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In the late night of the 7th of April 1990, a devastating fire erupted aboard the ferry Scandinavian Star, a passenger ferry operating between Frederikshavn and Oslo. Insufficient staff preparedness along with malfunctioning safety doors aided the propagation of the flames, while deadly hydrogen cyanide gas released from combusting materials caused the deaths of 159 individuals. At first, the disaster was blamed to a traveler—a truck driver with a record of fire-setting. Given that this individual too died in the fire and was unable to defend himself, the complete facts about the disaster stayed concealed for many years. Only in 2020 that a comprehensive documentary disclosed the fire was likely started intentionally as part of an insurance fraud.

Asta Olivia Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star Sequence: A Glimpse

Within the first volume of Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star series, the preceding volume, an unidentified narrator is traveling on a bus through the Danish capital when she notices an elderly man on the street. As the vehicle moves away, she feels an “eerie sense” that she is taking a piece of him with her. Compelled to retrace the route in search of him, the narrator enters a setting that is both alien and deeply familiar. She introduces us to Maggie and Kurt, whose relationship is tested by the pressures of their conflicted pasts. In the final pages of that volume, it is suggested that the source of Kurt's disaffection may stem from a disastrous investment made on his behalf by a man referred to as T.

The Devil Book: An Unconventional Approach

The Devil Book begins with an lengthy prose poem in which the writer explains her struggle to write T's story. “Within this volume, two,” she states, “we were meant / to follow him / from childhood up until / the night / when he sat anticipating for / the news that / the blaze / on the ferry / had effectively been / set.” Burdened by the task she has assigned herself and disrupted by the global health crisis, she tackles the tale indirectly, as a type of allegory. “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 tale gradually unfolds of a woman who spends quarantine in the UK capital with a near-unknown person and over the course of those days relates to him what occurred to her a ten years before, when she agreed to an proposal from a man who claimed to be the evil entity to fulfill all her desires, so long as she didn't question his motives. As the threads of the dual narratives become more intertwined, we begin to suspect that they are one and the same—or at minimum that the identity of T is multiple, for there are devils all around.

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

Pacts and Consequences: A Thematic Exploration

Classic stories teach us that it is the devil who does deals, not a divine being, and that we engage in them at our risk. But what if the protagonist herself is the malevolent force? A additional storyline eventually emerges—the story of a young woman whose childhood was scarred by abuse and who spent time in a mental health facility, under pressure to conform with social expectations or endure more of the same. “[This entity] understands that in the game you've set for it, there are two outcomes: submit or stay a beast.” A third way out is ultimately revealed through a collection of poems to the darkness that are simultaneously a call to arms against the influences of wealth and power.

Parallels and Interpretations: From Literature to Reality

Many British audience members of Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star books will reflect right away of the London tower tragedy, which, though unintentional in cause, shares similarities in that the ensuing disaster and fatalities can be linked at in part to the devil's bargain of putting financial gain over human lives. In these first two books of what is planned to be a seven-book series, the fire on board the ferry and the series of fraudulent business deals that ended in multiple deaths are a sinister underlying presence, revealing themselves only in brief glimpses of detail or inference yet casting a growing shadow over all that occurs. Certain individuals may doubt how much it is possible to interpret this volume as a stand-alone work, when its aim and meaning are so deeply tied into a larger narrative whose ultimate shape, at present, is unknowable.

Experimental Writing: Art and Morality Intertwined

There will be others—and I count myself as one of them—who will fall in love with Nordenhof's endeavor purely as text, as properly experimental literature whose moral and artistic purpose are so profoundly interlinked as to make them inextricable. “Write poems / for we require / that too.” Another kind of blaze exists: an intense, magnetic commitment to the craft as a political act. I intend to continue to pursue this series, wherever it goes.