Noway gun terror: PM and royals lead nation in mourning

Queen Sonja hugged Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg when they met at the hotel in Sundvollen, where victims' relatives waited to identify their bodies.

The queen and King Harald, accompanied by Crown Prince Haakon, comforted mourners while Stoltenberg, his voice trembling with emotion, spoke of the harrowing stories recounted by the young survivors of the deadly shootings on the nearby island of Utoeya.

Stoltenberg, who arrived by helicopter, said that the twin attacks made Friday the deadliest day in Norway's peacetime history. He said: "This is beyond comprehension. It's a nightmare. It's a nightmare for those who have been killed, for their mothers and fathers, family and friends."

The prime minister told reporters that he had spent every summer since 1974 on Utoeya, where teenagers from the youth wing of his governing Labour party were holding a summer retreat when the gunman struck.

It was "my childhood paradise that yesterday was transformed into hell", Stoltenberg said.

He added that some families were still looking for their children.

He warned that the number of casualties could still rise as police yesterday continued their search of woodland and the sea around the island.

Stoltenberg told reporters that meeting the relatives was "deeply touching", adding that he had been due to visit the youth group on Utoeya just hours after the slaughter took place.

Across the country, Norwegians struggled to come to terms with the horror of Friday's massacre and the city centre bombing in Oslo that killed seven people.

Buildings around the capital lowered their flags to half mast and people streamed into the city's cathedral to light candles and lay flowers. Outside, mourners began building a makeshift altar from dug-up cobblestones.

Army officers patrolled the quiet streets and stood guard outside public buildings, a highly unusual sight in this normally tranquil city. At lunchtime police lifted a warning, issued after the bombing, for people to stay away from the city centre.

Among the people who ventured out, there was a sense of bewilderment that such an atrocity could happen in their peaceful, accessible and democratic homeland.

"It's absurd. I can't believe it. Norway is the most safe and peaceful place in the world, or was," said Beate Karlsen, 39. "Maybe Norway is no longer as innocent and safe as we thought."

Some wondered if Norway would ever be the same again, but Stoltenberg said it was too early to say.

"I think we can maintain some of the most important things we see in Norwegian society - that we are an open society, that we are a democratic society and that Norway is a society where we have a very close relationship between the people and the politicians," he said.

He vowed that the killings would not change the fundamental values that have served Norway well. "It's a society where young people can have controversial opinions without being afraid," he told reporters.

Marit Saxeide, 68, who runs a shop in an ethnically diverse district of Oslo, said she was relieved the suspect, Anders Behring Breivik, was not a Muslim.

She said: "It would have been hell here if that were the case. It's incomprehensible how a seemingly educated man can do something like this. I sympathise with his mother though, it must be terrible for her."

Saxeide's son Helge, 40, said the attacks marked "day zero" for Norway. He said: "It's a double shock - 99 per cent of Norwegians immediately believed this was a Muslim terror attack. When it turned out not to be, that was the second shock."