Norway held a national remembrance ceremony in Oslo yesterday, one month after 77 died in a one-man killing spree.

The Oslo bombing and the Utøya island massacre on July 22 shocked a nation and the effect of the tragedy “is still very present”, according to Edwin Sammut, a 33-year-old father of two who settled in the Norwegian capital three years ago.

Mr Sammut, who works for a government department there, situated not very far from where the powerful explosions occurred, had just gotten off the train on his way home when he heard and felt the blast at 3.25 p.m.

“I live about 15 kilometres away from the city centre, so you can imagine how powerful the explosion actually was. Initially, I didn’t think much of it because I thought there was some construction work going on,” he said. However, when he got home and saw the scenes on TV, he was overcome with a sense of disbelief. Like many, he thought it might have been a terrorist attack, following recent threats aimed at Norway.

“Gradually, news began to flow in about the shooting going on in Utøya, where the gunman, 32-year-old Anders Behring Breivik, shot dead 69 people attending a summer camp by the youth wing of the governing Labour party.

The blasts which took place shortly before the shooting, it later emerged, had killed another eight people. However, news about what was exactly happening was very unclear. The scale of the tragedy only came to light in the evening.

“There was a lot of panic in the city centre in the hours after the explosion because the police were unsure whether there were other bombs in the area. We were told to try and avoid travelling to the city centre. Naturally, people remained tense for many days. Any loud noise would panic people,” Mr Sammut said.

Several people working in the bombed government quarters had now returned from their summer holidays but adjusting to the new circumstances was not going to be easy, he noted, pointing out that there were still too many reminders.

Over the weekend, about 1,500 survivors, relatives and close friends of the victims visited Utøya island for the first time since the atrocity.

The young victims were buried over the past days and a number of survivors are still recovering in hospital.

New security measures, some of which had been planned before the attack, will now be put into place. This includes closing off access to the street on which the Prime Minister’s office is located, making it even more difficult to forget what happened.

“It is not easy to forget, even for those who were not here. My department, for instance, is accommodating staff from another department that had been based in the bombed area,” Mr Sammut said.

“One can notice that things have somewhat changed. Disbelief has affected people, disbelief that one man, a Norwegian, can do this in his own country. Of course, we heard of similar things taking place in America but it never occurred to us that it would happen here,” he added.

Following the incident, Mr Sammut said it had become more difficult for political parties to raise issues such as ­immigration, which was at the heart of Mr Brevik’s actions, ­having arrogated to himself the job to “liberate” Europe of Muslims.

Mr Breivik’s confinement in isolation has been extended by another four weeks, the next court hearing is expected to be held on September 19.