Read Online One of Us: The Story of Anders Breivik and the Massacre in Norway by Åsne Seierstad - Free Book Online
Authors: Åsne Seierstad
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bears were on the prowl.
One summer’s day,when the family was taking a break, on the hill behind them a wolf stood staring. Thin and grey, it almost blended into the rocky mountainside. Gunnar froze.
‘Keep still. Don’t move,’ he said to the two boys. Tone picked up Håvard and Gunnar led Simon away, walking backwards. Very calmly, without any sudden movements, they withdrew up the slope to the road. The wolf slipped between the treesand was gone.
* * *
‘It is time for the kids to get to know their kin,’ Tone said one day. Distances in northern Norway are vast, and trips are expensive. It was time to go home. In Kirkenes they had a council flat, it was a nice one, but it wasn’t theirs.
‘We need to find something of our own,’ Gunnar agreed.
They were lucky: the house next door to Gunnar’s grandparents fell vacant. Sothey moved one county south, to the place where Tone saw Gunnar for the first time: Salangen, in Troms.
‘What a romantic place,’ exclaimed Gunnar when he returned to Upper Salangen, a short distance up from the fjord on the way to the high fells, an untamed bit of the natural world.
* * *
‘We’ve got to make sure we meet people,’ Tone soon concluded. So she and the woman next door starteda revue group. Then they needed writers and performers. Gunnar had once penned love poems, hadn’t he, so perhaps he could write some scripts? As for Tone, she was eager to try her hand as a stage diva.
The car was a great place for practising revue numbers. The whole family bellowing out. Håvard always the loudest.
A girl lives in Havana, makes her living how she can, sitting by her window, beckons to a man!
Every year, after the New Year’s Eve fireworks, the children of Upper Salangen put on a show. Astrid, the eldest of the neighbours’ children, was the director. The children devised comedy routines and practised their gymnastic displays. As the new year started, Reserved signs on cushions and chairs around the house showed the grown-ups where to sit.
Håvard usually opened proceedingswith a show tune. Simon was too shy to stand on stage, so he was the lighting technician. Throughout the show he carefully kept the family flashlight trained on the performers on the stage. He was never prouder of his younger sibling than on New Year’s Eve, when Håvard stood up there alone on stage, expertly illuminated by his big brother.
Gunnar’s scripts and lyrics soon earned quite a reputationin the district, and schools and children’s clubs started to ring up and ask him to write something for them. The PE and IT teacher spent whole evenings writing and composing. He learnt to read and write music, and once the children were in bed he would sit, polishing up dialogues and scales.
The two boys learnt to trust in themselves early on. From Year 1 at school they went off on their ownacross the garden, up the lane to the main road, then along to the crossroads where the school bus stopped. In winter, when the polar night descended on northern Norway, it was mostly pitch dark, as neither the lane nor the main road had street lights. One morning Tone was standing at the window with her coffee when she saw a shadow in the early-morning gloom. A huge bull elk was bearing down attop speed on Simon, who was ploughing along, head down, through the squally wind and snow. The elk and the seven-year-old were on course to blunder straight into each other. Tone cried out as she lost them both from sight in the snowy storm. She rushed out in her slippers and yelled.
When she caught up with Simon, down by the road, he looked up at her and asked, ‘Why are you shouting?’
The boyhadn’t even noticed the elk. With his back to the wind Simon looked at his mother.
‘Don’t worry about me, Mum,’ he said calmly. ‘I’m a man of nature.’
Young Dreams
Journey with me
Into the mind of a maniac
Doomed to be a killer
Since I came out of the nutsac
Dr Dre & Ice Cube, ‘Natural Born
One summer’s day,when the family was taking a break, on the hill behind them a wolf stood staring. Thin and grey, it almost blended into the rocky mountainside. Gunnar froze.
‘Keep still. Don’t move,’ he said to the two boys. Tone picked up Håvard and Gunnar led Simon away, walking backwards. Very calmly, without any sudden movements, they withdrew up the slope to the road. The wolf slipped between the treesand was gone.
* * *
‘It is time for the kids to get to know their kin,’ Tone said one day. Distances in northern Norway are vast, and trips are expensive. It was time to go home. In Kirkenes they had a council flat, it was a nice one, but it wasn’t theirs.
‘We need to find something of our own,’ Gunnar agreed.
They were lucky: the house next door to Gunnar’s grandparents fell vacant. Sothey moved one county south, to the place where Tone saw Gunnar for the first time: Salangen, in Troms.
‘What a romantic place,’ exclaimed Gunnar when he returned to Upper Salangen, a short distance up from the fjord on the way to the high fells, an untamed bit of the natural world.
* * *
‘We’ve got to make sure we meet people,’ Tone soon concluded. So she and the woman next door starteda revue group. Then they needed writers and performers. Gunnar had once penned love poems, hadn’t he, so perhaps he could write some scripts? As for Tone, she was eager to try her hand as a stage diva.
The car was a great place for practising revue numbers. The whole family bellowing out. Håvard always the loudest.
A girl lives in Havana, makes her living how she can, sitting by her window, beckons to a man!
Every year, after the New Year’s Eve fireworks, the children of Upper Salangen put on a show. Astrid, the eldest of the neighbours’ children, was the director. The children devised comedy routines and practised their gymnastic displays. As the new year started, Reserved signs on cushions and chairs around the house showed the grown-ups where to sit.
Håvard usually opened proceedingswith a show tune. Simon was too shy to stand on stage, so he was the lighting technician. Throughout the show he carefully kept the family flashlight trained on the performers on the stage. He was never prouder of his younger sibling than on New Year’s Eve, when Håvard stood up there alone on stage, expertly illuminated by his big brother.
Gunnar’s scripts and lyrics soon earned quite a reputationin the district, and schools and children’s clubs started to ring up and ask him to write something for them. The PE and IT teacher spent whole evenings writing and composing. He learnt to read and write music, and once the children were in bed he would sit, polishing up dialogues and scales.
The two boys learnt to trust in themselves early on. From Year 1 at school they went off on their ownacross the garden, up the lane to the main road, then along to the crossroads where the school bus stopped. In winter, when the polar night descended on northern Norway, it was mostly pitch dark, as neither the lane nor the main road had street lights. One morning Tone was standing at the window with her coffee when she saw a shadow in the early-morning gloom. A huge bull elk was bearing down attop speed on Simon, who was ploughing along, head down, through the squally wind and snow. The elk and the seven-year-old were on course to blunder straight into each other. Tone cried out as she lost them both from sight in the snowy storm. She rushed out in her slippers and yelled.
When she caught up with Simon, down by the road, he looked up at her and asked, ‘Why are you shouting?’
The boyhadn’t even noticed the elk. With his back to the wind Simon looked at his mother.
‘Don’t worry about me, Mum,’ he said calmly. ‘I’m a man of nature.’
Young Dreams
Journey with me
Into the mind of a maniac
Doomed to be a killer
Since I came out of the nutsac
Dr Dre & Ice Cube, ‘Natural Born
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