🔗 Share this article

In the early hours of April 7 1990, a catastrophic fire erupted aboard the ferry Scandinavian Star, a passenger ferry traveling between Oslo and Frederikshavn. Insufficient crew preparedness combined with malfunctioning safety doors aided the propagation of the fire, while deadly cyanide gas emitted from combusting materials caused the deaths of 159 people. Initially, the disaster was blamed to a traveler—a lorry driver with a history of fire-setting. Since this individual too perished in the fire and was unable to refute the accusations, the complete facts about the event stayed hidden for a long time. Only in 2020 that a detailed investigation revealed the blaze was likely started intentionally as part of an fraud scheme.

Asta Olivia Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star Sequence: A Glimpse

Within the first volume of Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star series, Money to Burn, an unidentified narrator is traveling on a public transport through the Danish capital when she observes an older man on the street. As the vehicle moves away, she experiences an “eerie sense” that she is taking a part of him with her. Driven to retrace the route in search of him, the character finds herself in a setting that is both unfamiliar and strangely known. She introduces readers to a couple named Maggie and Kurt, whose relationship is tested by the pressures of their troubled pasts. In the concluding section of that book, it is implied that the root of Kurt's discontent may stem from a poor financial decision made on his behalf by a individual referred to as T.

This New Volume: A Unique Narrative Style

The Devil Book begins with an lengthy poetic passage in which the narrator explains her struggle to compose T's story. “Within this second volume,” she writes, “we were meant / to trace him / from childhood up until / the evening / when he sat anticipating for / the news that / the blaze / on the Scandinavian Star / had successfully been / ignited.” Burdened by the task she has set herself and derailed by the pandemic, she tackles 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 businessmen and / the devil.”

A tale gradually unfolds of a female character who experiences lockdown in London with a virtual stranger and during those days tells to him what occurred to her a decade before, 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 intentions. As the threads of the two stories become more intertwined, we begin to believe that they are one and the same—or at the very least that the identity of T is legion, for there are devils all around.

There is another fire here: a passionate, magnetic dedication to writing as a political act

Pacts and Consequences: A Literary Examination

Classic stories teach us that it is the devil who does bargains, not God, and that we engage in them at our risk. But what if the narrator herself is the malevolent force? A third storyline comes finally to light—the story of a young woman whose childhood was marred by abuse and who spent time in a psychiatric hospital, under duress to comply with social expectations or suffer further harm. “[This entity] knows that in the scenario you've set for it, there are a pair of results: surrender or remain a monster.” A alternative path is ultimately unveiled through a series of poems to the night that are also a call to arms against the influences of wealth and power.

Parallels and Readings: From Fiction to Real Events

Numerous British audience members of Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star books will reflect immediately of the Grenfell Tower tragedy, which, though accidental in origin, bears parallels in that the ensuing disaster and fatalities can be linked at in part to the devil's bargain of putting profit over human lives. In these first two books of what is planned to be a multi-volume series, the blaze on board the ship and the series of fraudulent transactions that ended in mass murder are a sinister underlying element, showing themselves only in fleeting flashes of detail or inference yet projecting a deepening shadow over all that transpires. Certain readers may doubt how much it is feasible to read The Devil Book as a stand-alone piece, when its purpose and meaning are so deeply tied into a larger narrative whose ultimate shape, at present, is unknowable.

Innovative Prose: Art and Morality Intertwined

There will be others—and I include myself as among them—who will fall in love with the author's endeavor purely as written art, as truly experimental literature whose ethical and artistic purpose are so deeply entwined as to make them inseparable. “Compose verses / for we need / that as well.” Another kind of blaze exists: a passionate, attractive devotion to the craft as a statement. I intend to persist to pursue this series, no matter where it goes.