It did not go well. The wind blew the cart over on the very first day, sending the billboard flying off to hit a woman. The ‘unemployed academic’ project was abandoned after its maiden voyage. Maybe his ideas were a little too big. The plan was not only about earning money but perhaps more about humiliating academics. Even though his friends thought he was enterprising, he was often strange and obstinate.3 An odd eccentric who wore sunglasses around town, even though it looked peculiar in the evening, and who was perpetually vain, wearing a Canada Goose-branded down jacket in the winter or with his shirt collar folded up under his Lacoste jumpers. A metrosexual, as he said himself. Before he went out, he put on make-up. He was considering hair transplants and dental bleaching. He had a nose job done when he was twenty.
The man paid for his drink with a 200 kroner note, smiled and said that he did not need all the change.
The Palace Grill popped up in 1988, a casual alternative behind the neat West End façade of Solli Plass. My friends and I hung out there back then, pale university students in our dark leather jackets. By the summer of 2011, the Palace consisted of an American-inspired bar with a substantial selection of beers and whiskies and a reputable restaurant, as well as the outdoor bar in the courtyard called Skaugum, named after the crown prince and crown princess's family residence in Asker – maybe because the royals themselves used to show up in the courtyard there on occasion.
The place's alternative character gave way to an elegant West End watering hole where a composite mixture of local residents quenched their thirst. While the Palace Grill was frequently visited by A-list and B-list celebrities, cultural and media figures in their thirties, Skaugum was where student hipsters, dark horses in the financial sector and more anonymous representatives of the West End's alcopop generation hung out under the open sky.
For almost twenty-five years, the Palace Grill had endured as a cultured alternative to the sleek concept establishments that stretched out in a golden crescent from Solli Plass up to the neighbourhood of Majorstua and then down Bogstadveien. There you could meet damaged West End characters drinking away the last remains of their grandparents’ inheritance and saying that they would soon get their big break as designers, open a gourmet food shop or publish their manuscript that would solve all the world's problems.
This regular patron did not always go home quite so early or behave quite so well. There was something intense about him, which sometimes got out of hand.
At the turn of the year, he had been out on the town a fair bit and managed to get thrown out of the Palace Grill after having bothered one of the other customers. A TV star in his forties, known for his wicked humour and unrestrained behaviour, noticed that the thin-haired and blond regular customer was staring at him. The men nodded to each other, and the young, blond man came straight across to him. ‘Anders Behring Breivik, nice to meet you,’ the man introduced himself, speaking in his refined West End manner.
It was an uncomfortable conversation. Breivik immediately began lecturing about Muslims and immigration policy. The celebrity tried to signal that he was not interested. Breivik spoke about crusades and Knights Templar. There was something strange about him. It was difficult to put it into words, but it was something that could be felt. A kind of stiffness. A kind of flatness. Did he say he was writing a book? His face was almost expressionless, except for that artificial smile. His voice was toneless, his eyes stared and he blinked a lot. He sat on his chair as if he were sedated, not making a single spontaneous movement. It seemed as if his body were shut, closed off, like a condemned building.
The atmosphere eventually became so awkward that the celebrity called the bouncers. Breivik was led away, but he managed to turn round. ‘In one year's time, I'll be three times as famous as you,’ he said, before the bouncers pushed him out onto the street.4
Scenes like that are also two a penny in the West End of Oslo. There is often little distance between those who are famous and those who are not, but who would like to be. Celebrities must expect to be recognized, for good or for bad. Not all wannabes can master the codes of the West End, let alone the art of conversation. Groupies are not necessarily girls.
Breivik's parting remark did not appear especially likely and was more like typical hot air from an awkward bluffer with delusions of grandeur and an inferiority complex. Social skills are an art that requires constant practice, as Breivik himself thought, acknowledging that he had been out of practice for the past few years.5 He was looking to boost his ego, being a bit of an attention whore, as he said. Maybe it was his lack of practice that made him go on monomaniacally about Knights Templar that evening, or maybe it was the combination of alcohol and anabolic steroids. Breivik took steroids on a regular basis.
Not only was he a monomaniac, he also spoke about something quite odd: knights. Although the Knights Templar have become a popular cultural phenomenon after having been resurrected in, for example, the computer game Assassin's Creed, crusaders have not been a common topic of conversation in Norway over the nine hundred years that have elapsed since King Sigurd I Magnusson led his military expedition to the Mediterranean.
In the manuscript Breivik was writing – the ‘compendium’ as he called it – the spirit of the age came in for harsh judgement. He called the superficial and money-orientated culture he saw around him at Skaugum the ‘Sex and the City lifestyle’. Over the last few years he had been concerned about the ‘corrosive’ effect of celebrity culture.6 That was not how it was in the days of the Knights Templar.
The role of celebrities had changed as a result of the Internet, reality TV and social media. Breivik's generation was the spearhead in the democratization of fame. Carpenters and teachers – completely ordinary people – were suddenly perfect celebrities. Now that anybody could suddenly become famous, perhaps the pressure to do so also increased, and new arenas for showing off and for being seen were opening up, with blogs, chat rooms, Twitter and Facebook. The media's gaze used to be aimed at a select few, whereas the eyes of social media were, in principle, on everyone.
Unknown wannabes approached the celebrities in bars in the hope that a bit of their aura would rub off on them. A good celebrity story could increase the unknown individual's social status, like a character in a computer game who gets increased powers by acquiring a new weapon or a powerful spell.
Breivik took part in ‘the game’ to a certain degree even if he had secretly become critical of it, and to some extent critical of himself. ‘I am not going to act like a hypocrite and pretend I have not been influenced by the typical Sex and the City lifestyle,’ he wrote. ‘I have been under the influence of this lifestyle as [have] a majority of my friends and even my own family members. I used to be proud of my “achievements”.’7
In his compendium, he wrote about how this had changed. In September 2006, he moved out from his bachelor pad and back into his old room in his mother's flat. He and his mother had a complicated history. Breivik was a mummy's boy, but at the same time he was concerned about his façade: how things looked and what people would think. Even in his compendium, he became a little defensive when he described what it was like to move back in. His motivation, he claimed, was his lack of money.
[J]ust before I started writing this compendium, I decided to move from my apartment in Frogner, one of the most priciest [sic] areas in Oslo, home to my mother. […] The cost of renting my old apartment was 1,250 euro. My current accommodation expenditure (food included) is 450 euro […]. This wouldn't have worked in my old life, when I was an egotistical career cynic as it would devastate my social image […] (the pursuit to project a desirable façade to impress friends and potential mating partners). Sure, some people will think you are a freak for living with your parents at the age of 31 […]. The only thing that matters is to ensure that you have enough funds and free time to complete the objectives necessary to execute your individual mission. As for keeping secrecy while living with another person; sure, you need many cover stories and you need access to the loft and/or basement storage areas.8