The drab life of Norway's mass killer

Anders Behring Breivic spent a year playing the online role-playing game World of Warcraft full-time, as a reward for his impending "martyrdom", the Oslo court heard on Monday.

Between 2006 and 2007, the 33-year-old Norwegian mass killer spent his days and nights immersed in a world of fantasy monsters, wizards, and knights performing violent "missions".

During the time, Breivik, who has admitted killing 77 people last July, lived at his mother's Oslo flat, the court heard, supporting himself from his savings.

World of Warcraft - a virtual world where 10.3?million players attempt to achieve the position of Justicar - has been criticised for its addictiveness. Svein Holden, the prosecutor, described the game as violent.

Breivik broke into a broad smile when Holden projected an image of Justicar Andersnordic, Breivik's avatar in the game, on to a screen in the courtroom.

The details of his role-playing past were part of an opening presentation that portrayed Breivik's life in the decade before his attack as a drab succession of failures and isolation, starting with his early job in telephone sales and followed by the setting up of three businesses, each of which was wound up without yielding any profit.

"The business idea was the sale of telephone services, but it didn't generate much income, and it was very quickly closed down," Holden said of Behring Marketing, the first company Breivik registered.

It was only when Breivik set up an online operation selling fake diplomas in around 2003, Holden said, that he had managed to to stockpile considerable amounts of money, which he laundered through banks in the Baltic states. The cash allowed him to move out of the communal flat in which he had been living and into his own flat in Oslo.

But in 2006, at about the time Breivik became absorbed in the World of Warcraft game, that changed.

"The summer of 2006 represented a new change at several levels," Holden said.

"There was the sale of the false diploma company. He's also abandoned the ideal of being a financial supporter (of the anti-Islamic movement), he then moved into his mother's apartment in Oslo."

Holden portrayed Breivik's progress from this point almost as an extension of his role-playing, starting in 2009, when he bought 36 separate items from eight countries to make his Knights Templar uniform, including an arm-patch brought from a British supplier, sporting the words Marxist hunter England, which Breivik altered to read Marxist hunter Norway.

It was only after Breivik had acquired the uniform that he began to stockpile the weapons and bomb-making materials that he used to carry out his massacre.

Holden said he would refer to "Justicar Andersnordic" again in the trial, suggesting that he may see a connection between the Justicar level in the game, and the position of "Knight Justiciar" Breivik claims to hold in real life in the Knights Templar, a secret anti-Islamic organisation.

Police have found no evidence, either of the other cells Breivik claims exist of his order, or of the inaugural meeting he claims to have attended.

"There is one subject, in particular that stands out," Holden said as he began his presentation. "Mainly that Breivik claims he became a member of the Knights Templar in London at a meeting in April 2002.

"His membership in this network is of great importance to how he led his life. One of its main aims is to deport Islam out of Europe. In our opinion no such network exists."