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In the early hours of the 7th of April 1990, a devastating blaze erupted aboard the ferry Scandinavian Star, a passenger ferry operating between Frederikshavn and Oslo. Insufficient crew training along with malfunctioning fire doors accelerated the spread of the flames, while toxic cyanide gas released from combusting laminates led to the loss of 159 people. Initially, the disaster was attributed to a passenger—a lorry driver with a record of arson. Given that this suspect too perished in the fire and was unable to refute the accusations, the complete truth regarding the event remained concealed for a long time. Only in 2020 that a comprehensive documentary disclosed the blaze was probably set deliberately as part of an fraud scheme.

Asta Olivia Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star Series: An Overview

In the first volume of Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star sequence, Money to Burn, an unidentified protagonist is traveling on a bus through Copenhagen when she notices an older man on the street. As the vehicle moves away, she feels an “eerie sense” that she is carrying a piece of him with her. Driven to repeat the route in pursuit of him, the narrator finds herself in a setting that is both alien and deeply familiar. She presents us to Maggie and Kurt, whose relationship is strained by the burdens of their conflicted histories. In the concluding section of that book, it is implied that the root of Kurt's disaffection may stem from a poor investment made on his behalf by a individual known as T.

The Devil Book: A Unique Narrative Style

This second installment begins with an lengthy poetic passage in which the writer describes her struggle to compose T's story. “Within this volume, two,” she writes, “we were meant / to trace him / from childhood up until / the night / when he sat anticipating for / the report that / the blaze / on the Scandinavian Star / had successfully been / set.” Burdened by the undertaking she has assigned herself and derailed by the global health crisis, she approaches the story obliquely, as a type of parable. “It occurred to me / that I / can do / whatever I want / so this / is my work / this is / for you / this is / an sensational story / about entrepreneurs and / the dark force.”

A tale gradually unfolds of a female character who spends quarantine in London with a virtual stranger and over the course of those days tells to him what happened to her a ten years before, when she accepted an proposal from a man who professed to be the evil entity to grant all her wishes, so long as she didn't doubt his motives. As the elements of the two stories become more intertwined, we begin to believe that they are identical—or at the very least that the nature of T is legion, for there are devils everywhere.

There is another fire here: an ardent, magnetic commitment to writing as a political act

Pacts and Consequences: A Literary Exploration

Literature teach us that it is the devil who does bargains, not a divine being, and that we enter into them at our risk. But suppose the protagonist herself is the devil? A third narrative eventually emerges—the story of a girl whose early years was scarred by mistreatment and who was placed in a mental health facility, under pressure to comply with social expectations or suffer further harm. “[The devil] knows that in the scenario you've created for it, there are two outcomes: surrender or stay a monster.” A alternative path is ultimately unveiled through a series of verses to the darkness that are also a call to arms against the influences of wealth and power.

Parallels and Interpretations: From Literature to Real Events

Numerous British readers of the author's Scandinavian Star novels will think right away of the Grenfell Tower tragedy, which, though accidental in origin, shares parallels in that the ensuing tragedy and loss of life can be attributed at least partly to the devil's bargain of putting profit over human lives. In these initial volumes of what is projected to be a multi-volume series, the blaze aboard the ferry and the chain of deceptive transactions that culminated in mass murder are a sinister underlying presence, showing themselves only in brief glimpses of information or inference yet casting a deepening influence over all that occurs. Some readers may doubt how far it is possible to read The Devil Book as a independent piece, when its purpose and meaning are so deeply bound into a larger whole whose ultimate shape, at present, is unknowable.

Innovative Prose: Art and Morality Fused

There will be others—and I include myself as one of them—who will become enamored with Nordenhof's endeavor purely as written art, as properly experimental writing whose ethical and creative intent are so profoundly entwined as to make them inextricable. “Write poems / for we require / that too.” Another kind of blaze exists: a passionate, attractive devotion to the craft as a political act. I will continue to follow this series, no matter where it leads.