OSLO, Norway – It has been reported that Prince Charles and his wife Camilla, the Duchess of Cornwall, have met with survivors of last year’s Norwegian terror attacks at the start of their weeklong tour of Scandinavia.
The British royal couple, who were welcomed by Crown Prince Haakon and Crown Princess Mette-Marit at Oslo airport Tuesday, were accompanied to Oslo Nobel Peace Center for the meeting by King Harald and Queen Sonja. There, they were introduced to members of the Labor Party’s youth league, which was holding a summer camp on the island of Utoya when right-wing extremist Anders Behring Breivik gunned down 69 people on July 22. A few hours earlier, he had killed eight people in a car bomb attack on government buildings in Oslo center. A crowd of some 100 people cheered when the royals’ car pulled up at the center, some waving Union Jacks and shouting “Camilla, Camilla” in the bright spring sunshine. Inside, they met about a dozen survivors who had revisited the island after the killings.
“It was very brave of you,” Camilla told a group of them. “The most important thing is to be able to talk about it, and talking to each other, between yourselves.” Eskil Pedersen, the 28-year-old leader of the youth league, described the meeting with Charles and Camilla as “pleasant,” adding that they were “warm, well-informed, informal” and had paid attention to them. “They also said that they really believe that out of something dreadful it’s important that something good can come,” Pedersen added. Earlier Tuesday, Charles laid a wreath at the national monument in Oslo and the royal couple met with Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg.
They were to attend a state dinner later, hosted by Harald and Sonja. After the Prince of Wales and Camilla’s three-day tour in Norway, which includes a visit to the western city of Bergen, they are scheduled to travel to Sweden and Denmark. It is the couple’s first joint visit to Scandinavia.