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During the late night of the 7th of April 1990, a catastrophic fire erupted on board the MS Scandinavian Star, a passenger ferry traveling between Frederikshavn and Oslo. Inadequate crew preparedness combined with malfunctioning fire doors aided the spread of the fire, while deadly cyanide gas emitted from combusting materials caused the deaths of 159 people. At first, the disaster was blamed to a passenger—a truck driver with a history of arson. Since this suspect also died in the fire and was unable to refute the accusations, the complete facts about the event remained concealed for many years. It wasn't until 2020 that a comprehensive documentary revealed the fire was probably set deliberately as part of an fraud scheme.

Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star Series: An Overview

In the initial book of Asta Olivia Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star series, Money to Burn, an unidentified narrator is traveling on a bus through the Danish capital when she notices an older man on the street. As the bus moves away, she feels an “eerie sense” that she is taking a part of him with her. Driven to retrace the journey in pursuit of him, the character finds herself in a landscape that is both unfamiliar and strangely known. She introduces readers to Maggie and Kurt, whose connection is strained by the pressures of their troubled pasts. In the final pages of that volume, it is implied that the root of the character's disaffection may stem from a disastrous financial decision made on his account by a individual known as T.

The Devil Book: A Unique Approach

This second installment begins with an lengthy prose poem in which the narrator describes her struggle to write T's narrative. “In this volume, two,” she writes, “we were meant / to trace him / from childhood up until / the evening / when he sat anticipating for / the report that / the blaze / on the ferry / had successfully been / set.” Burdened by the task she has set herself and derailed by the pandemic, she approaches the tale indirectly, as a type of parable. “I came to think / that I / can do / whatever I want / so this / is my work / this is / for you / this is / an sensational story / about businessmen and / the dark force.”

A narrative gradually emerges of a woman who spends quarantine in the UK capital with a near-unknown person and over the course of those days relates to him what happened to her a ten years before, when she agreed to an offer from a man who professed to be the evil entity to grant all her wishes, so long as she didn't question his intentions. As the elements of the two stories become more interwoven, we begin to suspect that they are one and the same—or at the very least that the identity of T is legion, for there are devils everywhere.

Another blaze is present: a passionate, magnetic dedication to literature as a form of activism

Deals with the Devil: A Thematic Examination

Classic stories teach us that it is the dark figure who does bargains, not God, and that we enter into them at our risk. But what if the narrator herself is the malevolent force? A additional storyline eventually emerges—the account of a girl whose early years was scarred by mistreatment and who was placed in a psychiatric hospital, under duress to conform with social expectations or endure further harm. “[The devil] knows that in the game you've created for it, there are two results: surrender or remain a beast.” A alternative path is finally revealed through a series of poems to the darkness that are also a rallying cry against the influences of wealth and power.

Parallels and Readings: From Literature to Real Events

Many British readers of the author's Scandinavian Star novels will reflect right away of the London tower fire, which, though accidental in origin, shares similarities in that the resulting tragedy and loss of life can be attributed at least partly to the devil's bargain of putting profit over people. In these first two books of what is projected to be a multi-volume sequence, the fire on board the ship and the series of fraudulent transactions that ended in multiple deaths are a sinister underlying element, revealing themselves only in fleeting flashes of detail or implication yet casting a deepening influence over everything that occurs. Some individuals may question how much it is possible to interpret this volume as a independent work, when its purpose and significance are so intricately tied into a larger whole whose ultimate shape, at present, is uncertain.

Experimental Writing: Ethics and Aesthetics Fused

There will be others—and I include myself as one of them—who will become enamored with Nordenhof's project purely as text, as truly experimental writing whose moral and artistic intent are so deeply interlinked as to make them inextricable. “Write poems / for we require / that as well.” Another kind of blaze exists: a passionate, magnetic commitment to writing as a statement. I will continue to follow this literary journey, wherever it leads.