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During the early hours of the 7th of April 1990, a devastating blaze erupted aboard the ferry Scandinavian Star, a passenger ferry traveling between Frederikshavn and Oslo. Inadequate staff preparedness combined with malfunctioning safety doors accelerated the propagation of the flames, while toxic cyanide gas released from burning materials led to the deaths of 159 individuals. At first, the disaster was blamed to a traveler—a truck driver with a record of arson. Since this suspect too perished in the incident and was not able to defend himself, the complete truth regarding the event remained hidden for a long time. It wasn't until 2020 that a comprehensive documentary revealed the blaze was probably set intentionally as part of an insurance fraud.

Nordenhof's Literary Series: A Glimpse

In the initial book of Asta Olivia Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star sequence, Money to Burn, an unidentified protagonist is riding on a bus through the Danish capital when she notices an older man on the sidewalk. As the vehicle drives away, she experiences an “eerie sense” that she is taking a piece of him with her. Driven to retrace the route in pursuit of him, the narrator finds herself in a setting that is both alien and deeply familiar. She introduces readers to Maggie and Kurt, whose connection is tested by the pressures of their troubled pasts. In the final pages of that volume, it is suggested that the source of Kurt's discontent may stem from a disastrous investment made on his behalf by a man known as T.

This New Volume: A Unique Approach

This second installment begins with an lengthy prose poem in which the narrator explains her struggle to compose T's story. “In this volume, two,” she writes, “we were meant / to follow him / from childhood up until / the evening / when he sat anticipating for / the news that / the fire / on the Scandinavian Star / had effectively been / ignited.” Overwhelmed by the undertaking she has assigned herself and derailed by the pandemic, she approaches the tale obliquely, as a type of parable. “It occurred to me / that I / can do / anything I want / so this / is my work / this is / for you / this is / an sensational story / about businessmen and / the devil.”

A tale slowly emerges of a woman who experiences quarantine in London with a near-unknown person and over the course of those days relates to him what happened to her a ten years earlier, when she agreed to 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 motives. As the elements of the two stories become more intertwined, we begin to suspect that they are identical—or at the very least that the identity of T is multiple, for there are devils all around.

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

Deals with the Devil: A Thematic Examination

Literature teach us that it is the dark figure who makes deals, not a divine being, and that we enter into them at our peril. But what if the protagonist herself is the devil? A third storyline comes finally to light—the story of a young woman whose early years was marred by abuse and who was placed in a mental health facility, under duress to conform with social expectations or endure further harm. “[The devil] understands that in the game you've set for it, there are a pair of outcomes: surrender or stay a monster.” A third way out is ultimately unveiled through a collection of poems to the darkness that are simultaneously a call to arms against the forces of capital.

Connections and Readings: From Literature to Real Events

Many UK audience members of the author's Scandinavian Star novels will think immediately of the London tower fire, which, though accidental in origin, bears similarities in that the ensuing disaster and loss of life can be linked at in part to the devil's bargain of prioritizing profit over human lives. In these first two volumes of what is projected to be a multi-volume series, the fire on board the ship and the series of deceptive business deals that ended in mass murder are a ominous underlying presence, showing themselves only in fleeting glimpses of information or inference yet casting a deepening shadow over all that occurs. Certain individuals may doubt how much it is possible to read this volume as a independent piece, when its purpose and significance are so deeply tied into a broader narrative whose ultimate shape, at present, is unknowable.

Innovative Prose: Ethics and Aesthetics Fused

Some individuals—and I count myself as one of them—who will fall in love with Nordenhof's project purely as written art, as truly experimental writing whose ethical and creative purpose are so profoundly interlinked as to make them inseparable. “Compose verses / for we need / that too.” Another kind of blaze exists: a passionate, attractive commitment to the craft as a statement. I will continue to follow this series, no matter where it leads.