Hege Dalen and her wife Toril Hansen were having a quiet meal near the shores of Norway’s Lake Tyrifjorden. Then came the gunfire. And the “awful screaming.”

Across the lake was Utoyan Island, where Anders Breivik was slaughtering young campers. Authorities said Breivik gunned down more than 100 people attending the Labour party camp.

“We were eating,” Dalen told the Finnish newspaper Helsingin Sannomat. “Then shooting and then the awful screaming. We saw how the young people ran in panic into the lake.”

The couple hopped into their boat and headed toward the island picking up terrified and bloodied teens. When the boat was full, the newspaper said the women took the victims to the opposite shore to safety. Then, ignoring the bullets that struck their boat, they returned to the island again and again and again.

In all, they told the newspaper they plucked about 40 people from the water.

I first heard about this couple yesterday from Hubby who caught wind of it on Twitter. I haven’t yet seen the story on the major news networks, but it’s catching steam in the blogosphere.

Several lesbian-gay news sites and blogs have reported the story, complaining that the mainstream media has ignored it because the heroines are a same-sex married couple.

I’m not hopping into that fray, I just wanted to spread the word about two remarkably brave women on a terribly horrific day. In all, 77 people died on July 22, eight were in the bombing of an office building in Oslo, the rest were on Utoyan Island.

*Photo by Maija Tammi / HS.