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In the late night of the 7th of April 1990, a catastrophic blaze broke out aboard the ferry Scandinavian Star, a car and passenger ferry operating between Oslo and Frederikshavn. Insufficient crew preparedness along with jammed safety doors aided the spread of the fire, while toxic hydrogen cyanide gas emitted from burning materials caused the deaths of 159 people. Initially, the disaster was attributed to a passenger—a lorry driver with a record of arson. Given that this suspect also perished in the incident and was not able to defend the accusations, the full truth regarding the disaster remained hidden for a long time. It wasn't until 2020 that a comprehensive investigation revealed the blaze was likely set intentionally as part of an insurance fraud.

Asta Olivia Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star Series: A Glimpse

In the first volume of Asta Olivia Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star sequence, Money to Burn, an unnamed narrator is traveling on a bus through Copenhagen when she observes an older man on the sidewalk. As the bus drives away, she experiences an “uncanny feeling” that she is taking a part of him with her. Driven to retrace the route in pursuit of him, the character finds herself in a setting that is both alien and deeply familiar. She presents readers to a couple named Maggie and Kurt, whose connection is strained by the burdens of their troubled histories. In the final pages of that volume, it is implied that the source of the character's discontent may originate in a poor investment made on his account by a individual known as T.

This New Volume: A Unique Narrative Style

This second installment opens with an lengthy poetic passage in which the narrator explains her struggle to compose T's story. “In this second volume,” she states, “we were supposed / to trace him / from youth up until / the night / when he sat waiting for / the news that / the fire / on the ferry / had successfully been / ignited.” Burdened by the task she has set herself and disrupted by the global health crisis, she tackles the tale indirectly, as a form of parable. “It occurred to me / that I / can do / anything I want / so this / is my book / this is / for you / this is / an erotic thriller / about entrepreneurs and / the dark force.”

A narrative slowly unfolds of a woman who experiences quarantine in the UK capital with a near-unknown person and during those days relates to him what happened to her a ten years earlier, when she agreed to an proposal from a figure who professed to be the evil entity to grant all her desires, so long as she didn't doubt his motives. As the elements of the dual narratives become more intertwined, we start to believe that they are identical—or at the very least that the nature of T is legion, for there are demonic forces all around.

Another blaze is present: a passionate, compelling commitment to literature as a political act

Deals with the Devil: A Thematic Examination

Classic stories teach us that it is the devil who makes bargains, not a divine being, and that we engage in them at our peril. But what if the narrator herself is the malevolent force? A additional narrative comes finally to light—the story of a girl whose early years was marred by mistreatment and who was placed in a mental health facility, under duress to comply with societal norms or endure more of the same. “[This entity] knows that in the scenario you've created for it, there are a pair of results: submit or stay a beast.” A third way out is ultimately revealed through a collection of verses to the darkness that are simultaneously a rallying cry against the forces of wealth and power.

Connections and Readings: From Literature to Real Events

Many British readers of Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star books will reflect immediately of the London tower fire, which, though unintentional in cause, bears similarities in that the ensuing tragedy and fatalities can be attributed at least partly to the dangerous trade-off of putting profit over people. In these initial volumes of what is planned to be a seven-book sequence, the blaze on board the ship and the chain of fraudulent business deals that ended in mass murder are a ominous background presence, showing themselves only in fleeting glimpses of detail or implication yet projecting a deepening influence over all that transpires. Certain individuals may doubt how much it is possible to read The Devil Book as a stand-alone work, when its aim and significance are so deeply bound into a larger whole whose ultimate shape, at present, is uncertain.

Experimental Writing: Ethics and Aesthetics Intertwined

There will be others—and I include myself as among them—who will become enamored with the author's project purely as written art, as properly innovative writing whose moral and artistic purpose are so deeply entwined as to make them inseparable. “Write poems / for we need / that too.” Another kind of blaze exists: a passionate, magnetic commitment to writing as a political act. I will continue to pursue this series, wherever it goes.