A memorial service at Oslo's Domkirke Sunday ... and the imprompteau shrine outside the cathedral throughout the weekend ... were communal focal points as Norwegians began coming to terms with what has happened. People traveled hundreds of kilometres to attend the service.
Included was the singing of a choral piece, "To Youth," with words by Norwegian poet Nordahl Grieg set to music by Danish composer Otto Mortensen, at the memorial service. Its text was especially appropriate to the occasion, since more than 80 young people had been shot to death. NRK [Norsk rikskringkasting, the Norwegian state broadcasting service] posted the entire song to its website under headline "Kongen og dronningen gråt av sang i domkirken" [king and queen cry during song in cathedral].
NRK's cutline: "Den sterke teksten 'Til ungdommen' av Nordahl Grieg rørte mange under minnegudstjenesten" [the stark text "To youth" by Nordahl Grieg moved many at the memorial service].
According to Wikipedia, the poem was written in 1936; it is often referred to by its first line, "Kringsatt av Fiender' [surrounded by enemies]. Set to music by Otto Mortensen in 1952, it has been included in the Danish folk high school songbook and covered by choirs and metal bands alike. In a recent translation posted to Wikipedia, it begins:
Surrounded by enemies,And so on for 10 more verses.
go into your time!
Under a bloody storm -
devote yourself to fight!
Maybe you ask in fear,
uncovered, open:
with what shall I fight
what is my weapon?
Here is your defense against violence
here is your sword:
the belief in our life,
the worth of mankind.
For all our future's sake,
seek it and cultivate it,
die if you must - but:
increase it and strengthen it!
ITN News has footage of the service and Eurovision TV has a 60-second report. By far the best coverage overall is on Storyful, a website that "uses the power of social networks to create an innovative, interactive and socially useful journalism." It appears to be an aggragator that collects from personal blogs and social media as well as mass media content posted to the web. It's headed "Norway mourns its dead" ... Brief English-language accounts incorporated into stories on the guardian.co.uk and Irish Times websites. The Irish Times' report, by Derek Scally, led:
NORWEGIAN MASSACRE: A KING’S tears summed up better than any words the confusion and distress gripping an entire country yesterday.Mark Townsend, reporting Sunday in Oslo:
Norway’s King Harald wept openly at a church service to honour the 93 people killed in Friday’s twin tragedy that has left Norwegians reeling.
Outside the cathedral, near the site of Friday’s bomb blast, Oslo came to a standstill. Survivors gripped each other to fight back tears as they studied the sea of flowers and candles.
“Each and every life lost is a tragedy,” said a solemn prime minister, Jens Stoltenberg, addressing the service. “Together the number of people killed amounts to a national tragedy.”
Thousands of people have gathered outside Oslo cathedral, many travelling hundreds of miles to do so, to insist that Norway's "open" society would not be compromised by Friday's attacks.LATER: Posted to the NRK website Tuesday, a story with links about Kjersti Sofie Løvåsdal Halvorsen, 17, who posted a version of "To Youth" to YouTube a couple of years ago (Google translation here). Karina Lystad, arts and entertainment reporter for NRK, has this account:
As a memorial service dedicated to those killed and injured in the atrocities got underway, a huge crowd assembled on the plaza outside.
Throughout the 90-minute service, most stood in silence, heads bowed, moving only to place flowers on a steadily growing pile of wreaths outside the cathedral. Others wept or held radios, listening intently to the service, which was broadcast live.
Among those present was 15-year-old Sindre Kolberg from Mo i Rana, 700 miles north of Oslo, and home to many of those caught up in the shootings on Utøya island. Kolberg knew 10 children involved in the attacks, but only eight have come home. One is in hospital with gunshot wounds, the other, a girl, is still missing.
"I have talked to two of the survivors and they are shocked. They saw two friends from another city being killed. Norway is such a safe country. You see attacks in the US, London, but never here. I hope it doesn't change," he said.
It was a sentiment replicated throughout the crowd outside the cathedral, a 90-second walk from the police cordons sealing the part of Oslo's government district bombed two days earlier. The cathedral is famous as a place of refuge, often for asylum seekers whose applications have been rejected - the people who Anders Behring Breivik, the 32-year-old who has confessed to the attacks, so despised.
Nordahl Grieg's poem "To Youth", with music by Otto Mortensen, has been a kind of renaissance after shooting at Utøya .Adds Lystad of NRK:
Sangen ble sunget under minnegudstjenesten i Oslo Domkirke på søndag, og på rosemarkeringen på Rådhusplassen i går kveld, og det siteres hyppig fra teksten på nettsteder som Twitter. The song was sung during the memorial service in Oslo Cathedral on Sunday, and the praise celebration at City Hall last night, and it cited from the text on Web sites like Twitter.
Den økte oppmerksomheten rundt sangen har også fått konsekvenser for 17 år gamle Kjersti Sofie Løvåsdal Halvorsen. The increased attention the song has also had consequences for 17-year-old Kjersti Sofie Løvåsdal Halvorsen. Hun oppdaget plutselig at trafikken på en av YouTube-videoene hennes hadde økt drastisk. She suddenly discovered that the traffic on one of her YouTube videos had increased drastically.
- Tidligere var det rundt ti visninger hver dag, frem til for noen dager siden. - Previously, it was about ten views a day, until a few days ago. I det siste har det vært oppe i 1500, sier hun. In the past there have been up in 1500, she says.
I videoen det er snakk om sitter Kjersti med en kassegitar og synger “Til Ungdommen”. In the video in question is Kjersti an acoustic guitar and sings "The Youth". Og det er ikke bare klikktallene som har gått opp. And it is only then the numbers have gone up.
- Jeg fått veldig mange flere kommentarer. - I received many more comments. Folk sier de liker versjonen min og at de føler diktet er veldig riktig og gir dem mye trøst. People say they like my version and that they feel the poem is very appropriate and gives them much consolation.
It was more or less a coincidence that Kjersti posted just this video. Hun kom over diktet da hun jobbet med krigslitteratur på ungdomsskolen, og fordypet seg i skriveriene til Nordahl Grieg og Arnulf Øverland. She came across the poem when she was working with war literature in middle school, and immersed herself in the writings of Nordahl Grieg and Arnulf Overland.
- Jeg hørte den først i Herborg Kråkeviks versjon og bestemte meg for at jeg hadde lyst til å lære meg den på gitar, forklarer hun. - I heard it first in [pop singer] Herborg Kråkevik version and decided that I wanted to learn it on guitar, she explains.
- Hva var det for noe med akkurat det diktet? - What was it for something with just the poem?
- Det er et utrolig fint budskap om menneskeverd og solidaritet, som var verdier som Nordahl Grieg var opptatt av. - It is a very good message about human dignity and solidarity, which had values that Nordahl Grieg was concerned. Jeg syns også det er et utrolig godt skrevet dikt med tanke på strofene og rimene. I also think it is an incredibly well-written poems in terms of stanzas and rhymes.
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