🔗 Share this article

In the late night of April 7 1990, a catastrophic fire broke out on board the ferry Scandinavian Star, a car and passenger ferry operating between Oslo and Frederikshavn. Inadequate staff training along with malfunctioning fire doors aided the propagation of the fire, while deadly hydrogen cyanide gas emitted from combusting materials led to the deaths of 159 people. At first, the disaster was blamed to a traveler—a lorry driver with a record of arson. Given that this individual also perished in the incident and was unable to refute the accusations, the full truth regarding the disaster remained hidden for many years. Only in 2020 that a detailed investigation revealed the fire was probably set intentionally as part of an fraud scheme.

Asta Olivia Nordenhof's Literary Sequence: An Overview

Within the initial book of Asta Olivia Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star series, Money to Burn, an unidentified narrator is traveling on a public transport through Copenhagen when she observes an older man on the sidewalk. As the vehicle drives away, she experiences an “eerie sense” that she is carrying a piece of him with her. Compelled to retrace the journey in search of him, the character finds herself in a landscape that is both unfamiliar and strangely known. She introduces us to a couple named Maggie and Kurt, whose relationship is tested by the burdens of their conflicted pasts. In the final pages of that book, it is implied that the root of Kurt's disaffection may originate in a disastrous investment made on his account by a man known as T.

The Devil Book: An Unconventional Narrative Style

This second installment opens with an extended poetic passage in which the writer describes her struggle to compose T's narrative. “Within this second volume,” she states, “we were meant / to follow him / from childhood up until / the night / when he sat anticipating for / the report that / the blaze / on the ferry / had successfully been / ignited.” Overwhelmed by the undertaking she has assigned herself and disrupted by the pandemic, she approaches the story indirectly, as a type of parable. “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 emerges of a woman who experiences quarantine in the UK capital with a near-unknown person and during those days tells to him what occurred to her a ten years earlier, when she accepted an offer from a man who claimed to be the devil to fulfill all her desires, so long as she didn't doubt his motives. As the elements of the dual narratives become more interwoven, 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 all around.

Another blaze is present: an ardent, magnetic dedication to literature as a political act

Deals with the Devil: A Thematic Exploration

Literature teach us that it is the devil who makes bargains, not God, and that we engage in them at our peril. But suppose the protagonist herself is the malevolent force? A third storyline eventually emerges—the story of a young woman whose childhood was scarred by abuse and who was placed in a psychiatric hospital, under pressure to comply with societal norms or suffer further harm. “[The devil] understands that in the scenario you've created for it, there are a pair of outcomes: submit or stay a monster.” A third way out is finally revealed through a series of verses to the night that are simultaneously a call to arms against the forces of capital.

Connections and Readings: From Literature to Reality

Many UK audience members of the author's Scandinavian Star novels will think right away of the London tower tragedy, which, though unintentional in cause, shares parallels in that the ensuing disaster and loss of life can be linked at in part to the dangerous trade-off of putting profit over human lives. In these first two volumes of what is projected to be a multi-volume sequence, the blaze on board the ferry and the chain of fraudulent transactions that culminated in mass murder are a ominous background element, revealing themselves only in fleeting glimpses of information or implication yet casting a growing influence over all that occurs. Certain readers may doubt how far it is feasible to read this volume as a independent piece, when its aim and meaning are so deeply tied into a broader whole whose ultimate shape, at this stage, is unknowable.

Experimental Writing: Ethics and Aesthetics Fused

There will be others—and I include myself as among them—who will fall in love with the author's project purely as written art, as truly experimental writing whose ethical and artistic purpose are so deeply entwined as to make them inseparable. “Compose verses / for we require / that as well.” There is another fire here: an intense, attractive devotion to the craft as a statement. I will persist to pursue this literary journey, wherever it leads.