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In the late night of the 7th of April 1990, a catastrophic fire erupted aboard the MS Scandinavian Star, a car and passenger ferry traveling between Oslo and Frederikshavn. Inadequate staff preparedness combined with malfunctioning safety doors accelerated the propagation of the fire, while toxic hydrogen cyanide gas emitted from burning laminates led to the loss of 159 individuals. Initially, the tragedy was blamed to a traveler—a truck driver with a history of arson. Since this suspect too died in the incident and was not able to defend himself, the full facts regarding the event remained hidden for a long time. Only in 2020 that a comprehensive investigation revealed the blaze was likely started deliberately as part of an insurance fraud.

Asta Olivia Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star Series: An Overview

In the initial book of Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star sequence, the preceding volume, an unnamed protagonist is riding on a bus through the Danish capital when she observes an older man on the street. As the vehicle drives away, she experiences an “eerie sense” that she is carrying a piece of him with her. Driven to retrace the route in pursuit of him, the character enters a landscape that is both unfamiliar and deeply familiar. She presents us to Maggie and Kurt, whose relationship is tested by the burdens of their troubled histories. In the concluding section of that volume, it is implied that the source of Kurt's discontent may originate in a poor investment made on his account by a man known as T.

The Devil Book: A Unique Narrative Style

The Devil Book begins with an lengthy poetic passage in which the writer explains her challenge to write T's narrative. “Within this volume, two,” she writes, “we were meant / to follow him / from youth up until / the night / when he sat waiting for / the news that / the blaze / on the Scandinavian Star / had successfully been / set.” Overwhelmed by the undertaking she has set herself and disrupted by the global health crisis, she tackles the story obliquely, 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 erotic thriller / about entrepreneurs and / the devil.”

A narrative gradually emerges of a woman who spends lockdown in the UK capital with a virtual stranger and during those weeks relates to him what happened to her a decade before, when she accepted an proposal from a figure who claimed to be the evil entity to grant all her wishes, so long as she didn't doubt his motives. As the threads 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 all around.

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

Pacts and Consequences: A Thematic Examination

Literature instruct us that it is the devil who does 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 third storyline comes finally to light—the account of a young woman whose early years was scarred by mistreatment and who spent time in a psychiatric hospital, under pressure to comply with social expectations or suffer more of the same. “[The devil] understands that in the game you've set for it, there are a pair of outcomes: submit or stay a monster.” A alternative path is ultimately revealed through a collection of poems to the darkness that are also a rallying cry against the influences of capital.

Connections and Readings: From Fiction to Real Events

Numerous British readers of Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star novels will reflect right away of the London tower tragedy, which, though accidental in origin, shares similarities in that the ensuing tragedy and loss of life can be linked at in part to the devil's bargain of putting financial gain over people. In these initial volumes of what is projected to be a multi-volume sequence, the blaze on board the ship and the series of fraudulent business deals that ended in multiple deaths are a ominous underlying presence, showing themselves only in fleeting glimpses of detail or implication yet projecting a growing shadow over everything that occurs. Some individuals may doubt how far it is feasible to read this volume as a independent work, when its purpose and meaning are so intricately bound into a broader whole whose final form, at present, is unknowable.

Innovative Prose: Art and Morality Fused

There will be others—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 ethical and creative intent are so deeply entwined as to make them inseparable. “Compose verses / for we require / that as well.” Another kind of blaze exists: a passionate, magnetic commitment to the craft as a statement. I intend to persist to pursue this literary journey, wherever it goes.