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During the late night of April 7 1990, a catastrophic blaze erupted aboard the MS Scandinavian Star, a passenger ferry traveling between Frederikshavn and Oslo. Insufficient crew training along with jammed safety doors aided the propagation of the fire, while deadly cyanide gas emitted from burning materials led to the loss of 159 people. At first, the disaster was blamed to a passenger—a lorry driver with a history of fire-setting. Given that this suspect too perished in the incident and was not able to defend himself, the complete facts about the event remained hidden for a long time. It wasn't until 2020 that a comprehensive documentary disclosed the blaze was likely started intentionally as part of an insurance fraud.

Asta Olivia Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star Series: An Overview

In the initial book of Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star series, Money to Burn, an unidentified protagonist is traveling on a public transport through Copenhagen when she observes an elderly man on the sidewalk. As the bus drives away, she experiences an “eerie sense” that she is taking a piece of him with her. Compelled to retrace the journey in search of him, the character finds herself in a setting that is both unfamiliar and strangely known. She presents readers to a couple named Maggie and Kurt, whose connection is strained by the burdens of their conflicted pasts. In the final pages of that book, it is suggested that the root of the character's disaffection may originate in a disastrous financial decision made on his account by a man referred to as T.

The Devil Book: A Unique Narrative Style

This second installment begins with an lengthy prose poem in which the writer explains her struggle to compose T's narrative. “In this second volume,” she states, “we were meant / to trace him / from youth up until / the evening / when he sat waiting for / the report that / the fire / on the ferry / had successfully been / ignited.” Overwhelmed by the task she has assigned herself and disrupted by the pandemic, she approaches the story indirectly, as a form 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 dark force.”

A narrative slowly emerges of a woman who spends lockdown in London with a virtual stranger and over the course of those days tells to him what happened to her a decade before, when she accepted an proposal from a man who professed to be the evil entity to fulfill all her wishes, so long as she didn't question his intentions. As the elements of the two stories become more intertwined, we begin to believe that they are one and the same—or at minimum that the identity of T is legion, for there are demonic forces everywhere.

Another blaze is present: a passionate, magnetic commitment to literature as a form of activism

Pacts and Consequences: A Thematic Examination

Literature instruct us that it is the devil who does deals, not God, and that we engage in them at our peril. But what if the narrator herself is the malevolent force? A additional storyline eventually emerges—the account of a girl whose early years was marred by mistreatment and who was placed in a psychiatric hospital, under pressure to conform with social expectations or suffer further harm. “[The devil] knows that in the game you've set for it, there are two results: surrender or stay a monster.” A third way out is ultimately unveiled through a series of poems to the darkness that are also a call to arms against the forces of wealth and power.

Connections and Interpretations: From Fiction to Reality

Numerous British audience members of the author's series novels will think immediately of the Grenfell Tower tragedy, which, though unintentional in origin, bears similarities in that the ensuing tragedy and loss of life can be attributed at in part to the devil's bargain of prioritizing financial gain over human lives. In these first two volumes of what is projected to be a seven-book series, the fire aboard the ship and the series of fraudulent transactions that ended in mass murder are a sinister underlying element, showing themselves only in fleeting glimpses of detail or inference yet casting a growing influence over everything that occurs. Some individuals may doubt how far it is possible to read this volume as a stand-alone work, when its purpose and significance are so deeply bound into a broader whole whose ultimate shape, at present, is unknowable.

Innovative Prose: Ethics and Aesthetics Intertwined

There will be others—and I count myself as among them—who will become enamored with Nordenhof's endeavor purely as text, as truly experimental literature whose moral and creative purpose are so deeply entwined as to make them inextricable. “Compose verses / for we need / that too.” Another kind of blaze exists: a passionate, magnetic devotion to writing as a statement. I intend to persist to follow this literary journey, wherever it goes.