🔗 Share this article

In the late night of April 7 1990, a catastrophic blaze broke out on board the MS Scandinavian Star, a passenger ferry operating between Oslo and Frederikshavn. Insufficient crew training along with malfunctioning fire doors accelerated the propagation of the fire, while toxic hydrogen cyanide gas emitted from combusting materials caused the deaths of 159 individuals. Initially, the disaster was attributed to a passenger—a lorry driver with a history of fire-setting. Given that this suspect also died in the fire and was unable to refute the accusations, the full truth about the disaster stayed concealed for a long time. Only in 2020 that a comprehensive investigation disclosed the fire was likely set deliberately as part of an insurance fraud.

Asta Olivia Nordenhof's Literary Series: A Glimpse

In the first volume of Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star series, the preceding volume, an unidentified protagonist is riding on a bus through Copenhagen when she observes an elderly man on the sidewalk. As the bus moves away, she feels an “uncanny feeling” that she is taking a part of him with her. Compelled to retrace the route in pursuit of him, the narrator finds herself in a setting that is both unfamiliar and strangely known. She introduces us to a couple named Maggie and Kurt, whose connection is tested by the pressures of their conflicted histories. In the final pages of that volume, it is implied that the root of the character's disaffection may originate in a disastrous investment made on his account by a man referred to as T.

The Devil Book: A Unique Narrative Style

This second installment begins with an extended prose poem in which the writer explains her struggle to write T's story. “In this volume, two,” she states, “we were supposed / to trace him / from youth up until / the night / when he sat anticipating for / the report that / the fire / on the Scandinavian Star / had successfully been / ignited.” Overwhelmed by the undertaking she has set herself and disrupted by the pandemic, she approaches the tale obliquely, as a form of allegory. “I came to think / that I / can do / whatever I want / so this / is my work / this is / for you / this is / an erotic thriller / about businessmen and / the devil.”

A narrative gradually unfolds of a female character who experiences lockdown 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 earlier, when she accepted an proposal from a figure who claimed to be the devil to grant all her wishes, so long as she didn't question his motives. As the elements of the two stories become more intertwined, we begin to believe that they are one and the same—or at the very least that the nature of T is legion, for there are demonic forces everywhere.

There is another fire here: an ardent, magnetic commitment to writing as a form of activism

Deals with the Devil: A Thematic Exploration

Literature teach us that it is the devil who makes bargains, not a divine being, and that we enter into them at our risk. But what if the narrator herself is the malevolent force? A additional narrative comes finally to light—the story of a young woman whose childhood was marred by mistreatment and who was placed in a mental health facility, under pressure to conform with social expectations or suffer more of the same. “[This entity] knows that in the scenario you've created for it, there are two results: surrender or stay a beast.” A alternative path is ultimately revealed through a collection of poems to the night that are simultaneously a rallying cry against the influences of wealth and power.

Parallels and Interpretations: From Fiction to Real Events

Many British readers of the author's series novels will think immediately of the Grenfell Tower fire, which, though unintentional in cause, shares parallels in that the resulting disaster and fatalities can be attributed at least partly to the dangerous trade-off of putting profit over people. In these initial volumes of what is planned to be a seven-book series, the blaze on board the ferry and the chain of fraudulent business deals that ended in mass murder are a ominous background element, revealing themselves only in brief flashes of information or inference yet projecting a deepening influence over all that transpires. Certain individuals may doubt how much it is possible to interpret this volume as a independent work, when its aim and meaning are so deeply bound into a larger whole whose ultimate shape, at present, is uncertain.

Innovative Prose: Art and Morality Fused

Some individuals—and I include myself as among them—who will fall in love with Nordenhof's project purely as written art, as properly innovative writing whose moral and artistic intent are so deeply interlinked as to make them inextricable. “Write poems / for we need / that as well.” There is another fire here: an intense, magnetic commitment to writing as a statement. I intend to continue to pursue this series, no matter where it goes.