Me and my wife went downtown today to mourn and remember the fallen and to mark that we are not bowing down to hate, fear and violence.
We just came home from an amazing gathering in Oslo in front of the city hall (and lots of streets around) with 150.000 Norwegians mourning the lose of life and celebrating freedom, democracy, tolerance and love.
In this first picture we just arrived and expected to march with everyone else throughout Oslo.
We could already see that this would be a massive event
People were relaxing around the fountain in front of the city hall while waiting for the march to start.
Media was all over the place, but most were put on the balcony of the city hall.
Suddenly everyone started holding their flowers in the air. Notice the Nobel Peace Center in the background (yellow building)
At this point it was announced that the crowd was far too big to have a march through the town and that the event would take place at this spot all the time instead. The organizsers told us that it would be nice if we put our flowers all over town when we were leaving.
More and more people arrived. The mood was calm, sad, happy, resilient and warm at the same time.
As everyone spoke, HMS Crown Prince Håkon, the prime minister Jens Stoltenberg and the leader of the youth organization at Utøya Eskil Pedersen the flowers went in the air again and again.
Quotes
"Today we are filling the streets with love" - HMS Crown Prince Håkon
"We will punish the murderer. Our punishment should be more generosity, more tolerance and more democracy" - The mayor of Oslo, Fabian Stang
"Evil can kill a person, but never defeat a people" - Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg
On the way home we put our roses down on the lion in front of the Parlament. The hill where the parlament is situated is called "Løvebakken", the lions hill.
Flowers are also put in front of the parlament itself and all over the city.
Events like this is also happening all over the country from small communities to the bigger cities.
Here are a couple google translated links to newspaper articles about the event.
Aftenposten
Verdens gang
NRK This one contains a lot of photos as well.
I will be staying on for a little bit but I have to go to bed soon as I have to work at 6 am (8.5 hours from now).
My google+ account
I might not be too active here for a while though since my wife is due in one week and we will have a baby girl :) For this reason we had to leave a bit early today too, most were still in the square listening to artists singing and playing music when we left.