THE SEAGULL glides on the warm evening air, oblivious to the wreckage of the office block below. Of the hundreds of windows in the 16-storey ministry of justice, just seven panes are still intact. The others are vacant, the occasional blind flapping in the breeze.
In several offices the lights are still on – sometimes a lamp, sometimes just a bare bulb – but no one is doing any weekend overtime.
Normality ended here at 3.26pm on Friday with a bomb blast so powerful that windows were blown out in buildings two streets away. Seven people were killed immediately, dozens were injured; had it been outside the holiday season the death toll would undoubtedly have been higher.
Over the weekend, a four-block radius around the government quarter in Oslo remained cordoned off, patrolled by mournful, youthful soldiers, in some cases bearing machine guns almost as big as themselves.
Behind them, no life can be seen in this part of central Oslo. The debris of the blast is still strewn around the streets: grey and mangled metal shards, strips of wood like giants’ toothpicks.
On a normal summer evening like this, the terrace cafe behind the prime minister’s office and the Youngstorget square below it would be thronged with revellers.
Not on this evening.
Under the slowly setting sun, piles of shattered glass look like pools of melting ice. Step beyond the exclusion zone and a fragile echo of normal life goes on.
A tram glides by: young people are heading to bars and parties in T-shirts and shorts. From a bar, a singer longs to touch the green, green grass of home.
Spontaneously, people have drifted to the plaza before Oslo cathedral to lay flowers, light candles and talk softly. What started in the morning as a small floral tribute has spread rapidly with lilies and roses. A handwritten sign reads: “In memory of Utoeya – solidarity shall win out.”
“I believe in Norway; we are stronger than this. People who did this are not going to get away with this,” said Jens (25). “My cousin was there; I don’t think either of us have quite realised yet what happened.”
Young women lay down roses, supporting each other, then stagger away with glazed, dazed expressions. They don’t want to talk; they can’t.
“I didn’t know anyone in the tragedy but I’m here out of a feeling of empathy,” said Henning Iversen (39), from Oslo.
“We cannot stop people like this from doing terrible things, but we can stop them ruining our democracy. This is a strike at the heart of Norwegian democracy.”
A short distance back from the crowd, a middle-aged woman with black hair and a red dress is holding a handwritten sign from the book of Isaiah: “When your judgments come upon the earth/ the people of the world learn righteousness.”
“God is going to judge a nation that has rejected so much light,” she says calmly, “God is ready to judge entire nations.”
As passersby hiss at her to go home, Sven Lundeby (24) tackles her head-on, quoting the Bible back at her and suggesting this was less God’s judgment than the act of “a madman, a killer”.
“Can we please have a place here for sorrow? Please don’t come here with your judgments,” he said.
“Prime minister Stoltenberg said we would take back Utoeya island; well, we’re here to take back our city, too, after this terrible act,” said Andreas Lubiana, also 24. “I think all the political leaders have been very mature, [saying] that we need to meet violence with debate, not more violence.”
As the sea of candles grows and the light declines, the Norwegians think about a strike at their society that came from within, not without. “To be honest, I’m almost relieved it seems to have been a Norwegian guy,” said Arnar Linjoea (61). “I didn’t like the idea of being suspicious of Muslims all the time.”
It’s a widespread view in the shocked capital. “It’s better in a way that it came from within because otherwise it would have raised huge questions about our multicultural society,” said Lubiana.
In the fading light, the people gathered here are shocked but calm, having internalised the words of King Harald hours earlier: “We are being tested.”
In the aftermath of a terrible tragedy, Norway’s civil society seems so far to have passed the toughest of tests with distinction.
