It was another good day for Freya, the 590-kilogram walrus named after the Norse goddess of love, beauty and war, who has become a beloved international media sensation, a playful mascot in the long summer of Oslo, the capital. from Norway.
She spent a Saturday diving from a boat moored to a busy pier in the marina, feasting on clams and then resurfacing to nap on deck for hours. Christian Ytteborg, 47, a marina worker who saw her in the morning, called in authorities to help protect her.
Soon after, he says, a patrol boat manned by “four nice guys” from the Norwegian Directorate of Fisheries came to help. They ate mussels together and laughed at a close-up video one of the men took of the walrus dancing on the boat. A teenage marina employee then added to the video, as a soundtrack, a rap by Louis Theroux: “I’d like to see you move, move.”
But when night fell and Freya was alone, the Pesca workers sprang into action. They executed Freya with what her boss Frank Bakke-Jensen, a former Norwegian defense minister, later called “bullets suitable for this mission”. Then, they covered the animal’s body with a tarp, cut the boat’s ropes and towed the animal, returning the boat the next day, empty and clean, without any trace.
On Monday (15), the corpse arrived half frozen at a nearby autopsy laboratory. “It’s in pieces,” says Knut Madslien, a senior scientist in the health surveillance department at the Norwegian Veterinary Institute.
Freya’s death polarized Oslo and threatened to change the image of a country associated with love of nature, diplomatic idealism and Nobel Peace Prizes into a place where someone kills a vagrant, adoring bather with mob efficiency.
In a land that loves dark detective stories, the attack on Freya has emerged as the slaughter of summer, a marine mystery less about who pulled the trigger than about who ultimately is to blame for the demise of the wizened swimmer.
Animal advocates are raising money to build a statue in his honor. Politicians demand parliamentary hearings. Scientists examine an invasive species of Pacific oyster that may have lured it to the marina.
Bakke-Jensen and his wife received death threats, causing him to lament “irrational forces”. Ytteborg, the marina worker in love with Freya, claims he felt betrayed by “a death squad”.
“They didn’t have to kill her,” says Marius Løkse, 48, who stopped teaching children in his small fleet of replica Viking boats to blame dark political and capitalist forces interested in protecting his yachts. “We would love to have this walrus here,” he said. “She could have calmed down.”
The Norwegian Fisheries Directorate, which at first appeared to welcome Freya, was alarmed as people got closer and closer to a very large wild animal. Authorities warned people to leave her alone. But Norwegians, often children, ignored the warnings.
Authorities claimed to have noticed a change in Freya’s behavior, instigated by the crazed crowd of social media users. Afraid of someone getting hurt, they gave the Norwegians an ultimatum to back off.
“There is the possibility of approving a controlled operation to kill the animal,” warned a fisheries official on Aug. 11. Authorities said they considered drugging her with a dart but decided she would simply drown. This Friday (19), they chose to kill her.
While Norwegians blame each other, the real culprits, as is often the case, may be those closest to the victim.
“They wanted a selfie, a hug with her. ‘Best friends forever,'” says Kjell Jonsson, 44, as he returns home with a kayak over his shoulder after teaching a class. “It’s all the people’s fault who couldn’t leave her alone.”
But some villagers were also afraid of Freya, terrified of being devoured.
Erik Holm, 32, was in his apartment with his girlfriend when he heard the news of the murder. The execution caused nervousness. The secrecy of the thing. The coldness. The decision to punish the animal rather than the people. “What do you say to children when you kill a walrus?” he asks. Holm decided he needed to do something big.
He had already done great things before. He was the driving force behind the construction of Norway’s longest waterslide, a 300-meter tube in central Oslo. He founded a social network for club boys to share their activities. Most of all, Holm, who is half-Swedish, has worked on social media campaigns for his favorite Swedish football team, helping to build an online crowd and a statue of the team’s founder.
Then he had the idea. “Why not make a statue of Freya?” he recalls. “For people to see, touch, know her size.”
In less than an hour, he created an Instagram account and appealed to a crowdfunding online, linking it to his own page, @Norway, which has nearly 500,000 followers. Influencer friends and celebrities liked “and made it take off” the campaign, in his words, while anti-Freya forces mocked his phrases. (“Buy a teddy bear.”) By Friday afternoon, the page had raised more than 238,826 Norwegian kroner, or about R$126,000.
The boat where Freya spent her final hours belonged to Fredrik Walsoe, 46, a real estate developer who was traveling at the time. When a friend told him that a walrus was on his boat, he says he remembered that he didn’t have insurance and that he thought “Can I really be that unlucky?”
On Wednesday (17), as he took his golf clubs from the speedboat, he showed the rips in the canvas that Freya had made with her fangs. He says he wonders if she was trying to get some fries he had hidden in the cabin.
“I’m sorry they had to kill her, but it was the only way,” he says. “Everyone wants it to have meaning.”
