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In the early hours of April 7 1990, a devastating fire erupted aboard the MS Scandinavian Star, a car and passenger ferry operating between Oslo and Frederikshavn. Inadequate crew preparedness combined with jammed safety doors aided the propagation of the flames, while toxic hydrogen cyanide gas emitted from combusting laminates led to the loss of 159 individuals. At first, the disaster was attributed to a passenger—a lorry driver with a record of fire-setting. Given that this suspect also died in the fire and was unable to refute the accusations, the complete truth regarding the event remained hidden for a long time. Only in 2020 that a comprehensive documentary disclosed the fire was likely set 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 series, Money to Burn, an unnamed protagonist is riding on a public transport through the Danish capital when she observes an elderly man on the street. As the vehicle drives away, she experiences an “uncanny feeling” that she is carrying a piece of him with her. Compelled to retrace the journey in search of him, the narrator enters a landscape that is both unfamiliar and strangely known. She presents readers to Maggie and Kurt, whose relationship is tested by the pressures of their troubled histories. In the concluding section of that volume, it is suggested that the root of the character's disaffection may originate in a poor financial decision made on his account by a man known as T.

The Devil Book: A Unique Narrative Style

This second installment opens with an extended prose poem in which the writer explains her challenge to compose T's story. “Within this second volume,” 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 Scandinavian Star / had effectively been / set.” Overwhelmed by the task she has set herself and derailed by the pandemic, she approaches the story indirectly, as a type of parable. “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 entrepreneurs and / the dark force.”

A tale slowly emerges of a female character who spends lockdown in London with a virtual stranger and during those days relates to him what occurred to her a ten years before, when she agreed to an offer from a man who claimed to be the devil to fulfill all her wishes, so long as she didn't doubt his motives. As the threads of the two stories become more intertwined, we start to suspect that they are identical—or at the very least that the nature of T is multiple, for there are devils all around.

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

Pacts and Consequences: A Literary Exploration

Classic stories teach us that it is the devil who makes bargains, not a divine being, and that we engage in them at our risk. But what if the protagonist herself is the malevolent force? A third narrative comes finally to light—the account of a young woman whose childhood was scarred by abuse and who spent time in a psychiatric hospital, under duress to comply with social expectations or suffer further harm. “[The devil] understands that in the game you've created for it, there are a pair of results: surrender or remain a monster.” A third way out is ultimately revealed through a collection of poems to the darkness that are also a call to arms against the influences of capital.

Connections and Interpretations: From Literature to Real Events

Many UK audience members of Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star books will reflect immediately of the Grenfell Tower fire, which, though accidental in cause, shares parallels in that the ensuing disaster and loss of life can be attributed at in part to the dangerous trade-off of prioritizing financial gain over human lives. In these first two books of what is projected to be a multi-volume series, the blaze aboard the ship and the chain of fraudulent business deals that culminated in mass murder are a sinister underlying element, showing themselves only in brief flashes of detail or implication yet casting a deepening shadow over all that occurs. Certain individuals may question how far it is possible to read The Devil Book as a independent piece, when its purpose and meaning are so deeply tied into a larger whole whose ultimate shape, at this stage, is unknowable.

Experimental Writing: Ethics and Aesthetics Intertwined

There will be others—and I include myself as among them—who will become enamored with the author's project purely as text, as truly experimental writing whose moral and creative purpose are so profoundly interlinked as to make them inseparable. “Write poems / for we require / that as well.” There is another fire here: an intense, magnetic devotion to writing as a political act. I will continue to follow this literary journey, no matter where it goes.