You are someone. You are capable. Everyone cares about you. Isn’t that what everyone tries to convey to their children?

Sure — but these messages are not necessarily what previous generations were rejecting. The Law of Jante also encapsulated an ideal of solidarity. In the Scandinavian welfare model, as it took shape in the years following World War II, the Protestant ethic — work hard, be frugal, don’t put yourself before others — combined with the labor movement’s notion that being “one of us” was more important than being someone special. The result in Norway was universal public health care and education, public TV and radio, public railways and telecommunications, state-subsidized housing and agriculture, and a state-sanctioned belief that no one was better than anyone else. At school, no students were graded until the age of 13. Everyone, especially children, was to be treated alike.

And yet, or perhaps for that very reason, I lay awake at night, surrounded by the 1970s every way I turned, and dreamt of becoming famous. First I wanted to be a soccer star, later a rock star. I was an untalented soccer player, and I could neither play an instrument nor sing, but that made no difference to my desire, which was powerful. I tried to get the leading parts in all the school plays, and once I sent a letter to the public TV broadcaster asking to perform with the rock-musician Age Aleksandersen in a series that teamed up viewers with stars. I didn’t tell anyone about this. If my parents or friends had found out, I would have been condemned. In fact, I’ve never told anyone about this before. It still makes me feel ashamed.

Why did I have this strong desire to be different? What made me want to be seen by everyone? Did I think I was better than them? Actually no, quite the opposite: I was nobody, and my only chance of becoming someone, so it seemed, was to become famous, no matter for what. A famous scientist, a famous soccer player, a famous rock musician, a famous painter, a famous writer. Famous, famous, famous — that was the only way I could go from being no one to being someone.

These are powerful emotions. If not rooted in the self, identity is determined by external factors, which may end up becoming decisive, dominating forces. The desire for fame is first and foremost, and perhaps no more than, the desire of a child. For most people, finding ways of handling it — of putting the needs of others before one’s own — is a part of becoming an adult. For a very few people, it remains unmanageable.

Asne Seierstad’s book about the mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik was published last fall in Scandinavia. Breivik is the man who nearly three years ago massacred dozens of youths on Utoya island, near Oslo. The Norwegian title of the book is “En Av Oss” (“One of Us”), because Breivik seemed, in many ways, so ordinary: a middle-class young man raised in a welfare state on the periphery of Europe. The most interesting aspect of Seierstad’s narrative is her description of Breivik’s road to extremism and terror — the way Breivik always wishes to be seen and keeps being overlooked, ignored, disregarded; how he becomes more and more isolated until he is finally left alone in a room, in front of a screen, playing World of Warcraft constantly for a whole year. He is no one, and to be no one is to be dead, and when you are dead, you are beyond everything. There is nothing to lose; everything is possible. Breivik killed 77 people that day in order to be seen. It no longer mattered what he was seen as. In his own eyes he was a hero, a liberator, the chosen one.