Martin Sandbu: Norway Lost its Innocence a Long Time Ago

Martin Sandbuis the FT’s economics leader writer.

I was born in Oslo. My journey to school passed by the government quarter. When I was 15, I spent a week as an intern in the complex that was blown up by a complex that was blown up by a car bomb, on Friday afternoon.

The city of my childhood is now scarred by terrorism, its streets patrolled by soldiers. To those who have lost family and friends, we owe mourning and respect, but also a duty to understand how such a violent tragedy could have happened in a country perceived as a model of social democratic dialogue.

Anders Behring Breivikhas apparently admitted culpability to the events and he will no doubt attempt to exploit his appearance in court on Monday for propaganda purposes.

While we must be careful not to take his logic at face value, he also must not be ignored. The diabolical coherence of his arguments needs to be studied in order that we are able to refute it and understand why modern, democratic societies – including those, like Norway, which are admired around the world – too often miss the frustrations that gnaw at their edges, and in turn fail to stop those frustrations erupting into violence.

The commonplace view of recent days has been that the events of Friday have seen Norway lose its innocence. In fact, Norway’s innocence was already lost. The country still sees itself as a capital of peace, but it has become entangled in wars that it has been unable to confine to the television screen...