by Melissa S. Green

Hege Dalen and Toril Hansen — a lesbian couple — put their own lives at risk to save about 40 youth from the July 22 massacre in Norway. A total of 250 to 300 youth were rescued by Hege, Toril, and others camped near them that day. We salute their heroism.

The Finnish newspaper Helsingin Sanomat (Helsinki) reports that Hege Dalen and Toril Hansen — a lesbian couple — were among campers at Tyrifjord Lake on July 22 who rescued 250 to 300 youth as they swam in panic from Utøya Island, where a gunman disguised as a police officer killed 68 youth campers.  The gunman, Anders Behring Breivik, had previously set off a bomb in Oslo which killed 8 people.

Hege Dalen and Toril Hansen (some accounts spell her name Torill) rescued about 40 of the youth campers.  As translated at The Seattle Lesbian, the Helsingin Sanomat story reads,

Hege Dalen and her partner Toril Hansen were eating supper in the camping area opposite Utoya island when they started hearing gunshots and screaming….

Dalen and Hansen drove their boat to the island, and fished out of the water people who were in shock and young people who were injured and transported them ashore. Every now and then bullets almost hit the boat.

Since they couldn’t fit everyone into the boat all at once, they returned to the island four times. They might have saved as much as forty people from the clutches of the killer.

(See also the automated Google translation of the story.)

Further information from the Norwegian news site Helgeland Arbeiderblad (see Google translation) and the German blog Queer.de (apparently based on accounts from NRK, the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation; see Google translation) indicate that Hege and Torill, from a small town in the Oppland region of Norway, were in the area to celebrate Hege’s stepdaughter’s 10th birthday with other relatives, but festivities were interrupted by news of the bombing in Oslo.  They were watching coverage of the bombing when they heard gunshots. “We ran to the bridge and could smell gunpowder, ” said Hege. “Then we heard a terrifying scream. We saw many people who swam off the island.”

Initially, Toril went out alone in the boat, while Hege stayed on land and helped rescued survivors to a cafe belonging to the campground where the couple was camping. She accompanied Toril on later trips.  According to the account at Queer.de, the two women made a total of five (rather than four) trips to rescue the youth, once making actual landfall on Utøya Island to help some young people who were hiding in a cave. Breivik fired at them, once narrowly missing their boat.

They weren’t able to save all the youth they found in the water. On their first trip, they had to leave one person behind because, as Toril told NRK, “The boat was about to capsize. It was terrible to have to decide who we take…I wonder how many have drowned.” It was impossible to know if other boats might have rescued people that they were unable to. Other people with boats were also working to rescue the young people; the lives of an estimated 250 to 300 youth were saved this way.

Hege reported:

This was before any professional rescue operation was launched. There we were at the camp who did the job. We handed out blankets and transported people to Sundvollen hotel. The offender was not actually arrested when we took those first trips. It is scary to think about. Our boat was soon full, and I do not know what happened to them we were not with us. We saw the bullets that went into the water, and we saw the bodies before they were covered. It was completely unreal. A bad movie.

Many of the people the women rescued were seriously injured or suffering from the cold water. “You have seen up close how the assassin had shot at people,” Toril told NRK. “They were turning blue from cold and fear.”

At some point, the couple saw some of the scene on the island — teenagers on a stone hill by the sea. It appeared as if the youth were peacefully contemplating the river. But in fact they were dead.

The two were unable to sleep that night. They have since had professional care, and the intend to continue their holiday.

The People’s Forum has compiled several accounts of people involved in rescuing youth from Breivik’s attack.  We salute Toril Hansen, Hege Dalen, and the other men and women who put their own lives at risk to save these kids.

Wikipedia has articles, being updated as further information comes out, about the July 22 attacks in Norway and about the terrorist who carried them out, Anders Behring Breivik. Breivik is a right-wing extremist motivated by rabid hatred of Islam and describes himself in his manifesto as “a real European hero”, “the saviour of Christianity” and “the greatest defender of cultural-conservatism in Europe since 1950.”

Phil Munger of Progressive Alaska, himself of Norwegian ancestry, was following media coverage of the attacks from the beginning, observing how the media at first jumped to the conclusion that the terrorist behind them was Muslim — only to have to backpedal “as information started to fasten to the fact that the worst terrorist act in Scandinavia since the 3rd Reich was perpetrated by a right-wing Christian zealot.”  In a later post, Phil discusses Breivik’s adoration of rabid anti-Islam blogger Pam Geller (one of a number of American anti-Islam activists quoted extensively in Breivik’s 1,516-page manifesto).  Geller testified recently before the Alaska Legislature at the invitation of Representatives Carl Gatto, Bob Lynn and Wes Keller in support of  Gatto’s House Bill 88, an unnecessary effort to make sharia law illegal in Alaska — part of the general anti-Islam fervor among some socially conservative Americans. The bill did not pass in the 2011 session — most recently it was referred to the House Finance Committee — but may see further action when the next session begins in January 2012.