🔗 Share this article

During the late night of April 7 1990, a catastrophic blaze broke out aboard the ferry Scandinavian Star, a passenger ferry operating between Frederikshavn and Oslo. Insufficient crew preparedness along with malfunctioning fire doors accelerated the spread of the flames, while deadly cyanide gas released from burning laminates caused the deaths of 159 people. Initially, the tragedy was blamed to a traveler—a lorry driver with a record of arson. Since this individual too perished in the incident and was not able to refute himself, the complete facts regarding the event remained concealed for a long time. Only in 2020 that a comprehensive investigation revealed the blaze was probably started intentionally as part of an fraud scheme.

Asta Olivia Nordenhof's Literary Series: An Overview

In the initial book of Asta Olivia Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star series, the preceding volume, an unnamed protagonist is traveling on a public transport through the Danish capital when she observes an elderly man on the street. As the bus drives away, she feels an “uncanny feeling” that she is taking a piece of him with her. Driven to retrace the route in search of him, the character enters a setting that is both alien and strangely known. She presents readers to a couple named Maggie and Kurt, whose connection is tested by the pressures of their conflicted pasts. In the concluding section of that volume, it is implied that the root of the character's discontent may stem from a disastrous investment made on his account by a individual known as T.

The Devil Book: A Unique Narrative Style

This second installment begins with an extended prose poem in which the narrator explains her struggle to write T's story. “Within this volume, two,” she writes, “we were supposed / to follow him / from childhood up until / the evening / when he sat anticipating for / the report that / the fire / on the ferry / had successfully been / set.” Burdened by the undertaking she has set herself and derailed by the global health crisis, she tackles the tale obliquely, as a type of allegory. “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 devil.”

A tale slowly unfolds of a female character who spends lockdown in London with a near-unknown person and during those weeks relates to him what occurred to her a decade before, when she accepted an offer from a figure who claimed to be the evil entity to fulfill all her desires, so long as she didn't question his intentions. As the elements of the dual narratives become more interwoven, we start to believe that they are identical—or at minimum that the nature of T is legion, for there are demonic forces everywhere.

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

Deals with the Devil: A Literary Exploration

Literature teach us that it is the dark figure who does deals, not a divine being, and that we enter into them at our risk. But what if the protagonist herself is the devil? A additional storyline comes finally to light—the story of a girl whose childhood was marred by abuse and who was placed in a psychiatric hospital, under pressure to comply with societal norms or endure more of the same. “[This entity] knows that in the scenario you've set for it, there are a pair of outcomes: submit or stay a beast.” A third way out is ultimately revealed through a collection of verses to the night that are simultaneously a call to arms against the influences of wealth and power.

Parallels and Interpretations: From Literature to Reality

Numerous UK audience members of Nordenhof's series books will think immediately of the Grenfell Tower tragedy, which, though unintentional in origin, bears parallels in that the resulting tragedy and loss of life can be attributed at least partly to the dangerous trade-off of putting profit over people. In these initial volumes of what is projected to be a multi-volume sequence, the blaze on board the ship and the chain of fraudulent business deals that ended in multiple deaths are a sinister underlying element, showing themselves only in fleeting flashes of information or inference yet casting a deepening influence over all that occurs. Certain readers may doubt how much it is possible to read this volume as a stand-alone piece, when its aim and meaning are so intricately tied into a larger whole whose ultimate shape, at this stage, is uncertain.

Innovative Prose: Ethics and Aesthetics Intertwined

There will be others—and I include myself as one of them—who will fall in love with the author's endeavor purely as written art, as truly experimental writing whose moral and creative intent are so deeply interlinked as to make them inextricable. “Write poems / for we need / that as well.” Another kind of blaze exists: a passionate, magnetic commitment to writing as a political act. I will persist to follow this literary journey, wherever it leads.