Not long after we moved to Sweden neighbouring Norway was rocked by the mass murder of 77 people, most of them teenagers. Scandinavia is an open, generally peaceful and tolerant place and no one expects those things to happen here and certainly not by one of the natives. It was and is shocking but the response has been to hope for more dialogue.

However, for me it’s been an interesting reflection of the impact such events have when you’re not surrounded by 24-7 media. We don’t have a TV here and we don’t speak the language, most of the people we know here are on holiday and our main source of news is the internet which at the time of the shooting we didn’t yet have access to. In other words we were isolated from the constant flow of information and shielded from the impact.

I experienced the same thing at the time of 9/11; then I was on a beach in Zanzibar oblivious to all that was happening. By the time I reconnected the media had made the decision to stop showing the attacks. It was months before I saw what happened and so while I could understand  the shocking nature of it, agree with the evil, I was distanced from it.

The media connects people who are not connected, we can experience the power of the tsunami as we watch live the wave destroy all in its path, we can watch the tears of the survivors of shootings and bombings and we are affected. But we are also numbed, because it is momentary and as the media moves on so do we. The experience is temporary and short-lived however real we may have felt it at the time.

For me the distance from the media meant that I approach reading about this with a little more discernment as I wasn’t being numbed by constant coverage and endless repetition. I read how early reports of Breivik’s Christianity is overstated and wrong and this use of religion is often inaccurate and inflames the idea of a culture war; he’s more racist and mad and isn’t even sure if he believes in God. I read how Europe is still home to dangerous radical extremism of its own and not just of the Islamic kind. I read of how our culture struggles with the concept of forgiveness and vainly hopes that humanity will get better. Distance helped with discernment.

What happened in Norway was and is a tragedy, as were the thousands of other tragedies happening all over the world on the same day in Libya, Congo, Somalia, Mexico and goodness knows where else. But perhaps we might respond better if we had less not more media, not in a less detached way but a more discerning way and that if anything is what we need from our civil leaders.