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In the early hours of the 7th of April 1990, a catastrophic fire erupted on board the MS Scandinavian Star, a passenger ferry traveling between Oslo and Frederikshavn. Inadequate staff preparedness combined with jammed safety doors aided the propagation of the fire, while toxic hydrogen cyanide gas emitted from combusting laminates led to the loss of 159 individuals. Initially, the disaster was attributed to a traveler—a truck driver with a history of arson. Given that this individual too perished in the incident and was unable to defend himself, the complete truth about the event stayed concealed for a long time. Only in 2020 that a comprehensive investigation disclosed the fire was probably set deliberately as part of an insurance fraud.

Asta Olivia Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star Sequence: An Overview

Within the first volume of Asta Olivia Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star sequence, Money to Burn, an unidentified narrator is traveling on a bus through Copenhagen when she notices an elderly man on the sidewalk. As the vehicle drives away, she feels an “eerie sense” that she is carrying a part of him with her. Compelled to repeat the route in search of him, the narrator finds herself in a landscape that is both unfamiliar and strangely known. She presents us to Maggie and Kurt, whose connection is tested by the burdens of their troubled pasts. In the final pages of that book, it is suggested that the source of the character's discontent may stem from a poor investment made on his behalf by a man referred to as T.

The Devil Book: A Unique Approach

This second installment opens with an lengthy poetic passage in which the narrator describes her struggle to write T's narrative. “In this second volume,” she states, “we were supposed / to follow him / from youth up until / the evening / when he sat anticipating for / the report that / the fire / on the ferry / had effectively been / set.” Burdened by the undertaking she has assigned herself and disrupted by the pandemic, she approaches the tale obliquely, as a type of parable. “I came to think / that I / can do / whatever I want / so this / is my work / this is / for you / this is / an erotic thriller / about businessmen and / the dark force.”

A tale slowly emerges of a woman who spends lockdown in the UK capital with a near-unknown person and during those weeks tells to him what happened to her a ten years earlier, when she agreed to an offer from a figure who professed to be the evil entity to grant all her wishes, so long as she didn't question his intentions. As the elements of the dual narratives become more intertwined, we begin to believe that they are identical—or at the very least that the identity of T is multiple, for there are demonic forces all around.

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

Deals with the Devil: A Literary Exploration

Literature instruct us that it is the devil who makes bargains, not God, and that we enter into them at our risk. But suppose the protagonist herself is the devil? A third narrative comes finally to light—the story of a young woman whose childhood was scarred by mistreatment and who spent time in a mental health facility, under duress to conform with social expectations or suffer more of the same. “[The devil] understands that in the game you've set for it, there are two outcomes: submit or remain a monster.” A third way out is ultimately revealed through a collection of poems to the night that are simultaneously a call to arms against the forces of capital.

Connections and Readings: From Fiction to Reality

Many UK readers of Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star novels will reflect immediately of the Grenfell Tower tragedy, which, though accidental in origin, shares similarities in that the ensuing disaster and loss of life can be attributed at least partly to the devil's bargain of prioritizing profit over human lives. In these first two books of what is projected to be a multi-volume series, the blaze aboard the ferry and the chain of fraudulent business deals that ended in mass murder are a sinister background element, revealing themselves only in brief glimpses of detail or implication yet projecting a deepening influence over everything that occurs. Certain individuals may question how much it is possible to interpret The Devil Book as a independent work, when its purpose and meaning are so intricately bound into a broader whole whose ultimate shape, at present, is unknowable.

Experimental Writing: Art and Morality Fused

Some individuals—and I include myself as among them—who will fall in love with the author's endeavor purely as written art, as properly experimental literature whose moral and creative purpose are so deeply entwined as to make them inextricable. “Write poems / for we require / that too.” There is another fire here: a passionate, attractive commitment to the craft as a political act. I will persist to pursue this literary journey, no matter where it goes.