Community Corner
Massacre News Hits Norwalk's Norwegian Americans
Sudden worries arise about whether a relative might have been harmed by the bombing in Oslo or the shootings at an island youth camp.
Laila Andresen of Norwalk, a medical records administrator at Stamford Hospital, was driving home from work when she first heard the news of the recent mass murder in her family's native country.
“What kind of thing is going on?” she recalls saying to herself.
Andresen was one of several area people with ties to Norway who have been shocked by the news.
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“I contacted my cousin in Norway, and he told me fortunately nobody in our family was involved,” related Andresen, who was born to Norwegian parents who were living and working in Sweden. The majority of her relatives live in Norway.
“My cousin just can’t believe it. These kinds of things just don’t happen in Norway,” she said. “He just can’t believe it was a Norwegian (who committed these heinous acts).”
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The police identified the suspect as Anders Behring Breivik, 32, a right-wing fundamentalist Christian. Acquaintances described him as a gun-loving man obsessed with what he saw as the threats of multiculturalism and Muslim immigration.
Carol Skog, like Andresen, is a member of the Fairfield-based Scandinavian Club. Skog was sitting at her computer last Friday when she read the jarring news from Norway about the detonation of a car bomb at a busy government plaza in Oslo.
“To me, evil takes over when people do vicious things,” said Skog, a Fairfield resident. “(Norwegians) are such law-abiding people, honest, ethical. For something like that to happen in their county … they can’t imagine it. The police didn’t react. They aren’t trained to deal with (terrorism).”
Recently, somebody approached Andresen at the hospital and said, “Guess where the safest place in the world is to live?” Norway was the answer.
Laila Andresen visits her native country each year, and despite the recent carnage, she and her husband plan to make their planned trip on Saturday night.
“My parents retired there. Norway has the highest standard of living in the world,” she said.
Editor's note: This article originally was published by Fairfield Patch in a different version.
