Wearing white summer pants and white sneakers was a mistake. The red hooded raincoat barely shields her from the insistent rain. Only she knows what’s inside the brown bag. It’s certainly not black sunglasses, as she has them on. Even when it’s raining. On the mainland Gro Harlem Brundtland is welcomed by excited party members who’re also wearing red raincoats. Red is the color of Utøya.
It was getting embarrassing. No one was aware that she’d arrived, neither the AUF welcoming committee nor the press. They only saw a beige Toyota and then a young girl who stepped out. “Is it Gro?” asked one of the central committee members who had come over to greet her. In a red raincoat. “No,” replied Jorid Nordmelan. “It’s just Julie.” Julie Brundtland Løvseth is certainly Gro’s grandchild, and Jorid thinks it strange that she came alone, but she didn’t see any other passengers in the car. The photographers lowered their cameras, and the journalists continued disparaging their colleagues. As Julie walked slowly toward the registration booth, Jorid saw a head of fair hair barely protruding above the roof of the car, looking around confusedly. “Huh, that’s Gro,” said the central committee member as she ran toward the car and shouted a little desperately, “Hand me an umbrella!”
Gro is escorted on board the green deck of the ferry MS Thorbjørn, and she finds her own way into the cabin and settles down on a bench near the window. “I can’t remember having been here in such bad weather,” Gro says before reconsidering and adding, “Well, maybe once before.” Her first visit to the island was in 1945. The time span says something about the amount of rain that’s pouring down over Lake Tyri a little before 11:00 a.m. on Friday, July 22.
On the pier the seventy-two-year-old is received by Eskil Pedersen and others in the party leadership. The youths have brought along umbrellas, and they compete with each other to hold them over her. It’s not that far to walk up to the hall where she will talk about her life in politics, but Gro and Eskil are being driven up there in a black car. Meanwhile, the youngsters are streaming toward the main hall. The most social democratically romantic among them choose a spot along the wall under the black and brown poster from the Norwegian Building Industry Workers’ Union, on which is written in red letters, “Tomorrow is built through solidarity.” Some stop by the kiosk. Some have to fill their stomachs before eating a meal of meatballs, gravy, cranberry jam, mashed potatoes, and vegetables later in the day. Many people buy waffles from the red-and-white striped tent as they didn’t manage to eat breakfast. On the wall of the cafeteria building hangs a white paper plate with letters written with marker pen: “Waffles contain 80 percent happiness and 20 percent love. What are you waiting for?” While they wait for Gro, the youngsters listen to Snorre Haller’s welcoming speech from the LO and to Renate Tårnes playing the song “Idyll” from the band Postgirobygget. “There was beer, intoxicating words; it was summer, it was sunny, there were hearts on fire, calm waters, everything on earth.” A fitting picture, minus the alcohol, of course, and the sun and calm waters.
Two girls from Namsos municipality have overslept. Hanne Hestø Ness and Lene Maria Bergum were born on the same day at the same hospital. They have been in the same class from elementary school to high school. They tend to celebrate their birthdays together, the last one having been their nineteenth. Hanne and Lene Maria and twenty-eight other youngsters from the county traveled down by bus from Trondheim to Lake Tyri. The bus had a flat tire and had to change the engine oil, but the ambience was still great. The gang arrived at seven o’clock and pitched a green four-man tent in the rain. Hanne took an idyllic picture of Lene Maria in front of the campground after she had changed into typical Utøya attire: a light, flowery summer dress and rubber boots. She has a work crew lanyard around her neck and a coffee cup in her hand. She is smiling at her best friend.
The Namsos girls’ tent consists of two twin rooms divided by an awning. The plan was that they should have separate rooms, but Lene Maria’s thick, inflatable double mattress did not fit into her part, so it was set on grass under the awning. On the very first night the air went out of Hanne’s single mattress. Since it can often get cold at night on Utøya, it made sense to share the double mattress. The tent was then used as a walk-in closet. The improvised arrangement, due to unforeseen circumstances, led to widespread envy at the camp when the clouds dispersed on Wednesday. Hanne and Lene Maria pulled the mattress out of the tent and used it as a sun lounger. There they lay during the day, tanned themselves, and read Planet Utøya and novels—for Hanne it was Lars Saa-bye Christensen’s novel Lead.
Hanne and Lene Maria had been spending the evenings at Utøya working at the night cafe, except for the previous evening, when they got an hour off to attend the Datarock concert. When they came back to the tent at half past three, there was still activity in the North Trøndelag county campsite. The offer to sit down for five minutes was rejected with a winsome smile. The work at the night cafe is instructive and fun but tiring. It’s therefore no surprise that the Namsos girls overslept this Friday morning. Hanne and Lene Maria just managed to get a quick wash in the lavatory block before they had to run up to the main hall where Gro was holding her speech.
Tore Sinding Bekkedal is rudely awakened in the navy blue two-man tent at the Oslo campsite. It’s not uncommon for young people to oversleep at Utøya. Many go to bed when others wake up. In Tore’s case it’s not due to staying up all night. He went to bed at half past one in the morning, after sitting around the hookah by the stage and learning the Arabic word for “good.” Still Tore wakes up rather stressed out by the applause from the main hall this morning. Utøya’s unofficial photographer has been asked to take pictures of the “Mother of the Nation,” Gro Harlem Brundtland, for the Scanpix photo agency since it’s undermanned during the vacation period. It’s an honorable and important job for a young hobbyist photographer and certainly one for which he shouldn’t be late. Tore puts on the typical black-and-white Hawaiian shirt and runs up to the cafeteria building, where the Canon 5D camera is kept in the basement. He also takes along the new wide-angle lens he bought before coming to the camp. Heading into the cafeteria building, he stops by the kiosk and buys a microwaved pizza.
In Emma Martinovic’s green two-man tent it’s not standard camping gear that’s in the suitcase neatly placed in the corner. She and her friend have packed as if they were going for a weekend in Paris—the prettiest dresses, high heels, hair straighteners, lots of makeup, music speakers, and two cameras in case one doesn’t work. The girls from Kristiansand have looked forward to the Utøya camp for several months now. On board the MS Thorbjørn, the eighteen-year-old county party leader was so excited that she was trembling. Emma has already managed to take numerous photos with the camera and mobile phone: Team Agder playing a soccer match, hookah smoking, card games in the tent, the Datarock concert, karaoke evenings, lunches, Eskil’s opening speech, camaraderie around the grill, and even the sun and the AUF flag. Memories for life. Now she lies in the green tent, feeling slightly unwell, but she manages to get up in time to go listen to Gro. A small puddle has formed under the inflatable mattress, so she packs up her clothing and accessories in the black trolley suitcase before she puts on a hoodie. She quickly puts on makeup and opens the tent door. The shoes that her mother bought for her in Germany are lying there, soaking wet and dirty. The Kristiansand girl doesn’t have time for trivial matters. She puts them on and negotiates her way through the hundred meters of mud and puddles up to the cafeteria building. Emma is annoyed with herself for coming to Utøya without a raincoat and rubber boots; she brought only canvas shoes and high heels with her.
Ten youngsters have been allowed to speak for three minutes each after Gro’s speech. Ingrid Endrerud is just about to subdue the panic attack she got when she was interrupted while cheering at the volleyball match with the message that Gro is coming at 11:00 a.m. and not 2:00 p.m. as she’d originally thought. The eighteen-year-old stood below the information house, drenched to the skin, not having written a word of her speech. She ran to the tent; fetched clean, dry clothes; and went to one of the storage rooms at the inner part of the little hall. She took a chance that no one would come in, took off her soaking wet clothes, and hung them to dry on the chairs before she went into the little hall and started to write the speech. She’s not nervous. The youths in the main hall are usually an appreciative audience. Nevertheless, it’s good to know what you’re going to say before going to the podium. It has to be something about the famine, she thinks, and she will finish off with a quote.
Gro maneuvers among hundreds of sneakers, rubber boots, crocs, and sandals; past wet coats that are hung up to dry on the available hooks and doors; and over the small, dirty puddles on the linoleum floor. Johanne Butenschøn Lindheim left her boots back in Oslo, so she has placed her new Converse sneakers, purchased in Nicaragua, strategically in the hallway so they wouldn’t be trodden on. But that was before someone realized they had to make a path for the main guest and threw the shoes carelessly against the wall. Johanne’s white shoes are no longer white. Furthermore, it won’t be easy to find them again.
Cries of “Gro, Gro, Gro” rise in the main hall. The youngsters are impatient, but the Mother of the Nation first has to be made welcome by the AUF leader. In 1991, when unemployment reached record high levels in Norway, AUF members marched in the Oslo May Day parade under the banner “Gro—where the hell are the jobs?” The Buskerud AUF started a campaign to bring unemployment down to 2 percent with the slogan “Press Gro to less than two.” The South Trøndelag county faction demanded the prime minister’s resignation. At a seminar on Utøya in spring 1992 the county leader claimed that full employment was no longer the Labor Party’s number one objective. “I simply will not accept this,” said an angry Norwegian prime minister. Such conflicts are a thing of the past now, at least for today’s AUF members. Norway’s first female prime minister is a heroine without any blemishes.
“We’re all very fond of Gro. But we also have enormously great respect for Gro. We’re proud that you chose Utøya as your soapbox in Norway this summer,” says Eskil and gets a resounding round of applause. The youngsters in the hall are like most young people. They sit or lie close to each other, drink from Coke bottles or snack on chocolate, smelling of sweat, cheap perfume, and superficially washed bodies. The hall is packed. It’s impossible to change one’s position. Legs fall asleep under stiff bottoms. Even though it may look like it, they’re not enjoying movie night with lovers and friends. They’re listening to something that many of their peers back home in Mandal, Hamar, or Tromsø find dead boring: politics. Politics and history.
Eskil believes Gro is the greatest political figure we have in Norway today. She’s a role model for everyone on the island but especially for the girls. Through her political work she has paved the way for girls in politics, he says, before concluding, “I think that all those sitting here can really thank you for something much greater, something more important. The policy you have implemented on gender equality, whether it’s day care or maternity leave, has, in fact, made it possible not only for children to go to kindergarten, but also for girls to not have to choose between having children or working. This policy has contributed to the fact that Norway now has one of the highest birthrates in Europe. Some of those sitting here can perhaps safely say, “We wouldn’t have been born if you hadn’t done what you’ve done. We thank you for life.” Eskil gets thunderous applause on his way down from the stage, as Gro gets roaring cheers on her way up. It sounds more like a cup final at Ullevaal Stadium, filled with soccer fans rather than a political rally.
Gro talks about the first time she was here, in 1945. It was five years before the island was donated to the AUF and when the Danish foreign minister had had a little too much to drink. “I was here with my father at the Pentecostal camp. Yes, that’s what it was then—a Pentecostal camp, not a summer camp. Even then there were young people from other parts of Scandinavia here too. I remember one man, Hækkerup. He drank several beers. More beers than my dad. I noticed that the adults were not entirely sober. And how did I notice that? Because I was put to bed at 8:00 p.m. in the schoolhouse. I just had to put up with it and do as my father said. I was six years old. It was sunny and gorgeous outside. After half an hour, some girls came and knocked on the window, saying, “You know what, we think it’s too cruel of your father to lock you inside on a sunny summer evening. Now we’re going to sneak you out!” It was one of the first offenses I committed here,” she says to widespread laughter and applause. The young people know they are witnesses to a significant part of Norwegian history, as Jagland realized in the 1970s, when he was on Utøya listening to Gerhardsen and Bratteli talk about the war. Gro also talks about the war, the fight against Nazism, the Cold War, the Gerhardsen era, and the fight for women’s rights. “Gro is on the podium, and I’m weak in the knees. Fabulous lady! #utoya,” Renate Tårnes tweets.
Gro tells the girls in the audience to watch out for misogynistic control techniques. She was called “the Loudmouth of Bygdøy” during the election campaign in 1977. Four years later, when she became Norway’s first female prime minister, the Conservatives’ slogan was, ‘Get rid of her.’ They used the fact that I was a woman against me. But something like that doesn’t ever happen today,” she says sarcastically and gets some laughter. Violence against women, both verbal and physical, is just as prevalent in 2011. Hence on Utøya the youngsters are not only taught ways to expose unscrupulous speech and debating techniques, but in the afternoon they can also strengthen their self-defense skills. The course starts at five. The Friday night movie is the American action comedy Kick-Ass, which is in line with the self-defense theme. The Utøya program says that the movie is “ideal for people who are keen to learn self-defense. However, the AUF does not in any way condone the violence depicted and would like to remind everyone that this is a pacifist summer camp.”
Hadia Tajik is sitting in the main hall. She has come to Utøya expressly to hear Gro’s speech. When she hears the former prime minister say “Everything is connected to everything else,” the young member of parliament starts to grin. She sends a text message to a friend: “Now I’ve heard her say it—live!” “Lucky bastard,” was the response. The twenty-eight-year-old sitting in the audience listening to Gro is one of the most prominent symbols of the new Norway. She’s a journalist, feminist, and politician, as well as well educated, resourceful, career-driven, and multicultural. Her parents emigrated from Pakistan to Norway over thirty years ago. Her father’s family hailed from Tajikistan and Afghanistan, while her mother’s came from Iran, Turkey, and Afghanistan. Hadia grew up in Bjørheimsbygd in Rogaland County. As a child she often spoke Urdu, Persian, and Norwegian all in one sentence. She’s Muslim but attended a Lutheran kindergarten and went to the gospel hall. She’s a modern example of the concept that everything is connected to everything else—in a way it’s a distinctly Buddhist approach to life.
Matti Brox comes into the cafeteria building in a slightly groggy state just as Gro is nearing the end of her speech. Since it’s completely packed in the main hall, the sixteen-year-old finds a seat along the wall in the corridor. The alarm rang two hours ago. Nine in the morning seemed unreasonably early then, considering how late he had been up last night. The conversation was silly and vague around the hookah. The first stirrings of serious controversy appeared when the Oslo gang had to choose between grape or peach flavor. The evening featured everything that the novice party member had expected of the summer camp at Utøya: concerts, karaoke, strolls along Lovers’ Lane, intimate conversations by the pump room. He even played some guitar. Some Pink Floyd and one of Led Zeppelin’s classic songs: “Yes, there are two paths you can go by, but in the long run, there’s still time to change the road you’re on.” Matti has a repertoire of amusing comments and often makes others laugh. As is the case even now, in the corridor outside the main hall, against the wall, as he sits beside other youngsters who didn’t get a seat inside. He is harshly shushed by the others.
Gro steps down from the stage to thunderous applause. To deserve such cheers one has to have saved the fatherland, as was pointed out when Nansen arrived back in Kristiania after the conquest of Greenland. Preferably saved it twice. July 22, 2011, is undoubtedly right up there with June 7, 1905 (dissolution of the union between Norway and Sweden) and May 8, 1945 (liberation from German occupation).
And now youth takes the stage. Ingrid Endrerud talks about the famine in the south. “I’ve been to war and experienced extreme weather. All at the same time. Here on Utøya. War against Hordaland County in the mud. Extreme weather with buckets of rain. It’s not like that for people in many other places around the world. . . . So I’m a little hungry, and there’s a rumbling in my stomach. But for me it’s just a matter of walking over to the waffle booth. . . . And on this side we have a kitchen full of food. In the worst case I can trudge down to the Oppland campsite and make myself some sandwiches there. . . . Currently we are witnessing the most severe drought in fifty years. The thing that frustrates me most is why it takes so long to come to their aid. Why do we not have a UN pot that is ready to be used? Why do we have to start from scratch every time?” the eighteen-year-old asks, and she ends with a quote: “Our goal is to save the world—if it’s too painful and difficult, we might as well lie down and die.”
Ingrid is applauded. The young people in the audience can relate to her description of their privileged lives, where war, weapons, insecurity, and hunger are almost unknown to them. On the way down she gets a pat on the shoulder from the county leader of Hordaland, Tore Eikeland, one of the rising political stars of the youth organization. He’s adept at rhetorical turns of phrase and applause-winning jokes. Only Eikeland is capable of sneaking in references to light-fingered parish priests in a speech about EU postal legislation. When he speaks in the plenary session, it’s not certain that everyone understands all the time what he’s talking about, but everyone is left with renewed affirmation that he’s going to go far in the organization and, indeed, probably all the way to the top.
This year, for the first time, he is working as a journalist for Planet Utøya. Before coming to the island, he was considering introducing the AUF’S very own fashion column in the gossipy newsletter. Instead a popular innovation this year has been a page with stupid or revealing status updates and a layout that looks like a real Facebook page. During each status update the editor sent a message to the enthusiastic and extremely active Facebook queen from the Rogaland Labor Party, who has added all the AUF members as friends, even though she doesn’t really know them: “Thumbs up for Facebook Likes!” There’s teasing and joking around, but it’s done with love. The adult politician thinks it’s great with all these engaged AUF members, and the AUF members think it’s great that the Rogaland politician is so engaged in cake baking and gender equality.
Gro makes notes while the youngsters speak and answers their questions at the end. Ingrid thinks that the former prime minister really didn’t answer her questions. Instead she feels she’s being criticized because Gro got hung up with her quote. The Mother of the Nation doesn’t want people to lie down and die if things get difficult. Something is at least something, and it’s far better than nothing. It’s a case of the pragmatist versus the idealist, and that isn’t so unusual a confrontation when AUF members meet with representatives from the parent party. Ingrid thinks that the question was badly answered until she discovers that her stomach is growling irritably. The only thing she has eaten today is an apple while writing the speech in the little hall.
The youngsters go out to the courtyard in front of the cafeteria building and start queuing up for food. If you are unlucky and end up at the back of the line, the wait can take up to an hour. The queue is the only reason why some campers sign up for the work crew, as they get served dinner first. Moreover, there’s dessert, usually jelly, caramel, or chocolate pudding and canned fruit for vegans and allergy sufferers. The dining hall can’t accommodate everyone, so many people have to eat dinner in a tent or in the courtyard. But not today. The rain has made the camp administration magnanimous. The youngsters are allowed to find a place anywhere in the cafeteria building, and they don’t need to remove their shoes. The seats around the tables fill up quickly. Many people have to sit on the floor. Yesterday light summer food was served—chicken thighs, lettuce, rice, and béarnaise sauce. Today’s menu is tailored to the chilly weather—mashed potatoes and meatballs in brown sauce. Muslims are served halal meatballs, while vegetarians can have fried rice with onions, an American vegetable mix, and lentils. The meals can be washed down with yellow or red juice. The three who are serving one line are having fun repeating Ina Libak’s familiar phrase: “Remember” (from the server dishing out the meatballs), “you are” (from the one doling out the mashed potatoes), and “amazing” (from the one putting the vegetables on the plate). Ina Libak is a twenty-one-year-old party member from Akershus known for her winning, gentle nature, and nothing makes for a better ambience on Utøya than to hear her say, “Remember, you are amazing.” The menu is the same every year, but this time it seems to Hildegunn Fallang that the food tastes extra good. An empty stomach since breakfast and soccer matches in the mud and the miserable, wet, and cold weather work up an appetite.
After the youngsters have left the cafeteria building to go meet Gro at the campground or to relax in the tents, Ingrid sits in front of the piano in the little hall to prepare for choir practice later in the afternoon. They will be singing, “We are the world, we are the children, we are the ones who make a brighter day, so let’s start giving.” On Wednesday ten people came to choir practice at five o’clock. On Thursday only three showed up. They had a very fine session anyway, in the sun, on the field down by the volleyball court, as the band Datarock had taken over the little hall for its backstage room. The singers were enthusiastic and the atmosphere was good, except for those damned slimy frogs everywhere that paralyzed the eighteen-year-old. A girl picked up a frog and said, “Oh, so nice.” Ingrid had no musical instruments with her, but using an iPod and three song-books, they selected a handful of songs for the performance, all depending on how many people showed up for practice. Other than the optimistic but serious “We are the World,” the playful and sing-along-friendly song “Smart,” by DeLillos and Ida Maria, is a top candidate: “Yes, you’re darn smart / For you everything is possible / You create things, 100 percent natural / You’re the man / For you everything is possible.”
Ingrid has mobilized quite effectively for the afternoon practice at five, but it’s already clear that the spectators are not going to witness a polyphonic extravaganza on the outdoor stage on Saturday. A former leader of the choir has suggested that they can perform “To Youth,” but Ingrid doesn’t think much of it, especially not as a choir song. “The Internationale” has more pep and tempo when sung a cappella: “For too long we’ve endured exploitation, / Too long we’ve been the vulture’s prey. / Farewell to days of condemnation! / The red dawn brings a bright new day!” Ingrid has chosen three genres: a traditional work song, a modern pop song, and a political song. The last type will probably be a song by Bob Dylan. While two young boys in the work crew wash the floor of the little hall, Ingrid Endrerud plays and sings an inspiring protest song from 1963: “How many deaths will it take till he knows that too many people have died.”
When the youngsters on Utøya are cold and wet and want to go home, as is the case when the weather is miserable, Morten Djupdal’s job as delegation leader and county secretary is to come up with a motivational pep talk: “Remember how nice it was yesterday.” “There will be good weather tomorrow.” “There’s no such thing as bad weather, only bad tents.” As a matter of course Morten trudges around in slippers instead of rubber boots since he has come to the conclusion that he’s going to get just as wet anyway, even with boots. But he belongs to Utøya’s upper class. He’s indoors and they’re outdoors, a fact that the party members from Oppland County are quick to point out when he comes up with superficial, facile phrases. “Come on, you sly fox; you sleep indoors!” Truth be told, it makes no difference to Morten. He is tired, lethargic, and trudges around in his own world. When the AUF secretary general pointed out to him that there were too few people attending the political workshops, his response was that people should be allowed to do as they please.
Morten is credible giving pep talks, but he has also gotten wrinkled fingers and feet from all the rain. Therefore he is planning to go to his uncle and aunt’s in Hønefoss to take a hot shower. Since the truth can be misconstrued sometimes and lead to an outbreak of the bad weather blues, he asks around the Oppland campsite whether anyone would be interested in going with him to Hønefoss to shop for food. At one time or another before going home on Sunday, they’ll need a refill of bread and spread, but there’s no real hurry. No, it seems no one wants to leave the red party tent. “Buy more chocolate spread,” someone shouts. “We’ll see,” says the county secretary, who actually has no intention of buying more sugary sweet spread. The deputy of the Oppland Labor Party has been visiting for the day, and Morten makes arrangements with him to take the same boat over to the mainland at 4:00 p.m. Utøya isn’t big and neither is the social setting, so in a matter of minutes a rumor spreads that there’s a man from the Oppland campsite going over to the mainland. Three youngsters come over and ask Morten if they can come along. “No more than two,” says Morten, who’s still hoping that someone from his home county will reconsider.
After dinner, according to tradition, Gro makes a visit to the campground. Eskil walks beside her and holds the umbrella. Her white sneakers have been replaced with more suitable footwear for trampling around in the mud. She has borrowed high green rubber boots from Bano Rashid. The eighteen-year-old and the Mother of the Nation have the same shoe size. The girl can hardly imagine a greater privilege than lending Gro her boots. She calls home to her mother in Nesodden to tell her about it. “Remember to get her autograph on them,” the mother says to her excited daughter.
“What is it with Gro?” wonders the TV2 reporter Finn-Ove Hågensen in front of Bano’s tent. “I feel that she has done everything for women. That’s what we say. It’s thanks to Gro and our grandmothers. Gro forever!” a gleeful and boisterous girl says. Hågensen’s article headline is “Gromania on Utøya.” Bano and six others in the Akershus campsite have been chosen to have a conversation with Gro. The young girls wonder what it’s going to take to be heard and to be taken seriously. “Be yourself, do what you believe in,” Bano says.
TV2 also stops in front of the three-man tent of Matti Brox and his buddy. When they pitched the tent on Tuesday, they hadn’t noticed that it was right over a depression in the ground. For the young and well trained who stay up all night and need little sleep, it’s not a problem to lie on rugged terrain. This morning, however, is a different story. That was no fun at all. The tent did not keep off the rain. All the water collected under the green tent. Consequently they had to move the tent one and a half meters up toward the road. It was a time-consuming affair that caused the pillows, sleeping bags, and luggage to become thoroughly soaked. Now there’s a pond where the tent once stood. The TV2 reporter asks the Oslo boys how’s it going and gets a “Thank you, great atmosphere” in response. To exemplify the “great atmosphere” Matti and his buddy improvise a scene: one of them takes off all his clothes except for his underwear, jumps into the pond, and swims merrily around while the other one takes out a bottle of shampoo and washes his hair to a cheerful little tune. Matti is convinced that the pictures will be on the news tonight.
The NRK follows Gro around with a camera and microphone. When it comes time for the state channel to interview Gro, the reporter asks her how it is to be back on Utøya. “It’s always very nice,” she replies, “as well as inspiring and engaging. I’m always very glad to be here.” “Do you see any potential in some of these young people?” the NRK reporter asks. “There’s potential in everyone who’s here; otherwise they wouldn’t be here,” Gro replies. The party members on Utøya are the crème de la crème of the country’s young politicians and are the most committed and dedicated in the Labor Party youth organization. Everybody becomes something or other, but not all become career politicians. In fact few of the participants at summer camps do so. They become journalists, information consultants, bankers, bureaucrats in the ministries, tour guides in Italy, or advisers in the Finance Sector Union of Norway. Not all on Utøya become politicians, but all the leaders of the Labor Party have been to summer camp on Utøya. It was there they were trained and where they developed useful contacts through networking. The road from Utøya leads to all manner of occupations, but it usually leads to promising careers. It’s never a disadvantage to specify your AUF party membership in your CV. It probably means that you are well spoken. It means that your social interests and engagement are broad and deep. You will be an asset to an employer.
Jorid Nordmelan doesn’t go along on Gro’s tour around the campground. She wants to relax for a few hours before going back to the mainland to move cars around in the mud. Kristine Hallingstad, a central committee member in the AUF who is working on the mainland together with Jorid, reminisces about Wednesday’s speed dating. They did not participate, God forbid, but were responsible for arranging the event. After the regular program they organized “Blind Love”: the audience can see the dream boy and dream girl sitting on chairs behind a wall but not the three boys and girls who have been chosen to compete for them. They’re given ten multiple-choice questions each. For example: What king of dress style do you like best on a girlfriend? (A) Track suit, faded sweater. (B) Stylish designer wear. (C) Stark naked. (Naturally the mood in the room was greatest when the answer was C.) The one of the three who was the poorest in guessing the dream girl’s and dream boy’s preferences was knocked out. Then it was the turn of the dream boy and girl to ask the two remaining participants questions. The dream girl had a creative variant: “If I meet Bruce Springsteen, am I allowed to be unfaithful then?” One boy answered yes, albeit on condition that the same should apply to him and the currently sexiest woman in the world, Jessica Alba. There’s giggling in the audience. The other boy replied no, but on the other hand, he could go along on the date with “the Boss.” That wouldn’t be construed as adultery, would it? There’s even more giggling and laughter in the hall. Jorid and Kristine are still grinning. Jorid thinks speed dating is kind of awkward to participate in but fun to organize. They are both embarrassed and a little thrilled that they have now become famous on the island and been anointed with the exuberant nickname of “the Love Makers.”
While Gro eats lunch with the AUF leadership in the information house, Tore Sinding Bekkedal has a chat about photography with the press professionals from the capital. Because of the Scanpix job, he feels enough like a press photographer to help himself to the free baguettes. Tore is also going to record a video greeting from Gro to the youngsters afterward that will be posted on YouTube. He considers asking an acquaintance in the NRK if he can get a ride to Oslo. Tore is a technician at the Frikanalen TV channel and has a deadline on August 1. The plan was to work from Utøya, but it was impossible because of the bad Internet connection. Therefore he should go home. However, before Tore got around to asking for a ride, someone else took the seat he wanted.
Gro leaves the island a little before three on Friday afternoon. She takes the MS Thorbjørn over to the mainland with her granddaughter. Hadia Tajik is also on board. They get into their cars at Utstranda on the mainland and drive toward Sollihøgda, along the EI6 motorway to Sandvika, before they turn onto the highway going to Oslo. The guests from Utøya notice that the traffic coming in the opposite direction on the EI8 is at a standstill. A twenty-year-old delivery driver in a Peugeot full of TVS bound for Drammen lost control of his vehicle after driving over a puddle just after the Frognerkilen Sailing Club and ran into the crash barrier. “Now it’s all going to hell,” Mohamed, the driver, thought before the car went into a tailspin. The accident was causing delays for motorists heading south to their villas in Asker or cabins in southern Norway. “Clearing-up work is taking a long time, and there are huge traffic jams,” the entry in the police log says.