Jens and Tove withdrew their claim, and their lawyer wrote that ‘they would like to have Anders if his current situation is unsatisfactory, but they do not wish to tarnish his current situation in order to obtain him’. Jens underlined that his wish to take on custody of his son still stood. If the relevant authorities thought that Anders’ situation was unsatisfactory, he wrote, it was their responsibility to do something about it. The SSBU commented on the judgement in a letter on 28 October 1983: ‘We stand by our conclusion that Anders’ care situation is so unsound that he is in danger of developing a more serious psychopathology.’ At the same time, this implicitly states that the boy was already suffering from psychopathology, that he had mental problems to a certain degree, even though the SSBU did not make any clear diagnosis.
Such a note of concern on the SSBU's part was very unusual – yet another expression of how seriously the experts viewed the situation, and perhaps also an expression of their irritation at having been disregarded by the judge. As a result, the case went back to child welfare, which carried out another report in early 1984.
The child welfare report from April 1984, based on three visits to the family's new home, described what appeared to be a different family. Once again, Anders’ smile caught the attention of the social worker, but it was ascribed the opposite value to the SSBU's ‘feigned, aversive smile’. Anders ‘was a pleasant, relaxed boy with a warm smile that makes him instantly likeable’, wrote the caseworker. Anders and his sister were ‘well-mannered’, and Anders played nice and quietly with Plasticine and Playmobil. The SSBU had thought the boy did not know how to play, but now he was showing a different face. Or was it just a façade? His mother was ‘in control’. She did not ‘change her expression or get agitated in difficult situations’ with Anders.
In this account there is an implicit description of how the mother had been seen before, as someone who changed her expression, who became agitated and who was not in control. A worn-out single mother, not very resourceful and practically without any support from her children's fathers. But the housing co-operative on the edge of Frognerparken [Frogner Park] was a delightful place in springtime, and the flat was very spacious for the small family. How much of this was a façade and what was behind it? Was the mother really in control of the small family at Silkestrå? And what was her little boy really like?
The young Anders’ smile, like that of the Mona Lisa, is open to interpretation. The ‘feigned, aversive’ smile has now become ‘warm’, making him ‘instantly likeable’. Anders had good reports from the nursery in Frogner Park. There was apparently nothing remarkable to observe about him. Since his home situation appeared stable, child welfare concluded that he should stay with his mother, but they introduced a cautious supervision measure, which meant monthly home visits. The caseworker indicated the possibility that new crises might arise, and that Wenche could be quite temperamental and indecisive: ‘We base our proposal for supervision on the fact that the mother has repeatedly made requests asking for help in emergencies, e.g., help to have her children put into foster homes, weekend homes etc., and that she has then often changed her mind regarding the necessity and usefulness of this.’ But even this measure was not put into action. Child welfare dropped the case, which had been based on a note of concern from the SSBU, just two months later. There was no particular reason except that the mother said she did not need any further supervision, intervention or help.
The years went by. The small family seemed to get on well. Had something serious really happened between them in the early eighties? Perhaps the SSBU team had been frightened of their own shadows. What was really hidden in their dossier? After all, it was the mother who had taken the initiative to ask for assistance and help. The thought of what might have happened if child welfare had taken the report from the SSBU more seriously, or if the judge had ruled in favour of the father, became an increasingly irrelevant ‘if’.
According to Tove, Anders never mentioned this topic again. His memories of his earliest years had gone, he said. But, even if it is true that he has forgotten his early childhood, his experiences may not necessarily just have vanished. They could have consequences in the form of ‘uneven development’, according to attachment theory and to the SSBU. Childhood traumas can be like fermenting sourdough, a dark source of shame and hatred. Talking with the court-appointed psychiatrists in prison, Breivik stated that he could not remember his care situation being evaluated by the SSBU, but he knew that there had been a custody case and that it probably would have been best if his father and Tove had won, so that he could have lived with them.
Since those years, however, Breivik has mainly been keen to maintain his successful West End façade. For the most part, his description of his time at Silkestrå is like a rose-tinted sales brochure. Breivik later wrote about his childhood in his compendium: ‘[A]ll in all, I consider myself privileged and I feel I have had a privileged upbringing with responsible and intelligent people around me.’21
The Dark Sources
The place-name Hoff indicates there was once a pagan temple near Skøyen. A thousand years ago, the towering ash trees shielding Nedre Silkestrå were used to hang up sacrifices to the Norse gods, whether these were dead animals or perhaps people, but then the Norse religion was banished with sword and axe by an aggressive religion originating from the Mediterranean, namely Christianity. New names were coined, such as Abbediengen [literally ‘abbey meadow’] and street names such as Konventveien [‘Convent Street’] and Priorveien [‘Priory Street’], after the monastic property in the area during the High Middle Ages. The area went from being a sacred grove where Thor and Freyr were worshipped to pastureland and a herb garden for the monks from the island of Hovedøya.
Nedre Silkestrå was just beyond Frogner Park and had the character of a paradise garden. Anders and the other children ran and cycled freely along the paths between the yellow houses or disappeared among lush thickets of lilacs and raspberry bushes. A tawny owl shrieked on dark August nights. The landscape was neither a sacred grove nor a monastic garden any more, but because of the rich deciduous woodland – with ash, elm and poplar – the municipality of Oslo had given the woods around Silkestrå the status of a protected biotope. Behind the wooden fences of Konventveien were beautiful villa façades of brick, stucco and painted panels.
Tending to façades is not an unusual activity among the tennis courts and fruit trees of Oslo's West End. The area's aura of success was reflected in wealth statistics.22 The West End also glittered with cultural capital and the discreet inheritance of state-building patricians. Of course, success is measured not just in terms of the number of boats people own, the location of their holiday cabins or how many acres their gardens have. A career and a good education are also important. Christian Tybring-Gjedde, the leader of the Oslo branch of the Progress Party, lived at Smestad and had studied at Loyola University Chicago. The foreign minister, Jonas Gahr Støre, had gone to Ris Lower Secondary School, studied in Paris at the elite Institut d’études politiques, known as Sciences Po, and later worked at Harvard.
The higher up you are, the further there is to fall and the longer the shadows you cast. The West End is quite simply not a good place to fail. Breivik describes his West End background as being like a hallmark: ‘I'm from the West side of Oslo, and most of my current friends are from privileged families (middle or higher middle class). There are many factors that separate us from lesser privileged families on the East side. The essential factors are the ethics and principles you adapt in your community.’23