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In the late night of April 7 1990, a devastating blaze erupted aboard the MS Scandinavian Star, a passenger ferry traveling between Frederikshavn and Oslo. Insufficient crew training along with malfunctioning fire doors accelerated the propagation of the flames, while deadly cyanide gas emitted from burning materials caused the deaths of 159 people. Initially, the tragedy was attributed to a traveler—a lorry driver with a history of arson. Given that this suspect too perished in the incident and was not able to refute the accusations, the full truth about the disaster stayed concealed for many years. It wasn't until 2020 that a comprehensive documentary revealed the blaze was probably set intentionally as part of an insurance fraud.

Asta Olivia Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star Sequence: An Overview

In the initial book of Nordenhof's epic sequence, Money to Burn, an unnamed narrator is traveling on a bus through Copenhagen 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. Compelled to repeat the route in search of him, the narrator finds herself in a setting that is both alien and deeply familiar. She presents us to Maggie and Kurt, whose connection is tested by the burdens of their troubled histories. In the concluding section of that volume, it is suggested that the source of the character's discontent may originate in 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 writer describes her challenge to compose T's story. “In this volume, two,” 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 / ignited.” Overwhelmed by the undertaking she has assigned herself and derailed by the global health crisis, she approaches the story indirectly, as a form of allegory. “I came to think / that I / can do / anything I want / so this / is my work / this is / for you / this is / an erotic thriller / about entrepreneurs and / the dark force.”

A tale slowly unfolds of a female character who experiences quarantine in the UK capital with a near-unknown person and over the course of those weeks relates to him what happened to her a ten years before, when she accepted an offer from a man who claimed to be the evil entity to fulfill all her desires, so long as she didn't question his motives. As the threads of the two stories become more intertwined, we start to suspect that they are one and the same—or at minimum that the identity of T is legion, for there are devils all around.

There is another fire here: an ardent, compelling dedication to literature as a form of activism

Pacts and Consequences: A Thematic Examination

Classic stories teach us that it is the devil who does deals, not a divine being, and that we enter into them at our peril. But suppose the narrator herself is the malevolent force? A additional storyline eventually emerges—the account of a girl whose early years was scarred by abuse and who was placed in a mental health facility, under pressure to conform with societal norms or endure further harm. “[The devil] understands that in the scenario you've created for it, there are two results: surrender or stay a beast.” A third way out is finally revealed through a series of verses to the darkness that are also a call to arms against the influences of wealth and power.

Connections and Interpretations: From Literature to Reality

Many British audience members of the author's Scandinavian Star novels will think right away of the Grenfell Tower tragedy, which, though accidental in cause, bears similarities in that the resulting disaster and fatalities can be linked at least partly to the dangerous trade-off of putting profit over people. In these first two volumes of what is planned to be a multi-volume series, the fire on board the ferry and the chain of deceptive transactions that ended in multiple deaths are a sinister underlying presence, revealing themselves only in brief flashes of detail or inference yet casting a growing influence over all that occurs. Some individuals may doubt how much it is possible to read The Devil Book as a stand-alone piece, when its aim and significance are so deeply tied into a larger narrative whose ultimate shape, at this stage, is uncertain.

Experimental Writing: Art and Morality 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 experimental literature whose ethical and creative purpose are so deeply interlinked as to make them inseparable. “Write poems / for we require / that too.” There is another fire here: a passionate, attractive commitment to writing as a political act. I will continue to follow this series, wherever it goes.