August 2011

[Sweder]

We’ve heard several stories of heroism following the Oslo massacre, but one big story seems to have slipped through the cracks. The story of Toril Hansen and Hege Dalen, who saved 40 teens from Utoya island in their boat, is remarkable. The couple made four trips to save the youths despite coming under fire early on in the rescue.

This went unreported until last week when a Finnish reporter heard tell of the Dunkirkesque act of heroism. Tirol and Hege were having dinner on the opposite shore when the shooting started.

'We were eating, then came the shooting and the awful screaming' says Toril. 'We saw how the young people ran in panic into the lake.' The couple took immediate action, pushing their boat into lake Tifjorden and crossing to where the children were entering the water. They pulled as many as they could into their boat before crossing to the mainland. In all they made four round trips, rescuing 40 people. Some were wounded, all were terrified, freezing cold, soaked to the skin and, thanks to Toril and Hege, lucky to be alive.

After the first run they noticed several bullet holes along one side of the boat. Yet they made three further trips to make sure they saved as many as possible from the gunman.

It seems incredible that their story should pass unnoticed until now. It could be it was lost in all the craziness that followed a day of confusion and horror, yet other stories of equally brave rescue have come to light outside of Scandinavia. Some have suggested their extraordinary tale, reported on 24th July in the Helsingin Sanomat, the Finnish capital's largest daily newspaper, didn't circulate more widely because Toril and Hege are a married couple who both happen to be women.

Is it possible in this day and age that our media is driven by homophobes and bigots who would shun a great story because it highlights a married lesbian couple as heroines? Yesterday I posted a link on Twitter to a story about precisely that. The piece is here. It's the same story told with the central characters sexual orientation to the fore. The reaction I got was astonishing. Huge support and retweets from the lesbian, gay and transgendered community as you might expect, but also opprobrium from right wingers who wanted to know why I was so strongly supportive of 'these types of people' and what the hell did gender or sexual proclivities have to do with the story?

The answer to that is posed as a question at the mast of the original piece. I wonder would a Tea Partier, vehemently opposed to same sex marriage in their own country, object to having their kith and kin saved from the bullets of a 'Christian Fundamentalist' by such 'deviant' couple?

It's an ugly moral maze for some. To me it's simply a cracking story that needs telling, far and wide. Spread the news.