Norway opens new memorial for victims of 2011 massacre

What the report says

BBC World News reports that Norway has inaugurated a new memorial in Oslo for the 77 people killed in the 22 July 2011 attacks, just ahead of the 15th anniversary. Survivors, bereaved families, Crown Prince Haakon and government officials attended Sunday’s unveiling in the renovated government district, near the site where the first attack took place.

The memorial, titled “Upholding,” was created by artist Matias Faldbakken. According to the BBC, it includes a large blue steel structure holding a 12-metre stone mosaic of a small wading bird associated with Utoeya island, where most of the victims were killed. The names of all 77 victims are engraved at the site. Faldbakken described the work as both a tribute to those who died and a public statement of democratic resistance to the far-right ideology behind the attacks.

On 22 July 2011, Anders Breivik detonated a car bomb in Oslo, killing eight people, before travelling to Utoeya, where he shot dead 69 others, many of them teenagers attending a camp run by the Labour Party youth wing, AUF. Hundreds were also injured in what is widely regarded as Norway’s worst peacetime act of terror.

The BBC also notes that Haakon visited the new 22 July Centre, a national memorial and education centre dedicated to the attacks. Breivik was sentenced in 2012 to Norway’s maximum prison term of 21 years, which can be extended if he is still considered dangerous. His later legal challenges, including parole and prison-conditions cases, have not secured his release.