Massacre Threat at a Tromsø High School
On Thursday evening the national newspaper Aftenposten was ‘tipped’ to a picture posted on a forum that targeted Kongsbakken High School in Tromsø as a site for a massacre. Aftenposten contacted the school Principal who then contacted the police.
Today students arrived to school with a guarded welcome by the local police. All students were immediately sent home and the school closed.
Police are investigating the threat to find the source of the picture and determine whether the threat is real. They are currently searching through the school server logs to see if the threat came from one of the students.
It has been stated by the Principal that if everything is resolved quickly the school will re-open on Monday. However, on interview, two Kongsbakken students said they were scared to return to school.
This incident has certainly shocked the community, especially as the Finnish school massacres of 2007 and 2008 are still fresh in everyone’s mind.
updates below
Links:
Nordlys: www.nordlys.no/nyheter/article4794825.ece
Aftenposten: www.aftenposten.no/nyheter/iriks/article3454756.ece
iTroms updates: www.itromsø.no
UPDATES:
- The website where the picture was posted is an open forum where anyone can post anything. Last year a similar threat was posted against a Swedish High School. The person behind these threats was quickly located and arrested but he claimed the whole thing was a joke. However, there have been other threats posted on the same site that have actually followed through. Most students of Kongsbakken High School are aware of this forum and many are regular users.
- Teachers at Kongsbakken High School decided to ‘attempt’ holding classes today. However, the mood amongst the students, with the armed police guarding entrances, made teaching an impossible task. The students were therefore sent home at 9am.
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Pølse is THE fast food of Norway. When the grilled pølse was first introduced to Norway in the 50s it was eaten naked – without bread.
A popular Summer activity in Norway is kayaking. The coast of Norway is dotted with thousands of little islands making the perfect conditions for a smooth paddle.
Norwegian dogs were born with a purpose. They were bred to be hunting dogs, herding dogs and farm dogs.
The further ‘out of the way’ you go the more common it is to see folk cottages standing by the side of roads, along fjords or in a thicket of trees, minding their own business. 
How Norway became a country is shrouded in mystery and folklore. The most well known tale is of Harald Hårfagre who gathered the small kingdoms of the north into a unified nation in 872AD – and of course, this story is about love.
Another shocking element is the fact that it was aimed at the Sámi students in particular. In my (utlending) eyes, Tromsø seems to be fairly fine as far as Sámi stuff goes, so something like this is particularly surprising.
On the other hand, since it’s 4chan, it could be a joke… But, you never know. Glad they played it safe.
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from L-Jay:
Writing ‘Sami people’ I thought was very odd indeed. Sami and Norwegians in Tromsø are best buds. The only difference I see between them is character. The Sami are outgoing whereas Norwegians are shy…lol. This makes me think that it is a prank – but it is also serious enough to take cautious action.
Sorry if this is a silly question which shows my great naivety of Norwegian culture, but why is there problems between Sami and Norwegian people (albeit not in Tromsø like you said)?
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from L-Jay:
There is always a little friction with any two cultures trying to share the same land. The Sami were around with the Vikings but they didn’t mix. In Norway, at least, problems really started between Sami and the now Christianised Vikings when they started baptising the Sami. It wasn’t the fact that the Sami didn’t want to be Christensed – they did – it was the fact that the Sami were better Christians than the Norsemenn. The Sami would see the hypocrisy in the Norsemenn antics of running the church and Christening one minute and then turning around the next to do un-Christian things like selling alcohol, unfair taxing (the Swedish and Norwegians were both taxing the Sami – the Swedes would barge into Norway, finding the Sami to tax them!). So the Sami caused an up-rising for their rights and that was the Kautokino Rebellion (1852).
The Norsemenn continually tryed to ‘Norwegianise’ the Sami and get rid of their culture thanks to ‘Romantic Nationalism’. In the 1900s the Norwegianising of Sami became very organised and peaked in the 1930s. It’s funny that Norway always praises itself for being the second European country allowing their women to vote from 1909 (though, only upper & middle class women were allowed) but they fail to mention that at this time they were gaining strength in the ‘social-ethnic-cleansing’ of Sami. Norwegian history has many more colours than just red, white and blue.
This history is still in the minds of Sami and Norwegians. However, the difference between Sami and Norwegians today are the stereotypes that came out of the Romantic Nationalism era. The Sami weren’t seen in a good light then – and therefore, I guess, they still have to carry the old stigmas around because Norwegians are very hard to change.
(But I love them both! 
Wow! Thanks for that lengthy explanation
In addition to the land and political struggles that crop up, it’s worth noting that there are still ongoing cultural struggles (or maybe not struggles, but prejudices and racism) that are strong enough that some people, for whatever reason, prefer to hide their Sámi identity… And, even in Finnmark.
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from L-Jay:
My Norwegian family has great respect for Sami – Farfar knows how to speak Sami and he used to help herd reindeer to Summer pastures. We always go up to the Sami Easter festival and Sami week in Tromsø. I know on the surface that everything is happy between Norwegians and Sami. But in reality, however, I can feel sometimes in the air every now and then in daily encounters something is going on. It’s not really ‘friction’ but I find that Sami and Norwegians interact together differently than when Norwegians and Sami interact with me. I find that Sami are more cheerful interacting with me than with Norwegians. It’s likely because I’m oblivious to any prejudices. Actually, I purposely ignore and disregard anything I sense between Norwegians and Sami because I don’t want to be influenced and I don’t want to have an opinion about Sami and Norwegian relations. Not having an opinion, I believe, will enable me to stay neutral.
Hopefully the Scandinavian authorities in such situations as this do not “play it up” too much. While it’s important to report this to the citizens, placing too much focus on it will inadvertently ‘glorify’ these criminals, thus making it appealing to others who have little to do and are easily persuaded. America is like that and it had a major problem with the skinheads (a group that called themselves “neo-nazis”). The more fuel, the more fire.
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from L-Jay:
The problem is the papers keep interviewing the youth for quotes and I think this is what is causing a greater fuss.
It’s curious also that papers don’t care about censorship in Norway (only when it comes to violence) and I think some of the quotes publicised by the youth emphasises the ‘normal’ crass-speech of North Norwegians with quotes like: “We are drit scared! (The italics, of course, is the Norwegian word that is a swear in English.) This word would never be allowed in a Regional paper in the English-speaking world, let alone as the headline of a story, but in Northern Norway it seems perfectly normal.
I feel like they’re fair to publicize it to a point, however I found an article in one of the local newspapers that more or less said, “The police expect to find whodunit”, which only serves to add pointless focus to it. Sure, it’s good to know Kripos is working on it, it’s good to know the police are working on it, but that’s something we should really just assume is going on already.
Also in the news, a new threat was supposedly posted on 4chan: http://www.itromso.no/nyheter/article324402.ece
One of the potential problems is that now that 4chan is aware of it, and as a result 4chan users will do stupid things to gain more attention. That’s just par for course for 4chan, and internet trolls in general (not the usual mountain trolls we know here, of course).
Bringing attention to it could also work in the police’ favor, too, though. If the real crime here is one of someone just wanting attention, it’s possible that any further action they take will just be giving police and Kripos more data to work with. If there really is a threat of a school shooting, it sounds likely that the police will also manage to catch whoever it was– Tromsø isn’t a big city. I also heard that the school had a fairly heavy police presence today too, so they’re doing their job.
Having said that, I guess I’m not really sure how I feel about additional publicity– I just see a few possibilities to it.
Any updates on, who did it? There was similar situation in Estonia in November. The threat was also posted on 4chan. It took 3 days for police to find the one who did it. The offender(18 years old) said that he did it just for fun.
Today I read from newspaper that he got 3 years in jail and he had to serve 1 month and 18 days in jail during investigation. Now he is on probation and if he breaks law in next 3 years, he must serve all 3 years.
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from Moose:
So far the police have no suspects, but they say they are confident finding the culprit. The school ran as usual after the weekend, and few of the students think the threat is serious.
However, on Monday it was made known that another threat had been posted on 4chan – this time in the form of a forum comment:
“Implying I was kidding when I made that threat. Keep watching the news. I may have been foiled the first time, but time will show my seriousness”.
It is not known if this is the same person.