Bjorn Ihler was on his third trip to the peaceful wooded island of Utøya in Norway's Lake Tyrifjorden when he was shot at by the terrorist Anders Breivik. The 20-year-old had stayed up late with friends, enjoyed waffles for breakfast and was starting his day at the annual summer camp of the Worker's Youth League (AUF), the youth wing of the Norwegian Labour Party, when people began chatting anxiously about an apparent attack in the capital.
'Everyone on the island gathered in the main meeting space and we were told there had been an explosion in Oslo. We pulled up pictures from our phones and it looked pretty substantial, like pictures we'd seen from 9/11,' Bjorn, now 35, remembers of July 22, 2011.
The attack unfolds
That day, Utøya became the site of the deadliest lone-wolf terrorist attack in history. A 950kg homemade car bomb had been detonated outside the Prime Minister's office, killing eight people. To quell concern, leaders told campers they were in one of the safest places on earth. Barbecues were lit, and sweets and fizzy drinks were handed out. It was a decoy. Breivik, then 32, had sent emergency services to the capital so he could arrive on the island in a rudimentary police uniform and start his killing spree unhindered.
'After the meeting, my friends and I went out to the camping area to work out if any of our friends or family had been in the area of the Oslo attack, when we heard popping sounds, like fireworks,' Bjorn says. 'The campsite is in a crater in the middle of the island and I saw a man walk over the ridge in dark clothes with guns. People were running towards him and he shot them straight down. Then he turned and started shooting at the group I was in and we ran into the forest.'
Hiding and escape
The campers hid in woodland, headed for boats or made a desperate swim to safety across the cold fjord. Bjorn took cover among the trees and called his father for advice before trying to escape the gunman's path, picking up the eight-year-old son of one of the island's security guards on the way. He hid with the child before hearing approaching gunshots. 'A group of people came running through our hiding spot, including another eight-year-old child. So I took the two kids and ran with them through the woods and onto a track.'
At one point they ran into a place where Breivik had been and had executed several people. Bjorn 'blacked out' but later found himself on the southern tip of the island, where he heard a media helicopter and saw blue flashing lights from ambulances. Believing the ordeal was about to end, he gave his phone to the children so they could call their mothers, before calling his own father again.
Spotting a police officer walking towards him, he felt relief. But it was Breivik, disguised as an officer. 'He came out from the bushes behind us, and he said they'd caught the bad guy. As I was conveying that to my father, he started shooting at our group, so I jumped into the water,' Bjorn recalled. 'My phone died and the last thing my father heard was that the police were here.'
With the children following him into the lake, Bjorn stopped to remove his woolly jumper, and Breivik took aim and fired straight at him. 'For a moment I was like: "This is it." And I came to terms with that.' Breivik missed, and Bjorn and the children hid under bushes overhanging the lake. After Breivik's 72-minute killing spree, he was arrested. Only when Bjorn was sure the gunshots had stopped did he make his way back onto land.
Aftermath and legacy
Breivik had murdered 69 people, including the two boys' fathers. His youngest victim was 14. Norway and the world reeled with shock. 'There was a sense of, how can a person from our society create this kind of havoc and harbour this kind of hate? How can Norwegian society produce someone like this?' historian and political scientist Matthew Feldman says.
'It was the worst lone wolf terrorist attack in history. He put together a 1,500-page manifesto, and devoted years to this plan of killing his fellow citizens, a large proportion of whom were children shot at close range,' he adds. 'Norway hadn't seen the kind of conflict that other Western countries had. It was a real scales-falling-from-the-eyes moment.'
Breivik came from an affluent suburb of west Oslo, was middle class and well educated, but lived alone with his mother and spent a great deal of time online, where he became radicalised and consumed by racist hate. He had targeted the AUF because he saw its members as 'traitors' for promoting multiculturalism. His manifesto acted as a blueprint for others driven by anti-Muslim hate, influencing both the mosque attacks in Christchurch, New Zealand and the synagogue shooting in Poway, near San Diego, both in 2019.
In August 2012, Breivik was convicted on 77 counts of premeditated murder and sentenced to 21 years behind bars with 'forvaring', or indefinite extensions. Although he could be released by 2033, the court can indefinitely extend the sentence in five-year increments. At a rejected parole hearing four years ago, Breivik flashed Nazi salutes in court. 'I'm not seeing a future where he gets out of jail,' Bjorn says.
Life after the attack
In the weeks and months after the attack, Bjorn suffered from flashbacks, poor sleep and stress triggered by loud noises. 'I don't think "recovered" is a word I will ever use. It's more about learning to live with it, and at this point I feel mentally healthy. The experience is still there, but it is just part of the tapestry,' he explains. 'I'm not only a survivor of this attack but, at this point, I have 15 years' professional experience working against terrorism.'
Bjorn now runs the Kalifa Ihler Institute, an international organisation shaping global policy in the fight for peace, liberty and equality, and Revontulet, which monitors extremist networks. 'After the attack, I tried really hard to understand how Breivik had become who he was. I read the manifesto and went on a journey around the world for several years, meeting former extremists and trying to figure out how this could happen. But one of the things I learned was that it doesn't really make sense, and trying to make sense of it might not be the best approach,' he says.
'So it's become more important for me to learn to live with the fact that it happened, and figure out how to deal with the PTSD symptoms, the loss of friends, the loss of the sense of safety and the loss of youth, all of which happened incredibly brutally. And I've been able to move on from this to working on preventing radicalisation and terrorism.'
