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Anders Behring Breivik's Seventy-Five Minutes on Utøya1

First coming costume party this autumn, dress up as a police officer. Arrive with insignias :-) Will be awesome as people will be very astonished :-)2

The Killings at the Main Building, 17:17–17:22

Disguised as ‘PST officer Martin Nilsen’, Anders Behring Breivik arrived on Utøya with the MS Thorbjørn between a quarter past and twenty past five on Friday 22 July 2011, together with, among others, Even Kleppen from Norwegian People's Aid and Monica Bøsei, the camp manager. He had white earplugs and kept taking small sips from the straw leading out of the hydration pack on his back. The ferry docked at the pier below the main building. The captain, who was also Bøsei's partner, lowered the ramp and helped Breivik ashore with his heavy Pelican case, which contained ammunition, diesel fuel and smoke grenades, among other things. The captain put the case in the boot of a car, which he drove a few tens of metres up the track and parked at the back of the main building.

In the meantime, Even Kleppen left the island's security officer and walked across the volleyball court towards the Norwegian People's Aid camp by the Schoolhouse, on the south of the island. Monica Bøsei went over to the security guard and introduced him to Martin Nilsen from the PST. Breivik had asked her to bring together all the guards on the island. The security guard was a policeman and began asking questions, but Breivik interrupted him and suggested that they should walk up to the main building. The three of them walked over the lawn past a large, orange inflatable mattress, with Breivik at the rear. Breivik drew his pistol, a 9 mm Glock 34 semi-automatic handgun, and aimed it at the security guard.

‘You mustn't point that at him,’ Bøsei said.

Breivik shot the security guard first and then Monica, who tried to run off. They were both shot in the head at close range and immediately fell to the ground. It was 17:21. An AUF guard tried to run away but Breivik shot him and followed up with a head shot.

Over the course of about seventy minutes on Utøya, Anders Behring Breivik caused the death of sixty-nine people, sixty-seven of whom died of gunshot wounds. His victims were aged between fourteen and fifty-one. Thirty-two of them were under eighteen, and the average age of those who died was nineteen. Another thirty-three people were shot and wounded during the massacre. Almost all of the dead and many of the wounded were hit several times, since Breivik fired back-up shots at his victims' heads. The police found 189 empty cartridges on the island and believed that he had fired a total of 297 shots: 176 with the rifle and 121 with the pistol. Breivik killed and injured 100 people (excluding the two who died of other causes) and, according to the charges against him, they were hit by at least 247 shots. Some of the shots may have gone through more than one person, but it appears that the vast majority of the shots Breivik fired must have hit their target. The high percentage of hits is proof of a calm, determined and effective murderer. According to the police, there were 569 people on the island, 12 per cent of whom were killed, which means that approximately one in eight people died. A further 10 per cent were wounded, most of whom were hit by gunfire, while others (such as Ida and Stine) had broken bones, cuts or other injuries serious enough that they were admitted to hospital.

How could the worst peacetime massacre committed by a single person with handguns have been carried out by a person who, in so many other respects, was unable to accomplish things, who was a social, occupational and educational fiasco? On average, Breivik killed one person every single minute during the massacre. There is something puzzling about the massacre on Utøya, something that defies analysis even after the most thorough court case in Norwegian history. It is difficult to scrutinize pure evil calmly and objectively – the impulse is to turn your head away – but perhaps that is precisely why it is important to attempt to understand at least some of the elements that had a role to play in the tragedy.

A combination of factors contributed to the massacre taking on the proportions that it did. One category of factors has to do with Breivik's unique and complex psyche and personality. A second category is made up of tactical reasons, the methods and tools Breivik used on Utøya. Many of these are described in a section of his compendium entitled ‘Applying deceptive means in urban guerrilla warfare’,3 in which he also discusses infiltrating Utøya, described as ‘the youth camp connected to the largest political party’. A third category of factors consists of circumstances beyond Breivik's control that influenced the course of events, some of which contributed to extending the scope of the massacre, while others limited it.

Breivik later described how he struggled against his will as he stood on the grass together with Bøsei and the security guard, and that he overcame his physical reluctance to kill in order to take the first two lives. ‘At that moment, a minute lasted for a decade,’ he explained to the court-appointed psychiatrists, as ‘in biological terms this is something the body tries to avoid’.4 In this situation, as with the meticulous planning of the attacks and a series of other situations throughout his life, it is evident that Breivik was capable of brief moments of unusual self-discipline and controlled behaviour.

The most striking aspect of his own statements about Utøya to the police and the court-appointed forensic psychiatrists is how he describes himself as a machine or a robot. After he crossed a boundary with the first deaths, or ‘activated’, as he called it, he saw the rest of the massacre as ‘like a game on TV’.5 He described comprehensive stress reactions, but in a kind of language as if he were talking about an overloaded computer. His brain was ‘bombarded’ by impressions and he ‘lost access to its databases’, images of grotesque details were ‘deleted’ and he gradually continued on ‘autopilot’.6 Towards the end, he considered ‘self-terminating’ but surrendered instead.7

This robotic, mechanical nature is also linked to the most prominent aspect of Breivik's behaviour as the survivors saw it: he was so calm. Anne-Berit Stavenes described the sound of his footsteps as ‘the only calm footsteps on the island’. The other survivors said similar things. The gunman's shots hit their targets because he was calm and composed. The court-appointed psychiatrists Husby and Sørheim related Breivik's peculiar depiction of himself as a machine to a condition known as alexithymia, which means an inability to recognize or describe one's own feelings. Alexithymia is possibly his most characteristic feature (or symptom) and has affected him since childhood. The question is what does this alexithymia entail? Is he unable to articulate his feelings? Has the connection between feelings and language been severed?

On one level he does have feelings, but, when he cried in court or became angry, these emotions were triggered respectively by his avatar (in his propaganda film) and by what he perceived as personal offence (‘character assassination’, as he put it). Breivik's feelings are evidently linked only to his grandiose self-image, with no trace of any others. If this really was a trait that had persisted from when he was with the child psychiatrists at the SSBU (who noticed that he was unable to express feelings in spite of having well-developed linguistic abilities) until 22 July 2011, it can be questioned whether it is due to a genetic disorder in the brain's development or to damage resulting from the reactive attachment disorder the SSBU believed they had observed in 1983.

When he saw things as ‘like a game on TV’, this also had to do with Breivik leaping into his avatar, the knight figure he had spent the previous five years constructing. On Utøya, he became ‘Justiciar Knight Andrew Berwick’, or the ‘perfect knight’, as he described himself to the court-appointed psychiatrists.8 ‘Violence is the mother of change,’ as he wrote.9 ‘Humility and modesty are also important virtues,’ Breivik told Husby and Sørheim. ‘I know of no more perfect knight [than myself].’10 Even though, according to Breivik, many of his impressions were ‘deleted’, he did notice details that were not as he had expected. The sound of the head shots was different from impact sounds he knew from TV series or films.11 Shattered heads and blood pumping out of gunshot wounds also left an impression on him.

The Killings in the Café Building and by the Love Path, 17:22–17:44

After killing the first people by the main building, Breivik went on up the hill towards the Café Building. He was holding a semi-automatic Ruger Mini-14 rifle, he had extra-large thirty-round magazines in his combat vest, and he was wearing his pistol in the holster on his thigh. As he came over the top of the steep slope, he began shooting young people in the yard with his rifle. Many were hit, and panic broke out. At one point, Breivik looked directly at Anzor and shot behind him as the seventeen-year-old from Lillestrøm ran into the woods. Anzor ran to the western tip of the island, but there were not many options to go any further from there.

One of the reasons for the extent of the massacre was of course that Breivik chose to attack an island. This delayed the police response and made it difficult for his victims to escape: many youngsters were killed at the water's edge and on the beaches. At the same time, he hoped, his bomb had focused all attention on Oslo, including the attention of the police and the hospitals. ‘Make a sound in the east, then strike in the west,’ he wrote in the compendium. ‘Hide a knife behind a smile.’12

Breivik went on from the yard in front of the kiosk down the gravel track, which went along the side of the large Café Building towards the campsite. At the same moment, Anne-Berit Stavenes went out onto the top step and saw what she thought was a policeman coming along the track. She was about to call out to him but instead witnessed him shooting a girl, who fell to the ground. Anne-Berit went back. But to start with she had felt the same reaction as everyone else on the island: she wanted to turn to the policeman for help and advice.

Breivik used people's trust in the police, and really their trust in society in general, as a weapon. Perhaps this was particularly effective, as most Norwegians have, by global standards, an unusually high level of trust in the police and in one another. Breivik made use of this trust, or social capital. With the help of a police uniform, he obtained access to the island and access to the young people who came to him when he called. When he began shooting, he caused not only death but also deep confusion. By using people's trust as a weapon, he spread disbelief, fear and distrust. As the AUF members thought it was the police shooting at them just after the explosion in Oslo, they began thinking that a coup was taking place and that the camping tourists and rescuers in boats might be involved. While they saw one man shooting, many people thought that the PST or the police in general were attacking them, and that the whole community could be involved. Any camping tourist could be a murderer in disguise.

Breivik went on past the Café Building, where Ida Spjelkavik glanced out of the window in the group meeting room and saw him coming with his rifle raised, shooting a boy in the chest at the corner of the building. The semi-automatic weapons Breivik used were legal, and he had a licence for both of them. The Glock was a competition model, while the Ruger was a .223 calibre flat-shooting hunting weapon, which is legal for hunting roe deer and lynx, but not big game; .223 rounds are relatively small, cheap and easy to carry in large quantities. Breivik used expanding soft-point rounds (bullets with lead tips instead of nickel casing), which inflicted major tissue damage on those who were hit.13

It might be thought that an automatic weapon, which has a much faster rate of fire, would have been even more lethal, but, since Breivik was mainly shooting directed shots and not at random, his semi-automatic weapons were sufficiently effective for his objective. His extra-large magazines reduced the number of times he had to reload, and reloading could put him in a potentially vulnerable position. Furthermore, since he had two weapons, one of them was always loaded. Breivik also had a third weapon, which he called his ‘weapon of mass destruction’: the Tyrifjord. His plan was to drive the young people into the water so that they would drown. Given the distance to the shore, as well as the air and water temperature that day, it was a plausible scenario. For a long time, Breivik thought that the fjord had taken a large proportion of those who died. When in custody and asked by the psychiatrists about the sixty-nine dead, Breivik estimated that he had shot forty, while twenty-nine had drowned.14

Instead of carrying on down towards the campsite, as Anne-Berit and Ida thought, Breivik turned round and went up the concrete steps and into the Café Building. From the doorway between the Little Hall and the corridor, Arshad saw the blond-haired policeman come up the stairs and shoot into the Little Hall. From the window in the group meeting room, Ida saw complete panic break out in the packed hall. Breivik came into the hall and shot the wounded youngsters who were left and those who were playing dead or lying paralysed on the floor. He carried on through the door into the Main Hall. He was surprised that many people did not run when he came in but lay still. Completely calm, he changed his magazine while standing next to the piano in the Main Hall, before continuing to shoot the young people in the head from a distance of 20 to 60 centimetres, according to himself. From the Main Hall, he went into the corridor, back towards the Little Hall, and killed the boy lying outside the toilets where Arshad was hidden behind the wall. Instead of looking behind the door, Breivik carried on into the Little Hall and back out the door to the campsite. Seven people were dead in the Little Hall, and five in the Main Hall.

Throughout the seventy minutes, Breivik was careful not to go into constricted areas. The one time he broke this rule and entered the Café Building, he used people's panic to move them ahead of him so that he avoided ending up in a jumbled mass of people and always kept a distance from the young people as they escaped. His whole appearance was terrifying. He was dressed in black with two visible weapons, one of which was large and military-looking, a hydration pack on his back (he was constantly thirsty) and a bulging combat vest packed with several large magazines, making him appear ‘robust’ and ‘robot-like’, as Ida described him.

During the massacre in the Café Building, Breivik used tactics of shock and dominance. He wanted to frighten people and create panic. One of his methods was to shoot salvos with the Ruger, which made more noise and meant that he covered a larger area with bullets. That was how he scared people in front of the Café Building and how he scared people when he went back out into the campsite and shot at the youngsters he saw in the wooded area on the other side. A few times he shouted taunts at the AUF members (‘You're going to die today, Marxists!’ or ‘You're all going to die!’) to scare them and drive them off into the water. The effects of his tactics were so great that many people thought there was more than one gunman on the island, which might also have influenced the police to stay on the mainland while the massacre was ongoing. At the same time, Breivik did not lose his head during the massacre, even when he was shouting; he kept calm, did not waste his ammunition and was careful not to get into difficult situations – for example by not checking in the toilets in the Café Building.

The head shots Breivik aimed at the injured and those who were playing dead formed one of the most disturbing aspects of the massacre. The fact that he did this systematically was one of the main reasons that the ratio between the dead and the wounded was two to one (sixty-seven dead and thirty-three wounded), which meant an unusually high proportion of deaths. When James Holmes attacked a cinema in Aurora, Colorado, on 20 July 2012, the ratio was one to five (twelve dead and fifty-eight injured). Breivik's deadly efficiency may appear to be due to his being a good shot. Perhaps he was a good shot, but most of all he was able to keep calm and to get into as favourable a position as possible vis-à-vis his victims – in other words, point-blank range.

A good killer does not necessarily have to be a good shot in the sense that he is good at hitting clay pigeons in the air or small bull's eyes from a hundred metres away. The decisive factor is the killer's mentality. Shooting from a distance at people running away is different to killing young people lying helpless on the ground and begging for their lives. Not many people would be able to do that. Breivik had prepared himself for it in his compendium. In addition to beheading, he was fascinated by head shots. Not only did he describe a range of execution scenes, including ‘celebratory lynching’, he also painted out the scenarios awaiting him on the island. ‘You must therefore embrace and familiarise yourself with the concept of killing women, even very attractive women,’ he wrote, advising those who were not capable of doing this to start a blog instead.15

When reading the compendium, it is often difficult to determine which parts are neutral preparations for mass murder and which are emotionally or possibly sexually charged fantasies about the same thing. Even though Breivik described the seventy minutes as ‘hell’,16 the forensic psychologists noted that he appeared to be pleased with the thought of the massacre he had carried out. What he said about Utøya and what his expressions told were two different things, according to the psychiatrists. Perhaps his smile expressed pride in the massacre, which was a ‘military success’.17 Nevertheless, his behaviour on the island, including his meticulous use of head shots, reinforces the suspicion that a sadistic inclination contributed to the extent of the massacre, as do the many sadistic images in the compendium and his focus on gruesome details when talking with the police and psychiatrists afterwards: the impact sounds of shots, the sight of severe wounds.

‘He says that it was “hell”, but his emotional response is inadequate,’ wrote Husby and Sørheim, ‘since he makes a peculiarly stiff and inward-facing smile when he speaks about certain details.’18 These details were apparently connected to things such as executing people who played dead. ‘There was a lot of ammo wasted having to fire so many head shots,’ he explained.19 The smile described by the court-appointed psychiatrists is like an echo of the ‘feigned, aversive smile’ the SSBU psychologist described in the first portrait of Breivik as a four-year-old child.

After killing the people in the Café Building, Breivik went down the steps and shot at the young people on the other side of the campsite. He had a red dot sight and a scope on his rifle and hit several of the youngsters, even though they were at a range of 50 to 100 metres and he was shooting from the hip. He also had a laser pointer mounted underneath the Glock. A green spot of light marked where the shots would hit, which might have helped him when he fired head shots. Breivik crossed the campsite and went up onto the Love Path. There he encountered eleven young people lying in a close huddle up against the wire mesh fence, squeezed up like a covey of grouse along the path. Breivik shot them from right to left. One of them survived. Among the dead was Bano Rashid.

Breivik carried on south along the path, coming to a steep bank down to the water's edge, down which many AUF members had climbed. Breivik stood up on the path and shot at arms and legs sticking out from behind the rocks. He was trying to get them out of their hiding places. Many were injured; some tumbled out into the open and were killed. ‘You hear people hitting the water and rocks,’ as one witness who hid on the slope recalled.20 A number of the AUF survivors described Breivik laughing and shouting while he shot. ‘He said “Yesss!” “Yeah!” “Bull's eye!” ’ as one girl remembered.21 A player might react like that in a computer game, a well-trained soldier might react like that in combat, and perhaps a sadist would too. Still, Breivik remained calm and did not go down to shoot the victims in the head. Perhaps he was unsure of being able to stay standing upright on the steep slope.

From the Schoolhouse to Stoltenberget, 17:44–18:10

At around a quarter to six, Breivik arrived at the Schoolhouse, where Even Kleppen sat next to the closed door. Even heard the shots coming closer, moving away again and then eventually coming right up to them when Breivik killed a boy and a girl in the woods just outside. The crisis management expert in Norwegian People's Aid had bet that the policeman who was shooting would not risk attacking a barricaded building, and the six People's Aid volunteers from Hadeland had gathered forty-one young people in the building before shutting the door and putting mattresses and tables behind the windows. It was quiet outside, and Even had an unpleasant feeling in his stomach. The window in the door had bars between its panes of grooved glass, a surmountable obstacle for a determined intruder.

Even turned his head and peered out through the glass in the door. All he could see through the grooves was light, shadows and vague contours. A dark silhouette was approaching, treading calmly. ‘He's coming,’ Even whispered, crawling away from the door and into the corner.

He heard somebody grasp the door handle, then there were two ear-splitting shots. Glass shattered. Breivik shot into the cabin through the door window but without hitting anybody. Even stood half-way up. There was a table nearby and a fire extinguisher on the wall. They were potential weapons. If the gunman came in, the only option was to attack him. Even was tense. It fell completely silent outside. Then he heard more shots, but this time further away.

One of the external causes that limited the extent of the massacre was the conduct of the Hadeland group from Norwegian People's Aid. Their crisis management expert, Guttorm Skovly, was right that Breivik would not risk entering a space where he was not in control. Skovly had taken part in a number of emergency exercises, including a couple to do with terrorism. He had learnt that terrorists rarely attack places where they do not have the full picture. In the Café Building, Breivik had used shock to drive the young people away ahead of him and had made panic do the job for him. It was different in the Schoolhouse, so he left with unfinished business.

One of the weapons in Breivik's tactical arsenal was hope. As long as the youngsters had hope of escaping, they would flee instead of resisting. As long as they fled, he could kill those he caught and chase the rest into the water, where he assumed many of them would drown. He organized the massacre according to this principle, which he described in the compendium thus: ‘Cornered prey will often mount a final desperate attack. To prevent this you let the enemy believe he still has a chance for freedom. His will to fight is thus dampened by his desire to escape.’22

When he got back to the main building and to the Pelican case in the back of the ferry captain's car, Breivik stocked up on more magazines. He went down to the pier and shot at the Reiulf, which was full of fleeing AUF members, and at another boat picking up swimmers. He threw one of his smoke grenades into the barn by the main building. The second grenade exploded outside the main building. The orange smoke rose up above the treetops and could be seen by Allan and Reidun sitting in their cabin on the other side of the water. At around six o'clock, Breivik walked from the Café Building, past the so-called NATO Toilet, in the direction of the small wooded area at Stoltenberget, the cliff at the northern tip of the island. From there he shot at the young people standing on the beach, with bullets hitting the water to the north of the island towards where Erik Øvergaard and his friend were in their boat, approximately 100 metres from land. The efforts of people such as Erik Øvergaard and Allan Søndergaard Jensen were the decisive external factor limiting the extent of the massacre. The spontaneous civilian rescue operation saved a great number of lives that evening.

After having killed another group of young people at Stoltenberget, Breivik called the police to surrender. He picked up the mobile phone of a youngster who had either died or fled and got through on the emergency number 112. Breivik was out of breath and said he wanted to hand himself over. The policeman who answered had no time to enter negotiations before the call was cut off. Breivik did not answer when the policeman tried to call back. One of the external factors that contributed to the massacre not being stopped sooner was the fact that Breivik had forgotten his own phone. He called the police from other phones and did not know the numbers he was calling from. When he phoned from Stoltenberget, or near there, he must have put down or lost the phone he was using, perhaps because he started shooting again. If he had remembered his own phone, the chance of entering real surrender negotiations would have been higher. If Breivik had surrendered when he was on the cliffs at Stoltenberget, around twenty lives would have been spared.

From the Pump House to the Arrest, 18:10–18:34

From Stoltenberget, Breivik crossed the sandy beach in the cove at Bolsjevika and set off on the so-called Love Path, which led south through thick woods and steep, undulating terrain. At about a quarter past six, he emerged out of the woods by the pump house, where there was a large group of young people. He introduced himself again as a policeman, telling them that the culprit had been caught and that they had to gather together to be evacuated. Then he began shooting. While Anne-Berit heard what was happening from her hiding place up in the woods, Stine witnessed the slaughter begin. Breivik carried out the killings very calmly and once again with control shots to the head. He killed fourteen people in very little time before running on past Anne-Berit and in towards the centre of the island by the wash house.

By this point, the killings had been going on for almost sixty minutes. Most of the young people had heard that it was a policeman who was shooting, and many of them had also seen him. Nevertheless, he still managed to trick some (such as Stine) and keep others passive by introducing himself as a policeman when he emerged from the trees. His ruse and his disguise were still able to have an effect because many of the youngsters had either not managed to form a picture of what was happening or were unable to do so. By playing on the natural denial that sets in when something unexpected or inconceivable happens (Ida heard the young ones in the woods wondering out loud: ‘What's going on?’), Breivik was able to recycle his baiting method several times over the course of the hour or so he moved around the island.

After a detour towards the centre of the island, Breivik went back onto the Love Path near the steep western tip of the island. Ida Spjelkavik heard him shooting at a boat while she was in the opening of one of the caves in the rock wall, and she saw the boat turn away and disappear out across the water. At this point, Breivik must have realized that the Tyrifjord, his ‘weapon of mass destruction’, was instead saving many young people, but it is unclear whether he was shooting at the boats in an effort to hit them or to frighten them.

Over the last half hour of the rampage, Breivik moved about quickly and over a wide area. According to his own assertions, he expected that the police might arrive at any moment, at least from when he first called the emergency number to surrender. It might seem as if he did not know how to relate to the police: on the one hand he phoned them to surrender, while on the other hand he moved tactically to avoid them. He kept away from the eastern side of the island because he was afraid of snipers. By moving quickly and over a large area, he created uncertainty about where he was. The first team from the Delta Unit ran north along the island, apparently because of tip-offs from youngsters they met, and they found dead and wounded young people by the rock at Stoltenberget, but not Breivik, who at that point was on his way towards the island's southern end. Breivik's pattern of movement and his attempt to surrender were probably both due to his being afraid. He thought that the police would shoot him. When all was said and done, he was ‘not that keen’ on dying. His behaviour suggested that he wanted to live.

Breivik got through on the emergency number 112 for a second time at 18:26 and spoke with the control room at Drammen police station. He introduced himself again as ‘Commander Breivik’ and said that he wished to surrender, but the disorientated policeman was unable to keep the conversation going. He could not call Breivik back either, as the number had not come up on his screen. Breivik was probably calling from a mobile without a functioning SIM card. By this point, the NRK helicopter was circling the island, and Breivik has claimed that he considered shooting at it but decided not to. Through the pine woods and the hazel bushes he spotted a huddle of youngsters at the southern tip of the island.

Marius Arnesen's camera witnessed the final killings Breivik carried out at the island's southern end. The sun broke through the cloud cover just as the figure dressed in black came out of the scrub.

‘The madman's been caught,’ he said, and then began shooting.

He killed five people at the southern end. A young boy, the son of the security officer, confronted Breivik as he shot. ‘You killed my dad,’ the eleven-year-old shouted. ‘Why do you want to kill me too?’23

Yet again, the scene ended with Breivik firing control shots to kill the wounded young people, while he refrained from shooting at the boy in the water or at the eleven-year-old. Why did he spare some of them? When interviewed by police, he explained that he ‘skipped two of them who looked very young’, presumably the security guard's son and another boy. But he also failed to kill some AUF members. Perhaps it was chance, but, by letting a few people live in between his systematic bouts of slaughter, it could seem that Breivik was further underlining the message that he had command over life and death. Andrew Berwick, the perfect knight: judge, jury and executioner in one. One fundamental precondition for Breivik's terrible actions was his total lack of empathy, or ‘serious empathy deficit’, as the court-appointed psychiatrists call it. It is difficult to comprehend, but it seems as if the massacre did not affect him psychologically.

Husby and Sørheim indicated that Breivik was conspicuously unmoved during the reconstruction on Utøya, when he retraced the route he followed on 22 July and recalled the killing spree in detail. He appeared as if he were carrying out a ‘building site inspection’.24 When the psychiatrists asked him about the victims he killed, and Breivik probably realized they were hoping to hear about his feelings and ideas about the massacre as well as how he experienced it, he answered: ‘I felt traumatized every second, with blood and brain matter spraying everywhere.’25 He focuses on his own experience, on how it was not easy for him. The notion that he saw the massacre as ‘like a game on TV’ also paints a picture of his complete inability to see his victims as people.

Breivik's empathy deficit may to some extent have been reinforced by conscious self-suggestion over time, by ‘dehumanizing the enemy’, as he put it to the psychiatrists.26 He claimed that he meditated every day, in a similar fashion to al-Qaeda terrorists praying five times daily. His empathy deficit may to some extent have been further reinforced by steroids, excitement and an ephedrine rush during his rampage, but Breivik basically appears to be suffering from what the British psychologist Simon Baron-Cohen calls ‘empathy erosion’. According to Baron-Cohen, evil is a function of a complete failure of empathy.27

Baron-Cohen describes empathy as consisting of two elements: the ability to interpret the feelings of others and the ability to respond appropriately. People with serious personality disorders can normally interpret other people's feelings but often will not respond in an appropriate, empathic manner. People with autism may not initially be able to interpret the feelings of others but, even though they do not immediately understand that other people have their own feelings and needs, they can learn to respond empathically if they are at least motivated to do so. A lack of empathy does not necessarily mean moral deficiency. People with Asperger's syndrome often have strong feelings about rules and morality. Some personality disorders, however, can lead to destructive and selfish behaviour. The dangerous element of narcissistic personality disorder is precisely the lack of empathy, in the sense of being able to respond appropriately. This is the trait that makes the difference between people with strange thoughts about their own significance and those who are willing to destroy or to kill in order to gain recognition and status.

Some of the days during Breivik's trial in the spring of 2012 were dedicated to the dead and injured from Utøya. The testimonies were moving, and their effect could be seen on everybody present in Courtroom 250, including the judges, the prosecutors and the counsel for the defence. People cried, and only the man in the dock remained unmoved. On one level, a person with impaired empathy is almost invulnerable, as he or she is uninfluenced by the feelings of others. On another level, that person is extremely lonely. The primate brain is equipped with so-called mirror neurons, which are activated both when we perform an action ourselves and when we see others carrying out an action. If you see somebody yawn, it is easy to yawn yourself. A baby will start to cry if it hears other babies crying, and it is the same mirror effect that makes fear contagious.

Baron-Cohen believes that the ‘mirror neuron system’ is a primitive but important component in human empathy (which is also made up of higher cognitive components).28 As Breivik was apparently completely unmoved by the strong feelings surrounding him, it could be suspected that his imperturbability might stem from more than Bushido meditation alone. It is, however, not possible to say anything with certainty about whether his behaviour might be due to an impairment in his mirror neuron system or whether it might be connected to weaknesses in what Baron-Cohen calls the brain's ‘empathy circuit’.

A video camera on land also captured the killings at the southern end of the island, and how the Delta Unit officers by the pier were startled and ducked when they heard the shots. Five policemen then ran south along the island, across the volleyball court and along the gravel track to the Schoolhouse. Inside the Schoolhouse, from his position by the wall, Even heard several voices shouting warnings and orders.

‘Armed police!’

‘Freeze!’

‘On the ground!’

In the woods outside the Schoolhouse, Breivik put down his gun. Instead of stopping and getting down as he was ordered, Breivik walked towards the five Delta Unit officers. A policeman noticed the cords dangling from Breivik's earplugs, and started to squeeze his trigger. He thought Breivik was wearing an explosive vest, and aimed for the head. Breivik's life was saved at the last moment, when the officer closest to him shouted out that he was only wearing an equipment vest. The police arrested him at approximately 18:34. By then, a little over an hour had passed since the police had first been alerted to gunfire on Utøya, and approximately forty minutes since the first two policemen arrived at the Thorbjørn's pier on the other side of the water. The external factor that contributed most to the massacre taking on such proportions was that the police's immediate action was delayed by their lack of transportation, choice of rendezvous point and unclear areas of responsibility.

‘My brothers,’ Breivik said to the police as they handcuffed him. As Justiciar Knight Andrew Berwick, he had become a member of the brotherhood of alpha males. ‘Have you got a plaster?’ he added.

Breivik had a cut on his finger.

The Perfect Executioner

‘Cruel but necessary’ was how Breivik later summarized his seventy-five minutes on Utøya. It was not just his aesthetics and racial theories that linked Breivik to Nazism. There were clear similarities between his own executioner ethics and the ethical imperative the SS Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler described to his men in connection with the extermination of the Jews. When Breivik writes that ‘refusing to apply necessary cruelty is a betrayal of the people whom you wish to protect’,29 it could be the Reichsführer himself talking. The men of the SS had to be tough, pure and ‘gnadenlos’ [without mercy], according to Himmler.

In a speech in Poznań in October 1943, which mentioned the extermination of the Jews and was one of the main pieces of evidence against the Nazis in the Nuremberg Trials, Himmler unabashedly described how awful it was to stand next to mass graves ‘when 100 bodies lie together, when there are 500, or when there are 1,000’.30 At the same time, Himmler stresses that such atrocities are both morally just and a duty towards society:

We have the moral right, we had the duty to our people to do it, to kill this people who wanted to kill us. But we do not have the right to enrich ourselves with even one fur, with one Mark, with one cigarette, with one watch, with anything. That we do not have. Because at the end of this, we don't want, because we exterminated the bacillus, to become sick and die from the same bacillus.

I will never see it happen, that even one bit of putrefaction comes in contact with us, or takes root in us. On the contrary, where it might try to take root, we will burn it out together. But altogether we can say: we have carried out this most difficult task for the love of our people. And we have taken on no defect within us, in our soul, or in our character.31

According to Himmler, their work as executioners made the SS tough, but at the same time it was a source of secret honour. Being tough, merciless and pure was the ideal for a man of the SS. This blended aesthetics and ethics together in a notion of the consummate executioner. The execution role of the SS highlighted that they were the chosen superhuman few sacrificing themselves to purge the German Volkskörper of the Jews. Breivik's Templar knight is a corresponding form of superhuman living beyond common ethics and morality. Himmler laments that the 80 million ‘upright Germans’ all know a Jew they like. Even if they accept that Jews are swine to be exterminated, they all know of an exception, but 80 million exceptions would mean the end of the ‘necessary’ but cruel operation needed to purify the German Volkskörper of Jewish contagion.

Himmler favours a consistent policy with no distinctions, exceptions or doubt. Breivik points to a similar problem: ‘Many people have a Muslim neighbour who is a fine man, and from this empirical fact they conclude: Islam cannot be all that bad considering our friend Mustapha.’32 But this conclusion does not take into account the fundamentally aggressive characteristics of Islam, according to Breivik. Even though he dissociates himself from Nazism, many of his ideas are either inspired by or are practically carbon copies of Nazi conceptions of gender, aesthetics, ethics and politics. Regarding the ‘cruel nature’ of his planned operation, Breivik writes:

As a Justiciar Knight you are operating as a jury, judge and executioner on behalf of all free Europeans. Never forget that it is not only your right to act against the tyranny of the cultural Marxist/multiculturalist elites of Europe, it is your duty to do so.

There are situations in which cruelty is necessary, and refusing to apply necessary cruelty is a betrayal of the people whom you wish to protect. […] Once you decide to strike, it is better to kill too many than not enough, or you risk reducing the desired ideological impact of the strike. […] In many ways, morality has lost its meaning in our struggle. The question of good and evil is reduced to one simple choice. […] Survive or perish. Some innocent[s] will die in our operations as they are simply at the wrong place at the wrong time. Get used [to] the idea. The needs of the many will always surpass the needs of the few.33

Both Breivik and Himmler portray a situation in which common morality has been driven to the wall and self-defence is needed, as their people are on the verge of extinction. As far as they were concerned, the Jews wanted to kill the Germans, and Muslims and cultural Marxists want to kill the free Europeans. Rationalizing murder often entails pleading self-defence. The genocide in Bosnia was partly carried out to prevent what the Serbs saw as a genocide planned against them, or at least that was how some of their leaders explained it. Breivik and Himmler both envisage self-defence on a cosmic scale and hence a corresponding aestheticization and glorification of the role of executioner. The fact that they came to such similar conclusions, in spite of all the historical, social and cultural differences between Hoff in Oslo's West End in 2011 and Poznań in 1943, is to some extent connected to Himmler and Breivik both existing in an occidentalist tradition extending like a dark vein from the Napoleonic Wars to the present day. Their main difference was that, while the Nazis killed as a pack, Breivik acted alone on Utøya.

Evening on Utøya

While the police searched the island for other gunmen and gave first aid to badly wounded youngsters, the rescue operation continued with the boats. At about nine o'clock, the Norwegian Home Guard officer Even Frogh moored his bow rider next to the MS Thorbjørn at the pier on Utøya. He went onto the ferry, passing the dead body of a long-haired girl, and met his brother Stian and the ferry captain. Over the last few hours, Even had evacuated young people wounded and in shock from all along the island, and he had seen the twisted hands of the dead bodies along the shoreline. The impressions this left were impossible to imagine. Luckily the ferry captain's daughter had survived and was now in safety on Storøya.

The police had cleared the main building and asked Even and the captain, who were both familiar with the local area, to come inside. They walked past Monica's body on the lawn. While they sat in the office on the ground floor, the outside door opened, and Even heard the tramping of many footsteps. It was Breivik being led inside by the police. His hands were cuffed at the front. As Breivik went up the stairs to the first floor, he looked down at the ferry captain, who was staring back at him from the office. Breivik disappeared into the TV room on the first floor, where he was questioned by the police for the first time.

After having heard the recordings of this first interview, the court-appointed psychiatrists described Breivik as agitated, especially to begin with, while in later interviews and in court he appeared relatively stable. Breivik asked if he would be executed, and said that he thought his family would be executed too. He was fine with being ‘tortured for the rest of his life’, since his life was over. ‘My life ended when I ordained in Knights Templar Europe,’ he told the police.34 He made a number of demands during questioning, including that Norway should introduce the death penalty and the use of torture, as well as that he should be given access to a computer and to Wikipedia while in custody. ‘Today I'm the greatest monster since Quisling,’ Breivik said.35

Breivik's thoughts of suicide and his sadistic focus on torture and execution came across clearly, which was perhaps only natural after shooting young people in the head for over an hour. But he also said these things because he was still his avatar, Andrew Berwick, living out the fantasy he had dreamt of in his room. He expressed his wish to institutionalize torture and execution. Once again he described himself as dead, his ‘life ended’ when he had ordained as a knight a few years previously. Perhaps the fact he fantasized about his mother being executed (she was the only ‘family’ he had in Norway) was not so odd, as his compendium touched on the same idea.

Breivik characterized the massacre as ‘a stab in the heart for the Labour Party’,36 but he struggled to explain his grounds for killing AUF members. According to the categories he worked with for traitors, they belonged to category C, who were not considered targets to be killed, but on the other hand most of them would eventually move into category B, or maybe even A. He claimed that one of the reasons he had to carry out the massacre and the bombing was that he had been censored by Aftenposten.37 He later told the psychiatrists that the massacre was ‘an expression of my love for my own people and country’, and that his ‘love, empathy and conscience’ were over-developed.38

In the conversations with the psychiatrists, it is a narcissist speaking, just as it was Breivik the narcissist who wrote the compendium. The narcissistic personality disorder with which Breivik was diagnosed by the second team of psychiatrists, Tørrissen and Aspaas, could explain his eroded empathy and, to some extent, also how he was able to stay calm over seventy-five minutes: it was merely a matter of creating the perfect knight, of becoming his avatar. It was all about him, specifically about his self-image. The young people he killed were just as unreal and insignificant as the monsters he killed when he went questing in World of Warcraft. The massacre as such was not essentially different from the times when he graffiti-bombed Skøyen bus depot as a teenager. He wanted to be king; he had to be seen.

Personality disorders are relatively new concepts that are still disputed in psychiatry. There is an ongoing debate as to whether diagnosis of personality disorders should make use of specific categories, such as ‘narcissistic personality disorder’, or whether it should be based on the extent of dysfunctional or abnormal behaviour and ideas – in other words, creating a kind of composite profile. In Breivik's case, such a profile would probably feature a large dimension of narcissism but would also include dyssocial and paranoid traits, and perhaps elements of sadism, self-dramatization and compulsion as well.

According to the American Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, narcissistic personality disorder can be defined as:

A pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or behavior), need for admiration, and lack of empathy, beginning by early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts, as indicated by five (or more) of the following:

(1) has a grandiose sense of self-importance […]

(2) is preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success [or] power […]

(3) believes that he or she is ‘special’ and unique and can only be understood by, or should associate with, other special or high-status people (or institutions)

(4) requires excessive admiration

(5) has a sense of entitlement […]

(6) is interpersonally exploitative, i.e., takes advantage of others to achieve his or her own ends

(7) lacks empathy: is unwilling to recognize or identify with the feelings and needs of others

(8) is often envious of others or believes that others are envious of him or her

(9) shows arrogant, haughty behaviors or attitudes.39

Most of these criteria do seem to fit to some extent, with the possible exception of the eighth criterion, envy. Modern psychoanalysts such as Heinz Kohut have demonstrated that narcissism can have positive aspects and represents a necessary stage of personality development. People should like themselves. At the same time, a number of psychoanalysts and psychiatrists have linked so-called malignant narcissism to extreme cruelty. Everything in moderation, as the saying goes. Erich Fromm, who coined the term, called malignant narcissism ‘the quintessence of evil’.40

The influential psychoanalyst Otto Kernberg suggested that malignant narcissism should be understood as a blend of grandiosity and sadism, often linked with paranoid and antisocial elements (which the second pair of court-appointed psychiatrists found with Breivik), in which sadistic and destructive behaviour confirms a grandiose self-image. Malignant narcissism has not been included as a category in its own right in any of the major official diagnostic standards, but ‘sadistic psychopath’ is probably the popular expression that best reflects the essence of Fromm and Kernberg's term.

The American criminal justice experts Ronald Holmes and Stephen Holmes have tested Kernberg's theories against empirical data and have demonstrated a connection between narcissistic personality disorder and serial killers, who are among the most extreme of criminals.41 They distinguish between four kinds of serial killers (who are chiefly men). Visionary serial killers are psychotic and kill as directed by God or the devil. Mission killers see it as their duty to take the lives of certain categories of people – for example, prostitutes or homosexual people. Hedonistic killers have either sexual or financial motives, or both. The fourth type is more unusual and often appears to be driven by a desire to avenge childhood abuse. Power-control serial killers kill in order to affirm their control over victims. Murder is the most extreme form of demonstrating power, and the feeling of total control gives power-control serial killers satisfaction. The average serial killer has narcissistic personality disorder and a difficult family background, and might demonstrate traits from more than one of the categories mentioned above. His father is usually absent, but might also be authoritarian. His mother combines distance, allure and over-protectiveness.

From an early age, the average serial killer is interested in death, blood and violence. He is motivated primarily by his shame, which usually originates from a form of sexual conflict with his mother. ‘The backgrounds of many serial killers show a mother who was promiscuous, seductive, incestuous, and/or abusive,’ write Charles Brooks and Michael Church. ‘As a result, the killer is preoccupied with maternal sexuality and morality, which makes him feel ashamed of the mother. The killer then transforms this shame into rage and kills to erase painful memories from childhood.’42

The causes for personality disorders are generally complex, but there is a ‘robust’ connection between personality pathology and childhood abuse, according to Karterud, Wilberg and Urnes.43 The researchers point out some factors in particular that seem to be linked to the development of narcissistic personality disorder, including an unstable emotional attachment to parents in early childhood, emotional abuse, incest (especially between mother and son), a lack of boundary setting and being spoilt as a child.

The policemen who photographed Breivik on the first floor of the main building, wearing handcuffs and with his legs slightly apart, had no idea how much of this profile fitted him. Darkness was falling over the island, and their job was to find out if further attacks were imminent and whether Breivik had accomplices. Any further terrorist actions needed to be stopped.

While Breivik was being questioned, Even Frogh left the island for the last time shortly before eleven in the evening. He had assisted the ferry captain in evacuating young people from the island on the MS Thorbjørn; now he had to fetch his youngest daughter from friends. The civilian operation on Utøya was over. Darkness fell over the Tyrifjord and the slopes of Krokkleiva, wiping out the colours and contours in the landscape. Behind the bright light on the pier, Even glimpsed Utøya as a vague dark shape, a rupture on the surface of the water. When the helicopters left every now and then, he could hear the sound of dogs barking from the shoreline below the building. The police search was still ongoing.

When the helicopter with the thermal imaging camera disappeared at around midnight, it was completely dark. But mobile phones lit up around the island like fireflies; some in the grass, others among the rocks and on the cliffs. Various ringtones broke the silence and mobiles on silent rumbled as they vibrated on the stony ground. The displays carried on lighting up all night, like candles flickering erratically in the dark.44

Notes

All translated quotations from non-English-language texts are the translator's own, unless indicated otherwise. Quotations from Breivik's compendium are reproduced as in the original English text, although some minor changes have been made to punctuation and capitalization.

1 This chapter is based on Breivik's statements to police and accounts reproduced in Torgier Husby and Synne Sørheim's report (‘Rettspsykriatisk erklæring’ [Forensic psychiatric report], 29 November 2011 (the first psychiatric report), reproduced by VG: www.vg.no/nyheter/innenriks/22-juli/psykiatrisk_vurdering/), on his testimony in court, and on the review of the police investigation on Utøya as presented in court on 3 May 2012.

2 2083, p. 1470.

3 Ibid., pp. 917–21.

4 Husby and Sørheim, p. 152.

5 Ibid., p. 30.

6 Ibid., p. 152.

7 Ibid., p. 161.

8 Ibid., p. 122.

9 2083, p. 839.

10 Husby and Sørheim, p. 160.

11 Agnar Aspaas and Terje Tørrissen, ‘Rettspsykiatrisk erklæring’ [Forensic psychiatric report], 10 April 2012 (the second psychiatric report), reproduced by VG: www.vg.no/nyheter/innenriks/22-juli/psykiatrisk_vurdering/, pp. 39–40.

12 2083, p. 918.

13 Ibid., p. 1465; Husby and Sørheim, p. 152.

14 Husby and Sørheim, p. 153.

15 2083, p. 933.

16 Husby and Sørheim, p. 30.

17 Ibid., p. 21.

18 Ibid., p. 30.

19 Ibid.

20 Cited in Kristopher Schau, ‘Rettsnotater: Uke 10’ [Trial notes: Week 10], Morgenbladet, 21 June 2012, http://morgenbladet.no/samfunn/2012/kristopher_schau_rettsnotater_uke_10.

21 Tonje Brenna in the TV2 documentary Fire fortellinger fra Utøya [Four stories from Utøya].

22 2083, p. 919.

23 According to a witness who was shot and injured, and who overheard the incident.

24 Husby and Sørheim, p. 30.

25 Ibid., p. 153.

26 Ibid., p. 145.

27 Simon Baron-Cohen, Zero Degrees of Empathy: A New Theory of Human Cruelty (London: Allen Lane, 2011).

28 Ibid., pp. 25–6.

29 2083, p. 837.

30 The Complete Text of the Poznan Speech, 4 October 1943, The Holocaust History Project: www.holocaust-history.org/himmler-poznan/speech-text.shtml. Translation used with the permission of the Holocaust History Project (www.holocaust-history.org).

31 Ibid.

32 2083, p. 50.

33 Ibid., p. 837.

34 Husby and Sørheim, p. 15.

35 Ibid., p. 16.

36 Ibid., p. 23.

37 According to the newspaper's chief editor, Hilde Haugsgjerd, it did not appear that Aftenposten had received any contributions from Breivik.

38 Husby and Sørheim, pp. 141, 183.

39 Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th edn, text revision (Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Association, 2000), p. 717.

40 Erich Fromm, The Heart of Man: Its Genius for Good and Evil (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1965), p. 37.

41 Ronald M. Holmes and Stephen T. Holmes, Profiling Violent Crimes: An Investigative Tool, 3rd edn (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2002).

42 Charles I. Brooks and Michael A. Church, ‘Serial Murder and Mass Murder’, in Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Social Issues, vol. 2: Criminal Justice, ed. Michael Shally-Jensen (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2011), pp. 679–88 (at p. 684). See also Louis B. Schlesinger (ed.), Serial Offenders: Current Thought, Recent Findings (Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press, 2000).

43 Sigmund Karterud, Theresa Wilberg and Øyvind Urnes, Personlighetspsykiatri [Personality psychiatry] (Oslo: Gyldendal Akademisk, 2010), p. 63.

44 Espen Sandli and Line Brustad, ‘Utøya ble lyst opp av mobiltelefoner’ [Utøya was lit up by mobile phones], Dagbladet, 24 September 2011, www.dagbladet.no/2011/09/24/nyheter/innenriks/terrorangrepet/utoya/politiet/18277022.

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