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During the early hours of the 7th of April 1990, a devastating blaze erupted on board the MS Scandinavian Star, a car and passenger ferry operating between Frederikshavn and Oslo. Insufficient staff training along with malfunctioning safety doors accelerated the propagation of the flames, while deadly hydrogen cyanide gas released from burning laminates caused the deaths of 159 people. Initially, the tragedy was attributed to a traveler—a lorry driver with a record of arson. Given that this suspect also perished in the fire and was not able to defend himself, the full truth regarding the event stayed hidden for many years. It wasn't until 2020 that a detailed investigation disclosed the blaze was probably set intentionally as part of an fraud scheme.

Asta Olivia Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star Sequence: An Overview

Within the first volume of Asta Olivia Nordenhof's epic sequence, Money to Burn, an unidentified protagonist is traveling on a public transport through the Danish capital when she observes an elderly man on the street. As the bus drives away, she experiences an “uncanny feeling” that she is taking a piece of him with her. Driven to retrace the journey in pursuit of him, the character enters a setting that is both alien and strangely known. She introduces us to a couple named Maggie and Kurt, whose connection is strained by the pressures of their troubled pasts. In the concluding section of that book, it is suggested that the root of the character's disaffection may originate in a disastrous financial decision made on his account by a individual known as T.

This New Volume: A Unique Approach

The Devil Book opens with an extended poetic passage in which the narrator describes her struggle to compose T's story. “Within this volume, two,” she writes, “we were supposed / to follow him / from childhood up until / the night / when he sat waiting for / the report that / the fire / on the ferry / had successfully been / ignited.” Burdened by the undertaking she has assigned herself and disrupted by the global health crisis, she approaches the story obliquely, as a type of allegory. “I came to think / that I / can do / whatever I want / so this / is my book / this is / for you / this is / an sensational story / about entrepreneurs and / the devil.”

A narrative gradually emerges of a woman who spends lockdown in London with a virtual stranger and over the course of those days tells to him what happened to her a ten years earlier, when she accepted an proposal from a figure who claimed to be the devil to fulfill all her wishes, so long as she didn't doubt his motives. As the threads of the two stories become more interwoven, we start to believe that they are one and the same—or at the very least that the identity of T is multiple, for there are devils everywhere.

There is another fire here: a passionate, compelling dedication to writing as a political act

Deals with the Devil: A Thematic Exploration

Literature teach us that it is the dark figure who does bargains, not God, and that we enter into them at our peril. But what if the narrator herself is the malevolent force? A third storyline eventually emerges—the story of a young woman whose early years was marred by abuse and who spent time in a mental health facility, under duress to conform with social expectations or endure further harm. “[This entity] knows that in the game you've set for it, there are a pair of outcomes: submit or remain a monster.” A alternative path is ultimately unveiled through a series of poems to the night that are simultaneously a call to arms against the influences of wealth and power.

Connections and Interpretations: From Literature to Reality

Many British audience members of Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star books will reflect right away of the London tower fire, which, though unintentional in cause, shares similarities in that the ensuing disaster and loss of life can be attributed at in part to the dangerous trade-off of prioritizing financial gain over human lives. In these first two books of what is planned to be a seven-book series, the blaze aboard the ferry and the chain of deceptive transactions that culminated in mass murder are a ominous underlying element, revealing themselves only in fleeting glimpses of detail or inference yet projecting a growing shadow over all that transpires. Certain individuals may doubt how far it is feasible to interpret this volume as a stand-alone piece, when its aim and meaning are so deeply bound into a larger narrative whose final form, at present, is uncertain.

Innovative Prose: Art and Morality Intertwined

Some individuals—and I count myself as among them—who will fall in love with Nordenhof's project purely as text, as properly innovative literature whose ethical and creative purpose are so deeply entwined as to make them inextricable. “Compose verses / for we need / that too.” There is another fire here: an intense, magnetic commitment to the craft as a political act. I intend to continue to follow this literary journey, wherever it leads.