Norway's paradise lost

„It's hard to let go of the dream. For a few weeks before the shootings, a friend spending the summer in Norway was posting dreamy photos of her kids swimming in glistening lakes and lounging in hammocks in endless green pastures. She's an American who married a Norwegian, and she knows enough about both cultures to feel some cognitive dissonance about the reactions she was getting from people back home, many of whom wrote gushing comments like »Get me on a plane immediately!«

After the attacks, my friend's posts suggested she was both shaken and chagrined. »So much for quaint photos of blond children in hammocks«, she wrote. But soon, the pretty pictures returned. It was almost as if she wanted to reassure us dreamers that Norway's bucolic splendor had withstood the attacks, that the dream was still alive, that day care was still subsidized (and possibly involved hammocks).

Later, though, she told me in an email that she did feel an acute loss of innocence. But she also copped to the fact that it had less to do with the massacre than with the extent to which the bloom was already off the utopian rose. »People in Norway now have malls and tanning salons«, she wrote. »They're more like us, and that is such a total bummer«.

Tragically, since July 22, they share something else with us: homegrown terrorism, which is an even bigger bummer than tanning salons. Presumably neither will be coming to a Facebook post or liberal fantasy any time soon. Unless, perhaps, the government is funding those tans.”