Utøya
— — a small island Norway holds carefully.
Not only on a wall.
“Utøya is a wooded island of about 26 acres in Tyrifjorden, the lake Norway gathers around northwest of Oslo. Since 1950 the Workers' Youth League has held its summer camp here. On July 22, 2011, sixty-nine young people were killed on this ground. The island reopened in 2015 as a place of learning and memory. The pines still cover most of it. — from the studio
Utøya, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Utøya is a 10.6-hectare (26-acre) island in the Tyrifjorden lake, about 38 kilometres northwest of Oslo, in Hole municipality, Buskerud county. The Norwegian Workers' Youth League (AUF), the youth wing of the Labour Party, has owned the island since 1950 and held its annual summer political camp there each July. The island is reached by a short ferry crossing from Utvika on the eastern shore. Forested in pine and birch, it rises to about 30 metres at its high point, with a handful of cabins, a cafeteria building, and a small football pitch set in a clearing near the centre.
The silence on Utøya is held silence. On July 22, 2011, sixty-nine people, most of them teenagers, were killed and thirty-three more wounded in an attack on the AUF summer camp. The island closed and reopened in 2015 under the AUF's care, with a learning centre by Fantastic Norway and a memorial called Lysningen — 'the clearing' — a suspended steel ring inscribed with the names of those who died. The summer camp returned the same year. Visitors come by guided arrangement. The pines move overhead, and the lake water carries sound a long way over the water.
Utøya is open to visitors by arrangement, not as a tourist site. The AUF runs guided visits booked through utoya.no, typically May through September, with the ferry crossing from Utstranda taking about ten minutes. The public memorial Hegnhuset stands on the island, preserving the original cafeteria building within a protective timber lattice of sixty-nine columns. On the mainland, the larger 22 July Centre in central Oslo is free to enter and holds the wider exhibition and the names of the eight who were killed that day in the government quarter bombing that preceded the attack on the island.