have written. When you watch Tora Tora Tora about Pearl Harbor, you want to jump into the film and grab certain officers by their lapels and yell at them to wake up and act (logically), and this was my reaction to this film.
I was for a time a Scout, having the motto Be Prepared.
An example: I had some experience camping in the wilderness - a 1-man survival adventure on Aristazabal Island off the Canadian Pacific coast ... which I nearly didn't survive, appropriately. In Summer 1972, my new wife's family wanted to go camping on Lake Superior's northern coast. The first day in camp, they wanted to go for a walk through the park forest along the shore.
So I briefed them about what to do if we encountered a bear - men stand together in front, women behind, and everyone back away with pleasant smiles on our faces - and got the usual tedious "it's paranoid Lou again" reaction.
So a fair way down the shore in a forest clearing, we did indeed encounter a young bear, they all panicked, yelled "Bear!," and RAN past me leaving me to face it down alone. (It had this curious "So what's YOUR problem?" expression on its face looking at me, then seemed to shrug, and left.)
So I came out of the forest and down to the shore to give my new family *another* briefing, and this time they listened.
If Utøya had happened in Alaska, about 10 local people armed to the teeth would have been out on that island in 15 minutes, and although a few may have killed each other, they would have made short work of the terrorist.
And something very like Utøya did happen in McCarthy, Alaska in 1983, when an environmental activist (turned terrorist) killed 7 of the 22 residents, even though he himself was immediately wounded and finally surrendered.
The film was very human interest, but seemed (to me, anyway) to be too narrowly focused, although I do understand it was to put us in her mind. And it certainly does that.
There is another film, 22 July, which follows the terrorist's preparations, shows what happened overall, and the courtroom aftermath and implications of rightwing terrorism.
But I do think these films overlook the basic cause of these young-guy rightwing acts of terror: if they instead had normal families and wives and children to love, they might be far less likely to strike out at others like this.
This terrorist's parents had divorced, and he had become somewhat estranged from his father. (Happily, his sister is a married mom - she survived that.)
Unlike excellent wilderness survival films like Michael Mann's The Last of the Mohicans and (Anthony Hopkins in) The Edge, I do not want to watch this film again, ever.
I told my ex something has happened. She dismissed my concern - denial is common here - and as soon as we got home I turned on the TV and found out about the (ammonium nitrate) bomb downtown (which we hadn't heard in the tunnels) and about an attack on an island.
Some background to 22Jul11:
Norway was taken by surprise on 9Apr40, when the Germans launched the first-ever air invasion of a country followed by seaborne landings, albeit temporarily but decisively held up by the Oscarsborg gun and torpedo battery island fortress (now a beautiful park with the guns and a fine museum) which sank brand-new German heavy cruiser Bluecher - see the excellent film The King's No for that great scene.
To deal with a terror attack like Utøya Island, Norway does have a SWAT team, however its recon helicopter could not carry the whole team, and its pilot was on vacation anyway, it being July when everyone is. Local police who arrived fairly promptly at the shore were instead told to just stand by, although they were hearing shots from the island.
The SWAT team *drove* to belatedly arrive on the shore and then waited for its official boat to arrive, although a few small boats were going back and forth trying to get the kids off the island - until stopped by the police in at least one case - and could have gotten the team (or police) out on the island at least 1 or 2 at a time. When the team's boat did arrive, their and their equipment's weight swamped it, so they had to use other boats anyway, giving the (homegrown, Norwegian) terrorist decisively more time to kill more kids.
(The Labour Party youth camp's leader had departed/escaped on/with the island's ferry, and the captain would not help evacuation until the terrorist was apprehended.)
There was a security guard on the island - the Crown Princess's half-brother - but he was unarmed, that being the Scandinavian law enforcement style at that time. The terrorist quickly killed him but not his very young son who was kneeling by his father's body.
77 - young people and a few adults - many were girls - died, and many more were severely and permanently injured by the dum-dum bullets the terrorist used. When the SWAT team finally arrived, he quickly surrendered, apparently hoping to push his rightwing/anti-immigrant political case from jail like Hitler did after his attempted 1923 beer hall putsch.
Regarding the FILM, it shows young people being thrown into a survival situation they never expected and weren't at all prepared for ... and going into panic and shock. The girl who is the principal character is an older sister more and more distraught over what may have happened to her younger sister. She eventually gives away and then leaves a position of safety under the island's shore cliffs, finds her sister who appears to be dead, hysterically wanders out into view, and is cut down.
Most of the youths' first reflexes were to run to a place of temporary safety and then to call parents - in this girl's case, her younger sister also - and/or police on their cell phones. But they don't really think about and then know what to do.
The film follows her in real time with the "jerky camera" resented by others giving greater realism, and it is agonizingly slow and painful to watch, no police arriving, as others have written. When you watch Tora Tora Tora about Pearl Harbor, you want to jump into the film and grab certain officers by their lapels and yell at them to wake up and act (logically), and this was my reaction to this film.
I was for a time a Scout, having the motto Be Prepared.
An example: I had some experience camping in the wilderness - a 1-man survival adventure on Aristazabal Island off the Canadian Pacific coast ... which I nearly didn't survive, appropriately. In Summer 1972, my new wife's family wanted to go camping on Lake Superior's northern coast. The first day in camp, they wanted to go for a walk through the park forest along the shore.
So I briefed them about what to do if we encountered a bear - men stand together in front, women behind, and everyone back away with pleasant smiles on our faces - and got the usual tedious "it's paranoid Lou again" reaction.
So a fair way down the shore in a forest clearing, we did indeed encounter a young bear, they all panicked, yelled "Bear!," and RAN past me leaving me to face it down alone. (It had this curious "So what's YOUR problem?" expression on its face looking at me, then seemed to shrug, and left.)
So I came out of the forest and down to the shore to give my new family *another* briefing, and this time they listened.
If Utøya had happened in Alaska, about 10 local people armed to the teeth would have been out on that island in 15 minutes, and although a few may have killed each other, they would have made short work of the terrorist.
And something very like Utøya did happen in McCarthy, Alaska in 1983, when an environmental activist (turned terrorist) killed 7 of the 22 residents, even though he himself was immediately wounded and finally surrendered.
The film was very human interest, but seemed (to me, anyway) to be too narrowly focused, although I do understand it was to put us in her mind. And it certainly does that.
There is another film, 22 July, which follows the terrorist's preparations, shows what happened overall, and the courtroom aftermath and implications of rightwing terrorism.
But I do think these films overlook the basic cause of these young-guy rightwing acts of terror: if they instead had normal families and wives and children to love, they might be far less likely to strike out at others like this.
This terrorist's parents had divorced, and he had become somewhat estranged from his father. (Happily, his sister is a married mom - she survived that.)
Unlike excellent wilderness survival films like Michael Mann's The Last of the Mohicans and (Anthony Hopkins in) The Edge, I do not want to watch this film again, ever.