Oslo, today
Dear friends,
Last week in the office, in a day of bad weather during a week of bad weather, I heard a thundercrack while on the phone. I remember thinking "this is strange, thunder this short is usually louder because it must be near." In fact, it was some kilometers away, in the town center, where a car bomb wrecked the government quarter.
One of our PhD students was in the library and saw the blast; he phoned us, a bit later, and was so shaken that he spoke a mixture of English and Indonesian. I remember thinking, "please, let it not be a bomb, and if it is, let it not be these fundamentalists because otherwise Muslims the world over will have hell to pay again and they've suffered enough already." We chatted a bit in the office, unaware that the real horror was happening elsewhere, right then.
During the weekend facebook invitations to come into the city center flew around, first telling people to come for a candlelight procession and then, superseding that, to bring roses. I do not know whether there was any official organization going on, but people would have come anyway. There certainly was no crowd control or designated route; people came to the city center and, perhaps, went to the general area of the mayor's building. Everyone had roses.
There must have been a sound system and some preparation, because at one point I heard a trumpet play three or four notes, in the manner of a speaker saying "Test, 1 2 3 ..." into the microphone. The streets were full of people, talking among themselves, looking for friends. The atmosphere was relaxed and quiet, if a little subdued.
Then, within two seconds, everybody was quiet and holding their roses in the air. It was like an inverted cheer, the crowd standing silent, awake and present.
After some minutes, someone spoke on the sound system, saying that due to the number of people, the procession would be cancelled, and asking for understanding.
There was no further speech, and the trumpet player went home without playing the sad song he must have rehearsed. But that did not matter at all -- we were there to pay our respects, not to be entertained or spoken too. After some more minutes, the crowd started moving; I went along, saw some camera teams and about 100,000 people. The crowd was patriotic in a very Norwegian way -- I saw perhaps five flags -- everyone knew what we were here for anyway so there was no need for insecure flag-waving.
As for what's-his-name himself -- he tried to unite the European people behind a common goal, and from what I saw today, he certainly succeeded, albeit in a way that he had not foreseen in the delusional, self-aggrandizing stories he told himself about himself. I wish he could have been there to see it.
A wake or funeral procession is there to help people come to terms with someone's passing, to bring closure and to help living in a changed world. This, today was not a funeral procession for Norway -- it brought closure for me, and I think helped everyone to live in a world that has not changed, where the shared values of people living together endure and are reaffirmed.
And it feels good living in a place where people react in this way.
