🔗 Share this article

In the early hours of April 7 1990, a catastrophic blaze erupted aboard the ferry Scandinavian Star, a car and passenger ferry traveling between Frederikshavn and Oslo. Insufficient staff training along with malfunctioning fire doors accelerated the spread of the fire, while deadly cyanide gas released from combusting laminates led to the deaths of 159 people. Initially, the disaster was attributed to a traveler—a truck driver with a record of fire-setting. Since this individual also perished in the incident and was not able to defend himself, the full facts regarding the disaster remained concealed for a long time. Only in 2020 that a comprehensive documentary disclosed the blaze was likely started intentionally as part of an insurance fraud.

Nordenhof's Literary Series: An Overview

In the initial book of Asta Olivia Nordenhof's epic sequence, Money to Burn, an unidentified narrator is riding on a public transport through the Danish capital when she observes an older man on the sidewalk. As the vehicle moves away, she feels an “uncanny feeling” that she is carrying a piece of him with her. Driven to retrace the route in search of him, the character enters a landscape that is both alien and deeply familiar. She introduces readers to Maggie and Kurt, whose relationship is tested by the burdens of their troubled histories. In the final pages of that volume, it is implied that the source of Kurt's discontent may stem from a disastrous investment made on his behalf by a individual known as T.

The Devil Book: A Unique Approach

This second installment begins with an lengthy poetic passage in which the narrator describes her struggle to write T's story. “In this second volume,” she states, “we were meant / to trace him / from childhood up until / the evening / when he sat waiting for / the news that / the fire / on the Scandinavian Star / had successfully been / set.” Burdened by the task she has set herself and derailed by the pandemic, she approaches the tale indirectly, as a type of allegory. “It occurred to me / that I / can do / anything I want / so this / is my book / this is / for you / this is / an erotic thriller / about entrepreneurs and / the dark force.”

A narrative gradually emerges of a woman who experiences quarantine in London with a near-unknown person and during those days relates 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 intertwined, we begin to suspect that they are identical—or at the very least that the nature of T is multiple, for there are devils everywhere.

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

Pacts and Consequences: A Thematic Exploration

Literature teach us that it is the dark figure who does deals, not a divine being, and that we engage in them at our peril. But what if the narrator herself is the devil? A third narrative eventually emerges—the story of a young woman whose childhood was marred by abuse and who was placed in a mental health facility, under duress to comply with societal norms or endure further harm. “[The devil] knows that in the game you've created for it, there are two results: submit or remain a monster.” A alternative path is finally revealed through a collection of poems to the darkness that are also a call to arms against the influences of capital.

Parallels and Readings: From Literature to Real Events

Numerous British audience members of Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star novels will reflect immediately of the London tower fire, which, though unintentional in origin, bears parallels in that the ensuing disaster and loss of life can be linked at in part to the dangerous trade-off of putting financial gain over people. In these first two books of what is planned to be a seven-book sequence, the blaze on board the ferry and the series of fraudulent transactions that ended in multiple deaths are a ominous background element, revealing themselves only in brief glimpses of information or inference yet casting a deepening influence over everything that transpires. Certain readers may doubt how much it is possible to interpret this volume as a stand-alone piece, when its purpose and significance are so deeply tied into a larger narrative whose final form, at present, is unknowable.

Experimental Writing: Art and Morality Fused

Some individuals—and I include myself as one of them—who will become enamored with the author's project purely as text, as properly experimental literature whose moral and artistic intent are so profoundly entwined as to make them inextricable. “Write poems / for we need / that too.” Another kind of blaze exists: a passionate, magnetic devotion to writing as a statement. I will persist to follow this literary journey, wherever it leads.