Time to Change the World

From the center of Oslo to Lake Tyrifjorden, it’s just over half an hour by car. By the lake, there’s a gravel parking lot and a small dock. If you don’t know it’s there, it’s easy to miss. A few hundred meters from the shore lies a small island. Next to the dock stands a sign explaining that on July 22, 2011, a right-wing extremist attacked a summer camp for the Norwegian Social Democratic youth on this island and killed 69 people. Utøya.

The sign explains that Utøya is today a place for political engagement, dialogue, and learning about democracy. The island is a classroom built on the belief that knowledge is stronger than hatred of foreigners, hate speech, and conspiracy theories.

There is no regular ferry service. You can only go to Utøya by prior arrangement. The reasons are security-related and also to ensure the island does not become just another tourist destination. The memorial erected on the island by the victims' families is private. A public memorial center is located in Oslo.

Ana, the director of a partner institution of the Council of Europe who runs youth workshops on Utøya in cooperation with Norway’s Ministry of Education, and I had, of course, scheduled our visit. After a few minutes of waiting, we were picked up by a tiny ferry — the same kind used on that fateful July 22 eight years earlier, when the killer Breivik arrived on the island in a police uniform, pretending to check the security situation after a bombing that same morning in Oslo, which had already claimed eight lives.

The first impression of Utøya is that it’s like a postcard-perfect image of Scandinavian idyll. Above the dock sits a white wooden villa — the former holiday home of pre-war industrialist and politician Jens Kristian Bratlie, who in the 1930s became a supporter of Vidkun Quisling and his Nazi-inspired Nasjonal Samling party. Bratlie’s far-right politics did not prevent him from selling the estate to a youth organization representing his ideological opponents.

The second impression is how small the island is. You can walk across it in five minutes, around it in fifteen. It's no larger than Congress Square in Ljubljana. On July 22, 2011, over five hundred young people were camping there, many of them just teenagers — fifteen, sixteen years old. From the moment the shooting began to the arrival of the first police officers, an hour and a half passed. Ninety minutes for Breivik to carry out his infernal plan, foretold and explained in detail in his 1,500-page “manifesto.”

They say words don’t kill. Perhaps. But this 1,500-page document of hatred was written precisely to announce and justify his crime. The mass murder of teenagers — whose deaths, in the killer’s own non-lethal words, were necessary to save Western civilization.

Just above the dock is a soccer field. The summer tournament held there is a yearly highlight. Above the field, next to a small building where Leon Trotsky once briefly stayed before his fatal trip to Mexico, stands a red barn that now displays photos of the people, times, and events that have marked the island through the decades. In one, I spot my former boss, the now-retired Secretary General of the Council of Europe, Thorbjørn Jagland, cleaning latrines in extravagantly tight shorts. In another, an equally youthful Jens Stoltenberg poses next to a stolen signpost for the regional NATO headquarters. Under Stoltenberg’s leadership, the young Labour activists were highly critical of Norway’s NATO membership.

I wonder, chuckling, what Jens is up to these days as I leave the barn. At the island’s highest point stands a modern glass building surrounded by wooden pilings. Hegnhuset — the House that Protects. 495 wooden poles for the 495 survivors. They stand to preserve the memory of the dead.

Inside this structure — whose roof rests on 69 pillars — is one of the few buildings not demolished after the attack: the old dining hall, where thirteen of Breivik’s victims died. Everything remains. Bullet holes. Open windows through which some escaped to safety. Pale spots on the walls where the blood of those less lucky was scrubbed away with chemicals. A bullet-riddled piano once used to celebrate birthdays during the summer camps. Flowers and messages left on the birthdays of children who, during the attack, tried in vain to hide behind that very piano.

The cheerfulness from the barn vanishes, replaced by unspeakable horror. Those who visit the island often have a name for the emotional whiplash. In and out. Constantly. Idyllic nature and bloodstains. Light and darkness. Laughter and pain. Love and death. In and out.

This emotional vortex was intentionally woven into the island’s rebirth. People come here to remember the victims and talk about what happened — but also to laugh, to be together, to play soccer, and to love. The wish of the victims’ families was not to let Breivik destroy Utøya and everything the island had meant to their children.

At the entrance to the dining hall is a wall with a timeline of that fateful day and transcripts of text messages:

“Mom, Dad, I don’t think we’ll ever see each other again. I love you…”

“Mom, I’m scared I’m going to die…”

“Mom, whatever happens, I want you to know I love you…”

“Call me so I can come to you…”

“Please, call me so I can come to you…”

“Call me… Call me…”

Do words kill? I don’t know — some say they don’t. But when hatred kills children, their words can break your heart.

Next to the old dining hall, a workshop on hate speech is underway, using a methodology developed by the Council of Europe. Two dozen fourteen-year-olds from all over Norway, with their teachers, are discussing what hate speech is — and what it isn’t. Where does comparing people to rats lead us? How should society respond to public expressions of intolerance and hatred? Why can’t bans be the only answer? Can we be tolerant of intolerance? What can each individual do? Responses among peers. Responses within families. Society’s responsibility.

With a maturity many politicians would envy, these young people search for answers. Breivik represents right-wing extremism, which today is the fastest-growing terrorist threat in many Western countries — but the students also discuss other forms of extremism, from white supremacism to its mirror images. Back at school, they will continue these discussions with their classmates.

On the island’s western side, I walk along the “Lovers’ Path” toward the memorial. The shoreline here rises steeply above the lake; below are rocks, and the opposite shore is much farther than on the eastern side, where the killer came from. For decades a favorite spot for first loves and teenage kisses, Lovers’ Path saw the bloodiest toll. Those caught there during the rampage had nowhere to run. Love and death. In and out.

The memorial was built by the victims’ families. A simple steel ring suspended in the branches of three trees. Sunlight shines now through one name etched in metal, then another. Flowers transplanted from all corners of the island bloom on the forest floor — in July, the month of the tragedy, they attract butterflies.

I slowly head back to the ferry. In my thoughts are the lines of Norwegian poet Frode Grytten, written just days after the tragedy. They are inscribed on the wall of the old dining hall — and the last line also on the ramp leading onto the ferry. It is with this thought that we come to the island, and with this thought that we leave it:

“Another July 22 will come,

for other beating hearts

the ferry will arrive,

tents will be pitched on the green grass,

the kiss of morning sun will awaken the island.

Hey, hey — it’s time to rise and change the world.”

I don’t know whether words can kill. Some say they can’t. But I do know this: the words and actions of good people restore hope in a society where humanity is stronger than hate.

It is time to change the world.