SOLIDARITY MARCH:NORWAY'S IRISH community came out in solidarity with their friends and neighbours in a huge "flower march" in central Oslo yesterday evening.
More than 100,000 people flooded the capital’s town hall square, and it seemed the entire city was on its feet, clutching roses, lilies, bluebells, daisies and even roadside dandelions.
“We’re here to show solidarity and our respect, to be together,” said Bangor native Moya Berli, in Norway for 32 years, one of many Oslo Irish who attended.
“I never in a million years would have thought something like that was possible in Norway,” said Nancy Saur, 23 years in Oslo but originally from Rathvilly, Co Carlow. She was at work in a handbag shop near the government quarter when the bomb detonated on Friday afternoon.
“At first we thought a car had driven through the shop window, then someone said it might be a gas explosion,” she said. “Then the mirrors to display the handbags started flying everywhere. The shop was packed because of the sale, but we hurried to get people out . . . we were afraid the building would collapse.”
Only outside, when she saw people covered in blood running down the street, did she realise the scale of what had happened.
Maria Scharffenberg thought the engineers building a nearby tunnel had used too much explosive. “Then the window blew out in the second floor over the shop,” said Ms Scharffenberg, in Oslo for 42 years.
Yesterday workmen hurried to repair damage in a four-block section of central Oslo. But several key government ministries are still in ruins and many businesses will remain closed for the foreseeable future.
Earlier, Norway was joined by its neighbours in the observation of a minute’s silence. From airports to train stations and the stock market, the country ground to a halt to mark its worst tragedy since the second World War.
At the official ceremony outside Oslo university, the minute stretched into five as the nation pondered a violent act, a blot on its collective conscience. As the initial shock passed and the tears dried, the thinking began. For some Norwegians, it is the loss of innocence, for others the loss of presumed innocence.
“We always had this expression here that everything’s perfect, it must be Norwegian,” said Jonas (28). “We realise that things like this can happen anyway, that Norway is anywhere.”
For one of the most prosperous and open countries in the world, the attacks have also harmed national confidence and pride, which its leaders and its royal family are anxious to restore.
“Tonight the streets are filled with love,” Crown Prince Haakon told the crowd in Oslo last night. “We must meet every day, ready to fight for the values we hold dear.”
He was joined by his wife, Princess Mette-Marrit, still visibly in shock after learning that Friday’s shooting on the island of Utoeya claimed the life of her half-brother, Trond Bernsten. He was working as a private security guard on the island, where his 10-year-old son and 700 other young people were attending a summer camp. According to reports, Mr Bernsten, who was unarmed, was shot dead as he tackled gunman Anders Behring Breivik.
Back on the town hall square, softly at first, then more strongly and confidently, the crowd began singing Til ungdommen,based on a poem by Nordahl Grieg:
Faced by your enemies on every hand
Battle is menacing, now make your stand . . .
For all our children’s sake, save it, defend it
Pay any price you must, they shall not end it.