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During the early hours of the 7th of April 1990, a catastrophic blaze erupted aboard the ferry Scandinavian Star, a passenger ferry operating between Frederikshavn and Oslo. Insufficient staff training along with malfunctioning safety doors aided the propagation of the flames, while deadly hydrogen cyanide gas emitted from combusting laminates caused the deaths of 159 people. Initially, the tragedy was blamed to a passenger—a truck driver with a history of arson. Given that this individual also perished in the incident and was unable to defend himself, the complete truth about the disaster remained hidden for many years. Only in 2020 that a detailed documentary disclosed the blaze was likely set intentionally as part of an fraud scheme.

Asta Olivia Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star Sequence: A Glimpse

Within the initial book of Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star series, Money to Burn, an unnamed protagonist is riding on a bus through Copenhagen when she notices an elderly man on the sidewalk. As the bus drives away, she feels an “uncanny feeling” that she is taking a part of him with her. Driven to retrace the journey in search of him, the character enters a landscape that is both alien and deeply familiar. She introduces us to a couple named Maggie and Kurt, whose connection is tested by the pressures of their conflicted histories. In the concluding section of that book, it is suggested that the root of the character's discontent may originate in a poor financial decision made on his behalf by a man known as T.

The Devil Book: An Unconventional Narrative Style

The Devil Book begins with an lengthy poetic passage in which the narrator describes her struggle to compose T's story. “In this second volume,” she states, “we were meant / to follow him / from youth up until / the night / when he sat anticipating for / the report that / the fire / on the ferry / had successfully been / set.” Overwhelmed by the task she has set herself and derailed by the global health crisis, she approaches the story obliquely, as a form 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 erotic thriller / about entrepreneurs and / the devil.”

A narrative slowly unfolds of a woman who experiences quarantine in the UK capital with a virtual stranger and during those days relates to him what occurred to her a ten years earlier, when she agreed to an offer from a man who professed to be the devil to fulfill all her wishes, so long as she didn't doubt his motives. As the elements of the two stories become more interwoven, we begin to suspect that they are identical—or at the very least that the nature of T is legion, for there are demonic forces all around.

There is another fire here: a passionate, magnetic commitment to literature as a political act

Pacts and Consequences: A Thematic Examination

Literature teach us that it is the devil who makes bargains, not God, and that we enter into them at our risk. But what if the protagonist herself is the malevolent force? A third storyline eventually emerges—the story of a girl whose childhood was scarred by abuse and who was placed in a mental health facility, under pressure to comply with societal norms or suffer more of the same. “[The devil] knows that in the scenario you've set for it, there are two outcomes: submit or stay a beast.” A alternative path is ultimately revealed through a series of verses to the night that are simultaneously a rallying cry against the influences of wealth and power.

Connections and Interpretations: From Fiction to Real Events

Many UK readers of Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star novels will think immediately of the London tower tragedy, which, though accidental in origin, bears parallels in that the resulting disaster and fatalities can be linked at in part to the dangerous trade-off of putting profit over people. In these first two books of what is projected to be a multi-volume sequence, the fire aboard the ferry and the chain of fraudulent transactions that ended in multiple deaths are a ominous underlying presence, revealing themselves only in fleeting glimpses of information or implication yet casting a growing influence over all that transpires. Certain individuals may doubt how much it is feasible to read this volume as a stand-alone work, when its purpose and meaning are so deeply tied into a larger whole whose ultimate shape, at present, is uncertain.

Experimental Writing: Ethics and Aesthetics Intertwined

There will be others—and I count myself as one of them—who will fall in love with Nordenhof's project purely as text, as truly innovative literature whose ethical and artistic purpose are so deeply entwined as to make them inseparable. “Write poems / for we need / that too.” There is another fire here: an intense, attractive commitment to writing as a political act. I will persist to follow this literary journey, no matter where it goes.