Kongsberg attack

On the evening of 13 October 2021, a man attacked eight people at several locations in the town of Kongsberg, Buskerud, Norway, approximately 70 kilometres southwest of Oslo. Using a bow and arrows along with two other weapons, the attacker moved through the town, beginning inside a Coop Extra supermarket before continuing his assault in the street and in a residential area. Police said all five fatalities resulted from stabbings rather than arrow shots, as the perpetrator discarded or lost his bow during the attack. At least one non-fatal injury was caused by an arrow.

Police were first alerted at 18:12 CEST to a man walking around Kongsberg carrying a bow and arrows. Armed officers confronted him six minutes later, but he fired arrows at them and escaped before continuing the attack. A large emergency response followed, involving 22 armed police patrols, more than ten ambulances, and two helicopters. The perpetrator was arrested at 18:47, 35 minutes after the attack began; a warning shot was fired during the arrest. This was described by police as the deadliest attack in Norway since the 2011 attacks committed by Anders Behring Breivik.

Five people were killed — four women and one man, aged 75, 75, 78, 56, and 52-year-old German musician and writer Andrea Haugen — in either their homes or public spaces. Three others were injured, none with life-threatening wounds; one survivor was an off-duty police officer.

The accused, Espen Andersen Bråthen, a Danish citizen born in Norway in 1983 with a Norwegian father and Danish mother, was taken into custody the same day and later charged with murder. He had prior convictions for break-ins, cannabis possession, and death threats against family members, and had been known to Norwegian police since 2015 over concerns about possible extremist views, including a 2017 report by a childhood friend over online videos. In 2018, health services were notified about him but assessed him as unlikely to commit a terrorist attack. Police said he had converted to Islam around 2016, but investigators considered this an unlikely motive, instead pointing to mental illness. The Norwegian Police Security Service opened a terrorism investigation while examining a broad range of possible motives, and Danish authorities said they would cooperate with the Norwegian investigation given Bråthen's citizenship.

Bråthen was questioned for more than three hours, cooperated with authorities, and confessed to the attack, according to his defence lawyer. He was moved into the custody of health services on 14 October for psychiatric evaluation. His trial began on 18 May 2022 at Hokksund district court, where he was charged with murdering five people and the attempted murder of 11 others. Forensic psychiatrists diagnosed him with chronic paranoid schizophrenia and found he was psychotic at the time of the attack. On 24 June 2022, the court found Bråthen unfit for criminal punishment under Norwegian law and ordered compulsory mental health care instead — an outcome requested by both prosecution and defence. In the aftermath, Norwegian police, usually unarmed, were temporarily ordered to carry firearms nationwide, though the national threat level was not changed.