Together in Grief? Space and Conflict in the Establishment of a National July 22 Memorial in Hole Municipality

This chapter examines the contentious collective memory processes around establishing a national July 22nd memorial in Hole Municipality as they played out in local public discourse. We adopt social and spatial frameworks of memory to examine how different groups responded to the spatial dimensions of both grassroots memorials and proposed memorial sites. Using publicly available newspaper articles, editorials and letters to the editor on grassroots and permanent memorials which appeared in the local newspaper between 2011 and 2023, we describe key groups which interacted throughout the time period in collaboration and conflict. Five spatial areas which became particularly important are identified: Utøya-Utstranda (2011–2023); Grassroots memorials and Svingen (2011–2014); Utsikten (2012–2022); Sørbråten/Lauvodden (2012–2017); and Utøyakaia (2017–2023). We show that the placement of the current memorial on Utøyakaia cannot be separated from the contentious processes about space which occurred within these groups across different sites in the local community.