A woman working in Oslo's Justice Department when last week's bomb exploded is back at work, just five days after escaping the building — with, unbeknownst to her at the time, a foot-long piece of debris lodged in her head.
Line Nersnaes, a 50-year-old legal adviser, was in her office on the 11th floor when a car bomb ripped through central Oslo, killing eight people. The force of the blast shattered a nearby wooden window, sending a 12-inch splinter through her chin and up through her skull.
"I was at my desk when I heard this violent blast," Nersnaes told The Daily Mail. "The glass in the window is laminated so it did not shatter, but the whole window frame splintered and came towards me."
The bombing was part of twin terror attacks by self-confessed killer Anders Behring Breivik, an anti-Islam zealot. After the blast, Breivik shot 69 people at a summer camp for youths of the ruling Labor Party on the island of Utoya, off of Oslo.
Nersnaes was knocked out of her desk chair and pinned against the wall when the bomb detonated, she said.
"I have to admit, I didn't even know that this wooden spike had drilled into my head, through my chin," Nersnaes told The Daily Telegraph. "Everybody who survived understood immediately that we had to get out of the building as fast as possible."
Nersnaes said shards of glass were everywhere, but she managed to find the stairs to get out. Colleagues and blast survivors were staring at her in bewilderment, she said.
"I met my boss Knut Fosli in the hallway," Nersnaes told the Telegraph. During the difficult journey down the stairs, "I told him that I had this terrible headache. He looked at me and said, 'You've got something sticking out of your head.'"
Outside, Nersnaes put her hand to her head, and could tell she was bleeding a lot.
"It felt like my head had been torn apart," she told The Daily Mail. "I got so terrified when I realized that I had something in my head."
She was rushed to the hospital with other blast victims. Shortly after, hospital staff started shouting that many more victims were arriving, this time from the Utoya island shooting.
'Some luck in all this bad luck'
Miraculously, the spike hadn't pierced her brain or any vital organs. Surgeons removed it, gave Nersnaes 27 stitches, and bandaged her head. Having sustained only superficial injuries, she was released to go home at 8:30 that night.
"I feel I've had some luck in all this bad luck," she said. "I'm very lucky to be alive."
On Friday, Norway held the first funerals for victims of massacre.
Back at work, Nersnaes told The Daily Mail that she is determined to finish a government paper on domestic violence she was working on when the explosion went off.
Despite not having a replacement computer yet working at a school desk with a paper and pen, Nersnaes told The Daily Mail, "I think it will be difficult to make my August 10 deadline, but I promise I will have the document on domestic violence ready before Christmas."
Nersnaes did not respond to a request for comment from msnbc.com.
