From Tragedy to Transformation – EUSTORY Past Forward Festival 2026
Jørgen Watne Frydnes speaks about his experience in processing collective trauma by involving the bereaved and reshaping sites of horror into new democratic spaces.
Input and Talk about Processing Collective Trauma After Terror
On 22 July 2011, a white supremacist killed 77 people in Norway – first at the Government Center in Oslo, then on the island of Utøya, where he executed 69 people, mostly teenagers attending a youth democracy camp.
Jørgen Watne Frydnes took on the task of rebuilding Utøya in the aftermath. He made a radical decision: rather than imposing a vision from above, he set out to meet personally with every family who had lost someone – listening to their grief, their needs, and their hopes. This emotionally grueling process, rarely considered in scholary literature on commemoration, shaped a renewal of Utøya that honored te dead while creating a living space for democratic values and future generations.
Frydnes reflects on what this decade-long experience taught him about processing trauma – at the individual level and the societal level. How do institutions navigate grief that takes many forms, including anger? What does genuine inclusion of bereaved communities actually require? And what does it mean to build hope without leaving people behind?
