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In the early hours of the 7th of April 1990, a devastating fire broke out aboard the ferry Scandinavian Star, a passenger ferry traveling between Frederikshavn and Oslo. Inadequate crew preparedness combined with malfunctioning safety doors accelerated the propagation of the flames, while toxic hydrogen cyanide gas emitted from combusting laminates caused the loss of 159 people. Initially, the disaster was attributed to a passenger—a truck driver with a record of fire-setting. Given that this suspect also perished in the fire and was not able to defend himself, the complete truth regarding the event stayed concealed for a long time. Only in 2020 that a comprehensive documentary revealed the fire was probably started intentionally as part of an fraud scheme.

Asta Olivia Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star Sequence: An Overview

In the initial book of Asta Olivia Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star sequence, the preceding volume, an unnamed protagonist is riding on a bus through the Danish capital when she notices an elderly man on the street. As the vehicle moves away, she feels an “uncanny feeling” that she is carrying a part of him with her. Driven to repeat the route in pursuit of him, the character enters a landscape that is both alien and strangely known. She introduces 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 the character's discontent may originate in a poor financial decision made on his behalf by a man known as T.

The Devil Book: A Unique Narrative Style

This second installment opens with an extended poetic passage in which the narrator explains her struggle to write T's story. “In this volume, two,” she states, “we were supposed / to follow him / from youth up until / the evening / when he sat anticipating for / the news that / the fire / on the Scandinavian Star / had successfully been / set.” Overwhelmed by the undertaking she has set herself and disrupted by the global health crisis, she approaches the tale indirectly, as a type of allegory. “I came to think / that I / can do / whatever I want / so this / is my book / this is / for you / this is / an sensational story / about entrepreneurs and / the devil.”

A tale gradually unfolds of a female character who spends quarantine in London with a virtual stranger and over the course of those days relates to him what occurred to her a ten years earlier, when she accepted an proposal from a figure who professed to be the evil entity to grant all her desires, so long as she didn't question his motives. As the elements 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 legion, for there are demonic forces all around.

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

Pacts and Consequences: A Thematic Exploration

Literature teach us that it is the dark figure who makes bargains, not God, and that we engage in them at our risk. But suppose the narrator herself is the devil? A third narrative 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 suffer more of the same. “[This entity] understands that in the game you've created for it, there are a pair of outcomes: submit or remain a monster.” A alternative path is finally revealed through a collection of verses to the darkness that are also a call to arms against the influences of capital.

Connections and Interpretations: From Literature to Reality

Many British readers of Nordenhof's series novels will reflect immediately of the Grenfell Tower tragedy, which, though unintentional in origin, bears similarities in that the ensuing disaster and fatalities can be attributed at least partly to the devil's bargain of putting profit over people. In these first two books of what is planned to be a multi-volume series, the fire on board the ferry and the series of deceptive transactions that culminated in mass murder are a sinister underlying element, revealing themselves only in brief glimpses of detail or inference yet casting a growing shadow over all that transpires. Certain readers may doubt how much it is feasible to interpret this volume as a independent work, when its purpose and significance are so deeply tied into a larger narrative whose ultimate shape, at this stage, is unknowable.

Experimental Writing: Ethics and Aesthetics Intertwined

Some individuals—and I count myself as one of them—who will become enamored with Nordenhof's endeavor purely as text, as truly innovative writing whose moral and artistic intent are so profoundly interlinked as to make them inseparable. “Compose verses / for we need / that as well.” There is another fire here: a passionate, magnetic devotion to the craft as a political act. I will continue to follow this series, wherever it goes.