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In the early hours of the 7th of April 1990, a devastating fire broke out on board the MS Scandinavian Star, a car and passenger ferry traveling between Frederikshavn and Oslo. Insufficient staff preparedness along with jammed fire doors accelerated the spread of the flames, while deadly hydrogen cyanide gas released from burning laminates caused the loss of 159 people. Initially, the tragedy was attributed to a passenger—a lorry driver with a history of arson. Since this individual also died in the incident and was not able to refute the accusations, the complete facts about the event stayed hidden for a long time. It wasn't until 2020 that a detailed documentary disclosed the blaze was probably set intentionally as part of an fraud scheme.

Asta Olivia Nordenhof's Literary Sequence: An Overview

In the initial book of Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star series, the preceding volume, an unnamed protagonist is riding on a public transport through Copenhagen when she notices an elderly man on the street. As the vehicle moves away, she experiences an “uncanny feeling” that she is carrying a piece of him with her. Driven to repeat the route in search of him, the character enters a setting that is both alien and strangely known. She presents readers to Maggie and Kurt, whose relationship is tested by the burdens of their troubled pasts. In the final pages of that book, it is suggested that the source of Kurt's discontent may stem from a poor investment made on his behalf by a man known as T.

The Devil Book: A Unique Approach

The Devil Book opens with an extended prose poem in which the writer explains her challenge to write T's story. “Within this second volume,” she states, “we were meant / to trace him / from childhood up until / the night / when he sat waiting for / the news that / the blaze / on the Scandinavian Star / had effectively been / set.” Burdened by the task she has set herself and disrupted by the global health crisis, she approaches the story obliquely, as a type of allegory. “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 devil.”

A tale slowly unfolds of a woman who spends quarantine in the UK capital with a near-unknown person and over the course of those weeks relates to him what occurred to her a decade earlier, when she agreed to an offer from a man who claimed to be the evil entity to grant all her wishes, so long as she didn't question his motives. As the threads of the two stories become more intertwined, we begin to suspect that they are identical—or at the very least that the identity of T is legion, for there are devils everywhere.

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

Pacts and Consequences: A Thematic Exploration

Literature instruct us that it is the devil who does deals, not a divine being, and that we engage in them at our risk. But suppose the narrator herself is the devil? A third storyline comes finally to light—the account of a girl whose early years was marred by mistreatment and who spent time in a mental health facility, under duress to comply with societal norms or endure more of the same. “[This entity] knows that in the game you've created for it, there are a pair of outcomes: submit or remain a beast.” A third way out is ultimately unveiled through a series of verses to the darkness that are also a rallying cry against the forces of wealth and power.

Connections and Interpretations: From Fiction to Real Events

Many British readers of Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star novels will reflect immediately of the Grenfell Tower tragedy, which, though accidental in origin, bears parallels in that the ensuing disaster and loss of life can be attributed at in part to the devil's bargain of putting financial gain over human lives. In these first two volumes of what is planned to be a seven-book sequence, the fire on board the ship and the chain of deceptive transactions that ended in mass murder are a ominous background element, showing themselves only in brief glimpses of information or implication yet casting a growing shadow over everything that transpires. Some readers may question how far it is feasible to read this volume as a independent piece, when its aim and meaning are so intricately tied into a broader narrative whose final form, at present, is uncertain.

Innovative Prose: Art and Morality Fused

There will be others—and I count myself as among them—who will become enamored with Nordenhof's project purely as text, as properly experimental writing whose moral and creative intent are so profoundly interlinked as to make them inextricable. “Write poems / for we need / that too.” There is another fire here: a passionate, attractive commitment to the craft as a statement. I will persist to follow this series, wherever it leads.