Terror in Norway

In the last 72 hours Norway has been through the biggest attack it has witnessed since the second World War.

Its hard for me to write about this, since I think its not a person in this country that has, in some way not been touched by what has happened.

I´m not going to recap for you everything that has happened. You´ve got CNN and whatnot to do that for you.

What I´m going to do is to describe what is happening in Oslo and in Norway at this moment.

The thing is. The terror attack that befell upon our country has made a couple of things abundantly clear. One of which is that Norway, as a people, have reacted a bit differently than what would have been believed. Its difficult to explain how grief strikes people, but believe me when I say that the Norwegian people is a small people, and it is currently collectively grieving as one.

Normally I would have thought that people would react with anger and hate towards the man who bombed our parliamentary district and shot over a hundred young, politically active men and women, killing 92 people in total (this number may be adjusted). But no. Instead most people have reacted with a sense of resignation towards the animal who did this. With that said, instead of flocking toward the prison where he is held, we keep to other places, places of mourning, rather hate.

It makes me proud to be a part of this nation.

We keep to the words of our Prime Minister: “We will react with more democracy...” - Jens Stoltenberg. Even though those words were spoken with the thought of a man who sought to rob us of it, in mind.

With that said: I believe that this situation is teaching us something very important about ourself as a nation. But I´m very glad, and I can´t stress this enough, that this act of terror was done by a white man from the better part of Oslo city, and not by a known terrorist organization. 

  

The day after the bomb exploded I had a talk with a taxi-driver. He was ethnic norwegian, but his parents were from Pakistan. Both he and I were both glad that this act was not done by a man with a muslim background because then the story would probably been a different one. Like he said; “If this had been done by one with my color of skin, I, even though I was born and have lived all my life here, would have been seen as a terrorist.” Sadly enough there is racism in this country, and the thought of that fire being fueled is a scary one.

Instead people are more open than ever before.

The 22 of Juli, was the day Norway changed. The 23 was the day that Oslo was silent. The 25 was the day of reaction with love.