But the suspect, it seems, is no pure nationalist. Instead, he is said to be a right-wing extremist of the kind that police authorities in the West have feared for some time.
Their fear has been heightened by the potentially explosive mix of economic recession and unemployment, increasing racism and an ever stronger anti-Muslim sentiment, according to the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten.
This is similar to the conditions which led to the rise of Nazism last century. This was not as much of an aberration as people like to think it was. People are still fundamentally the same animals, as ample evidence from various parts of the world (including Europe) has shown since then.
But at the same time, aspects of the far-right agenda have risen to greater prominence on the mainstream political arena, with Expo reporting how the revulsion displayed by the Swedish people during the 1990s is increasingly turning towards a curiosity about toned-down far-right rhetoric.
Similar sentiments have been felt in Norway, where politicians have openly been voicing concerns about how the country's culture might be diluted by immigration from countries with different religions and values.
This isn't surprising either. Muslim immigrants in many places have been giving themselves a bad name. Not all of them of course, but enough of them to make a difference.
Following the attacks in Oslo and on Utoeya, it will be interesting to see whether many in the country develop a more sophisticated view of where the greatest threats are coming from, amid a growing realisation that extremism is deadly regardless of nationality, ethnicity or religion.
This. I never trust people who are proud of the purity of their ideology, whatever it happens to be.
I find it hard not to worry that the nightmare has arrived in full now.
The mobilisation of a terrorist, murderous far-right in Europe is something I have worried about for a long, long time.
Hey, Europe has survived that already umpteen times.