Café Teatret has used Breivik’s so-called ‘extremist manifesto’, published online shortly before he killed 77 people in Norway on 22nd July last year, as the inspiration for their drama Manifesto 2083.

The play, directed by Christian Lollike, will see the right-wing extremist’s views performed as a monologue, with Christian Lollike playing the lead role. The announcement has however attracted heavy criticism, as the car bombing in Oslo and the massacre on Utøya Island still sits fresh in the minds of survivors and victims’ families six months on.

Entitled ‘2083: A European Declaration of Independence’, Brievik’s manifesto praised Denmark for being “the only Scandinavian country with some spine left”, regarding the “ideological war” against Islam. Many felt that such comments referred to the right-wing Dansk Folkeparti’s (DF) attacks against multiculturalism.

However, Pia Kjærsgaard, leader of DF, was one of the first to speak out against the new production. Writing on her Facebook profile, she said, “I find it deeply embarrassing, distasteful and shameful. Personally, I would be ashamed to go in and see the show. [Breivik] can sit back and rub his hands together because he gets all the publicity he longs for.”

Also offended by the offering are some of the families and friends of Breivik’s many victims. Ragnar Eikeland, who lost his son at Utøya, said it is, “so offensive that I really have no words”.

“It will be an extra burden for [the victims’ families] to know that it will be performed while the court case is underway,” he told Norway’s NTB news bureau. “No-one should do something that spreads Breivik’s opinions.”

In a written submission to Politiken however, Lollike defended his artistic decision.

“Is it not precisely the task of art to help understand how something so terrible could happen?” he wrote. “Where do we go with our anger, our pain, our frustration and the big ‘why’? How could this happen? What kind of mindset and view of humanity has he filled his mind with, and where does it come from?

“Writers, journalists and analysts have sought to answer these questions based on the manifesto. They have a right to. Doesn’t theatre – based on Breivik’s manifesto and with the critical and analytical resources of the performing arts – have the right to examine these same questions?” Lollike wrote.

The Dansk Folkeparti (DF) is just one of the parties that plans to introduce tougher legislation for such offences.

“We are asking for harsher penalties and minimum sentences,” Peter Skaarup, DF party spokesman, told Ekstra Bladet. “It needs to be done now.”

The former Venstre-Konservative (VK) government started an investigation into the country’s sexual offence laws before leaving office. It is due to be published by Straffelovrødet (the Council for Crime and Punishment) later this year, and while some politicians are awaiting the results, many say it is clear already that things need to change.

“Personal assaults should be punished more severely than economic crimes. The penalties should reflect how violated the victims feel,” said Ole Hækkerup, the legal spokesperson for Socialdemokraterne.

Speaking to Ekstra Bladet, however, lawyer Sysette Vinding Kruse said the current legislation already allows for harsher penalties to be administered if deemed necessary. Kruse added that she does not think changing the law will solve the problem.

The man, who has converted from Catholicism to Islam, was tracked down in Skien on Wednesday 18th January, just a day after publishing the film.

As well as showing photographs of Crown Prince Haakon, Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg and Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Støre with text urging Allah to “destroy them” with painful deaths, the video also promoted a protest in Oslo on Friday. ‘Demonstration: Norwegian troops out of Afghanistan’, however, only attracted a crowd of 40 – far short of the 500 to 700 people the Islamic organisers were expecting.

The film itself received much more attention and media coverage, with Stoltenberg claiming the threat was “different” to other he has received because it could be widely distributed. “The video confirms, unfortunately, what we’ve seen in recent years, that there are more people with extreme views who express them,” Stoltenberg said.

A local court in Telemark County, where the man was born, has agreed to let prosecutors keep the defendant in custody without media or personal communication for two more weeks. The 21 year-old, however, claims the posting was not meant as a threat and that he was only expressing his opposition to Norway’s activities in Afghanistan.

Speaking to NRK, defence solicitor John Christian Elden called his client’s situation “absurd”. “He maintains he was simply exercising his democratic right to freedom of expression,” Elden said.

The ten-month-old hooded grey pup, known as Eve, most recently paid a visit to Skegness after previously being spotted in Germany, where she was fitted with a GPS tracker, followed by Scotland and the south of England.

The Natureland sanctuary in Skegness is now caring for the intrepid pup and appealing for donations to help pay for her flight back to the Arctic region. Seals from Greenland, Iceland and Canada rarely make it as far as the North Sea.

“No one knows why Eve got lost and travelled so far,” said Cheryl Yeadon from Naturland in a Daily Mail report. “She is still a baby and we think she hasn’t learnt how to cope on her own away from her mum.

“Seals only feed on their mother’s milk for four days before they have to learn to fend for themselves. We are keeping Eve with other seals to teach her about competition for food. Our best option is to get her closer to where she would come from in the wild.

“It is not unusual for seals to travel long distances, but we have never known one to travel as far – and in the wrong direction – as Eve,” Ms Yeadon added.

The document released earlier this week by the Guggenheim Foundation proposes the south waterfront area of Katajanokka as the site for the facility. A feasibility study also said found that the museum would come at a cost of EUR 140 million and would attract some 500,000 visitors annually.

Helsinki deputy mayor Tuula Haatainen said in a statement, “By giving artists, designers and architects access to major international networks, and by promoting new types of conversations of the arts, a Guggenheim Museum in Helsinki would offer global exposure and unprecedented opportunities to practitioners in the field of visual culture in Finland as well as in the Baltic and Nordic regions in general,” YLE reports.

An official decision regarding the construction of the museum is expected from the City of Helsinki and its city council within the next few weeks. If given the green light, additional approval would be needed from Guggenheim Foundation’s board.

The proposed facility is slated to be about 12,000 square-metres in size, with nearly 4,000 square-metres dedicated to exhibitions. Helsinki officials say that funding will come via a combination of private, corporate and public sources.

The company called the reserve, named Havis, a “twin” of the biggest-ever find in the area, the Skrugard field. Officials from Statoil, Norway’s largest energy firm, said in a statement released that the Havis field likely holds between 200 million and 300 million barrels of retrievable oil equivalent.

Helge Lund, chief executive of Statoil, said in the company’s statement, “Havis is our second high-impact oil discovery in the Barents Sea in nine months. Skrugard and Havis open up a new petroleum province in the north,” Bloomberg reports.

Experts say the discovery will mean big changes for the region. Carl Christian Bachke, an analyst from Oslo-based RS Platou Markets, said: “This means a lot to the Barents region; it will open up a lot of new activity in the area.”

Similarly, Trond Omdal, an analysts Oslo’s Arctic Securities ASA, explained, “They said after Skrugard that this really changes how we view the Barents Sea and it will likely lead to other discoveries and this is a proof of that.”

Norway is the seventh largest oil exporter in the world and expects to see a record NOK 184.6 billion (EUR 24 billion) in industry investments in 2012. However, analysts say the country is likely to experience a slump over the next decade.

The news follows earlier reports issued by a pair of court-commissioned mental health experts that the man was indeed psychotic, a diagnosis which had been the centre of fierce opposition from victims’ families as well as a topic of heavy debate among psychologists.

Now, after a second evaluation following requests from the families of the 77 people who were killed in the mid-July massacre which Breivik has confessed to, officials say he is not psychotic and has not yet been administered any related medication.

Meanwhile, Svein Holden, head prosecutor in the case said he is not calling for a third evaluation despite differing court-appointed diagnoses because Breivik now has access to media reports and could manipulate his behaviour in further testing. Mr Holden said it would be preferable to his case to let the mental health experts testify during the imminent trial, which is set to commence on 16 April.

Breivik confessed to the 22nd July planting of an explosive device in a government area of Oslo before opening fire at a youth summer camp for the country’s Labour Party. If convicted, he faces 21 years in jail or an indefinite amount of time under alternative custody arrangements.

The comments come as opinion polls reflect plummeting approval ratings for the Danish premier and as global economic woes continue to affect the nation and Thorning-Schmidt’s political policies.

The Prime Minister said in her statement, “Our goal is to bring Denmark safely through the crisis and out on the other side with our wealth, decency and solicitude intact,” the Copenhagen Post reports. She went on: “It won’t be easy. But we can if we will. The New Year – 2012 – will not be the year, when we free ourselves from our problems. We must admit that now”.

But she went on to say that the current adversity could indeed be overcome, citing the history of her own family and previous difficult periods in the nation’s past: “From generation to generation – my grandmother’s, my mother’s, my own – Denmark has become a better country to live in,” she said.

Meanwhile, many critics have since responded by saying that the Prime Minister’s speech lacked specific concrete solutions.

Political analyst Jens Ringberg of the DR broadcaster said, “When Helle-Thorning Schmidt doesn’t use her new year’s speech debut to present concrete suggestions for political initiatives, it was clearly a conscious decision”. He added, “This [was] a speech where she paints a picture of the crisis-agenda, gives expectations in relation to Danes’ behaviour – that we shouldn’t expect good times – and then just points a moral finger. It’s a gamble.”

According to Birdlife Finland, many flocks are refusing to fly the roost until the weather gets suitably cold to warrant the long journey.

The organisation has tallied up a total of 160 bird species so far this year, with many of them never seen in the Finnish winter before. The rarest visitor this December are the Isabelline Shrike and Hume’s Warbler, which have sent twitchers racing for their binoculars all over the country.

Known as the land of a thousand lakes, most of the Finland’s waterways are presently ice-free and still teeming with Canada geese, swans and waterfowl, happily preening their feathers. According to Birdlife, there are also increased numbers of hen harriers, meadow pipits and wagtails, although pine grosbeaks, waxwings and fieldfares have already moved on in search of food.

The lawyer for 42 year-old Harry Larsen said her client, who was found guilty of physically and sexually abusing the couple’s 10 children over many years, was pleased with the result of the appeal.

Larsen and his 37 year-old wife were both sentenced at Hjørring Municipal Court in June after their eldest 21 year-old daughter escaped from the house and told the authorities about abuse, exploitation and squalid conditions at their home. The court heard how the mother forced the girl to ‘dig her own grave’, while the father made her have sex with a horse.

“I know that he is very satisfied with getting a sentence with a specified length, so he has a concrete date which he can look forward to being released again,” Anne Mette Ovesen, Larsen’s lawyer, said in a Copenhagen Post report. The 42 year-old is only likely to serve another five years, however, due to parole and time already spent in jail.

Despite having her four-year sentence upheld, the mother will probably be released after serving just half. “The only thing I regret is that I ever let that man into my life,” she said when leaving the court. Journalists reported that the two children who attended the appeal hearing were seen hugging and joking with their mother.

Margrethe Sanning, the prosecutor, admitted that it was difficult to know what punishment Larsen deserved. “It’s satisfactory that he received a long sentence,” she said. “The decision to imprison someone indefinitely is typically used in cases where a person repeats a crime he has previously been convicted of.”