On July 22, two carefully choreographed attacks shattered the prototypically Scandinavian calm of Norway. First, a bomb in central Oslo damaged several government buildings and killed eight people; very quickly after, a gunman invaded Uto island, in a lake just outside the city, and shot to death 69 people (mostly teens) at a youth camp run by the Labour Party, the senior party in Norway's ruling coalition, chasing some of them down or firing at them as they attempted to swim to safety. The double act of terrorism was the work of one man: Anders Behring Breivik, 32, whose years-long planning of the carnage was buttressed by beliefs in white supremacy and by a blinding paranoia that Christian Europe was about to be drowned in a surging sea of Islam, Marxism and atheism. That so much hatred and death could emanate from one man led many Norwegians to ask what could be so rotten in the state of their nation to produce such a monster. The answer, it seemed, was a like-minded culture of xenophobia in Norway and Europe that provided inspiration for Breivik, who acted alone. His writings and personal history seem to delineate a man so obsessed with the hells he believed were being ignited around him that he soon became a hell unto himself. And then he unleashed his inferno. At the end of November, an official panel made up of two psychiatrists declared that Breivik suffered from paranoid schizophrenia. Prosecutors then said he was unfit to stand trial.
The Top 10 Everything of 2011
- Top 10 Albums
- Top 10 Animal Stories
- Top 10 Apologies
- Top 10 Business Blunders
- Top 10 Buzzwords
- Top 10 Comebacks
- Top 10 Consumer-Spending Trends
- Top 10 Crime Stories
- Top 10 Campaign-Debate Moments
- Top 10 Best Fashion Moments
- Top 10 Worst Fashion Moments
- Top 10 Feuds
- Top 10 Fiction Books
- Top 10 Fleeting Celebrities
- Top 10 Food Trends
- Top 10 Gadgets
- Top 10 Green Trends
- Top 10 Marriage Stories
- Top 10 Medical Breakthroughs
- Top 10 Memes
- Top 10 Movie Performances
- Top 10 Worst Movies
- Top 10 Best Movies
- Top 10 New Findings in Parenting
- Top 10 New Species
- Top 10 Nonfiction Books
- Top 10 Numbers
- Top 10 Oddball-News Stories
- Top 10 Overreported Stories
- Top 10 People Not Running for President
- Top 10 Plays and Musicals
- Top 10 Political Gaffes
- Top 10 Protest Signs
- Top 10 Quotes
- Top 10 Religion Stories
- Top 10 Ridiculously Obvious Study Findings
- Top 10 Scandals
- Top 10 Smart-Phone Apps
- Top 10 Songs
- Top 10 Space Moments
- Top 10 Sports Moments
- Top 10 Toys
- Top 10 TV Ads
- Top 10 TV Episodes
- Top 10 TV Series
- Top 10 Best Tweets
- Top 10 Worst Tweets
- Top 10 U.S.-News Stories
- Top 10 Underreported Stories
- Top 10 Video Games
- Top 10 Creative Videos
- Top 10 Viral Videos
- Top 10 World-News Stories
- Top 10 Photos of the Year
In 54 wide-ranging lists, TIME surveys the highs and lows, the good and the bad, of the past 12 months