I’m in Oslo with my colleague Robert to help relocate the Norwegian office of our translation company from the city centre to new premises on a business park about 5km further north. This is our second day in Norway and we’re working with some removal men to move equipment from one site to the other, with a view to opening the new office on Monday.
It’s Friday 22 July and, just before 15:30, Robert and I are talking in the kitchen on the ground floor of the old office when a huge bang shakes the building. The windows rattle in their frames and the floor vibrates beneath us.
Initially, I believe the removal people may have somehow caused the sound booth upstairs to fall through the floor. It’s a self-contained and soundproofed room, rather like an oversize phonebooth, which our translators sit in to record dubbing and audio description tracks. Robert, meanwhile, thinks that the removal guys must have backed their truck in to the side of the building.
We hurry outside, as a member of the removal team, none of whom speak English or Norwegian, shrugs his shoulders at us. Everything looks normal and there is no obvious damage. So we conclude that it must have been a freak thunderstorm, although it doesn’t quite make sense: There has only been one short bang (unlike the usual roll of thunder), and it was louder than any thunder either of us have ever heard. Plus, there was no lightning.
We spend the next half hour packing up kitchenware, although an increasing number of sirens pierce the previously quiet outdoors. I start to consider that this might in fact have been an explosion, although I assume some kind of accident (gas jumps to mind).
Robert and I take a short walk to the local store to buy some snacks and, as we arrive back at the office and prepare to drive up to the new office, Robert receives a call from our colleague Sølve. They’re conversing in Norwegian but it was a bomb, Robert quickly translates for me.
It’s now about 16:00 and, although we’re not yet aware of the magnitude of the attack, we both text those who know we are in Oslo to reassure them that we are safe, albeit a little shaken. The bomb was placed in a vehicle parked barely 500 metres from where are standing, in front of a government office block.
Over the next few hours, as we unpack boxes at the new office, news reaches us of a second attack on the nearby island of Utøya. A gunman has fired on young people attending a summer camp there.
