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During the late night of the 7th of April 1990, a catastrophic blaze erupted aboard the MS Scandinavian Star, a passenger ferry traveling between Frederikshavn and Oslo. Inadequate crew training along with malfunctioning safety doors accelerated the spread of the fire, while toxic hydrogen cyanide gas emitted from burning laminates led to the loss of 159 individuals. Initially, the tragedy was attributed to a traveler—a lorry driver with a history of arson. Given that this individual too died in the incident and was not able to defend himself, the full facts about the disaster stayed concealed for many years. Only in 2020 that a comprehensive investigation disclosed the blaze was probably set deliberately as part of an insurance fraud.

Asta Olivia Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star Sequence: A Glimpse

In the first volume 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 sidewalk. As the bus drives away, she feels an “uncanny feeling” that she is taking a part of him with her. Driven to repeat the route in pursuit of him, the character enters a setting that is both alien and deeply familiar. She introduces readers to Maggie and Kurt, whose connection is strained by the burdens of their troubled histories. In the concluding section of that book, it is implied that the source of the character's disaffection may originate in a disastrous financial decision made on his behalf by a man known as T.

The Devil Book: An Unconventional Approach

The Devil Book begins with an extended prose poem in which the writer explains her challenge to write T's narrative. “In this volume, two,” she writes, “we were supposed / to follow him / from youth up until / the evening / when he sat anticipating for / the news that / the fire / on the ferry / had successfully been / set.” Overwhelmed by the undertaking she has set herself and derailed by the global health crisis, she tackles the tale indirectly, as a type of parable. “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 businessmen and / the dark force.”

A narrative gradually emerges of a female character who spends lockdown in the UK capital with a virtual stranger and during those weeks relates to him what happened to her a ten years before, when she accepted an offer from a man who professed to be the devil to grant all her desires, so long as she didn't question his motives. As the threads of the dual narratives become more intertwined, we start to believe that they are one and the same—or at minimum that the nature of T is legion, for there are devils everywhere.

There is another fire here: an ardent, compelling commitment to writing as a political act

Deals with the Devil: A Thematic Exploration

Classic stories teach us that it is the dark figure who makes deals, 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 childhood was marred by abuse and who was placed in a psychiatric hospital, under pressure to conform with social expectations or endure further harm. “[This entity] knows 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 simultaneously a rallying cry against the influences of wealth and power.

Connections and Interpretations: From Literature to Reality

Many UK readers of the author's Scandinavian Star books will think immediately of the Grenfell Tower tragedy, which, though accidental in cause, shares parallels in that the ensuing disaster and fatalities can be attributed at least partly to the dangerous trade-off of prioritizing financial gain over human lives. In these first two volumes of what is projected to be a seven-book sequence, the fire on board the ferry and the series of deceptive business deals that ended in mass murder are a sinister underlying element, showing themselves only in brief glimpses of detail or implication yet casting a deepening influence over everything that transpires. Some individuals may doubt how far it is possible to read this volume as a stand-alone work, when its aim and significance are so deeply tied into a broader whole whose final form, at this stage, is uncertain.

Experimental Writing: Ethics and Aesthetics Intertwined

Some individuals—and I count myself as one of them—who will become enamored with the author's project purely as text, as truly experimental writing whose moral and creative intent are so deeply interlinked as to make them inextricable. “Compose verses / for we require / that too.” There is another fire here: an intense, attractive devotion to the craft as a political act. I will continue to pursue this series, no matter where it goes.