"It's important to show they can regain normality in one sense, because the summer camps have played a very important role for the organization," said Ali Esbati of the think tank Manifest. The Swede, who has lived in Norway for more than five years, was one of the people who "ran and survived" the Anders Behring Breivik attack two years ago. 

As The Local reached him on the phone, Esbati had just stepped off the bus at Tyri Fjord, near Oslo, the site of the first summer camp held since the terror attacks that shocked Norway and the world, and said the atmosphere is joyous. 

"Obviously, apart from the immense shock that the attack two years ago meant, there has been something missing from the organization, and now they can regain that in one way," he said.

"I'm sure a lot of them will (discuss the attacks). The way in which people handled the attacks two years ago is very different from individual to individual. Some people don't want to think about it all, others want to discuss it a lot, and many would be somewhere in between," said Esbati.

"But as far as I can see, having been here just for a few minutes, the young kids are having a lot of fun, and want to listen to speeches and go to lectures."

The camp is not being held on Utoya Island, but the AUF has not ruled out rebuilding part of the houses, and potentially using it again for summer camps. 

The summer camps are a staple of the ruling Labour Party's membership culture, with Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg telling this year's attendees that he himself went to his first summer camp in 1974.

"This was before iPhones and iPads and we had to pen actual postcards to our parents," Stoltenberg said. "Often we'd arrive home before our postcards."