Podcast #113: Åsne Seierstad on the Deadliest Attack on Norway Since WWII
On July 22, 2011, seventy-seven people, many of them teenagers, were killed by Anders Behring Breivik in Norway. Åsne Seierstad chronicles this story in One of Us, a finalist for NYPL’s Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism, which is awarded annually to journalists whose books have brought clarity and public attention to important issues, events, or policies. For this week's New York Public Library Podcast, we're proud to present Åsne Seierstad discussing how she found her subject, the meaning of her title, and what Breivik thought he had in common with authors.
Åsne Seierstad
Seierstad recalls how the way she thought about the Norway massacre changed over time, from when she first heard about it on July 22 to the trial of Breivik:
"It took a long time actually for me to take on the project. I think when it happened, I was like most Norwegians that summer: in a holiday mood in July when Norway closes down. So when this happened, I was driving out of Oslo with some friends, and a friend got a message saying, 'Stay out of City Center.' Of course that was like an alarm. We turned on the radio to see what was happening. We turned on the radio and we were told the whole facade was missing of the government building. We thought instantly this was Al-Qaeda, that now it was payback time for our participation in Afghanistan, the recent Libya campaign. But I was with my kids too, so I was not in this journalist mood to say, 'Stop the mood. I'm getting out.' So I think when this story developed, I was very much hit as a civilian as opposed to a journalist. First, I was in shock, then grief-struck like most Norwegians were for a long time. And then I wrote one article for Newsweek, and then I went back to Libya, which was the Arab Spring. This was the place I would feel safe, to be in the Arab world and report on their tragedies there. Only when the trial was about to start next March, April, I was asked to write an article and then a book, and I was thinking, 'I'll make a little book about the trial.' And then once I got into the courtroom and Breivik got in and victims were sitting…I just couldn't get out of the story. What was going to be this little book, I realized I had to dig into our own story."
When asked about the title, Seierstad explained that it refers not only to Breivik but to all of those connected with the case:
"Many people think it's only about him, and that's because I really wanted a title that would include all of them, and, and when I first came up with One of Us which was when one of my editors said something about him being one of us, I just cut out those three words because we were struggling so hard to find a title. Then we were like, 'Oh no, that won't work because that's only about him whether he's one of us or not.' Then we were thinking like Bano that I mentioned, the Kurdish girl, her highest dream was to become one of us. You have the other strand of the other victims that I chose, three friends… they go together and only one came back."
Breivik wrote a manifesto and biography prior to the killings. He considered the massacre to be a way for him to attain a readership, as Seierstad observed:
"In February, that's when he starts buying the weapons, ammunition, the uniforms, and then later in the summer, the fertilizers and the ingredients for the bombs and plans this terror act. In the court, he said that this massacre, he called it his 'book launch,' because he wanted so desperately to be read, to be someone. So he had been calculating how many people do I need to kill to get read? He'd come to ten, twelve, somewhere in there, that's enough, then I'll be worldwide famous. Then he ended up killed seventy-seven. But he insisted still on this being his book launch, this is what I did to be read."
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