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During the late night of the 7th of April 1990, a devastating fire broke out on board the MS Scandinavian Star, a passenger ferry operating between Oslo and Frederikshavn. Inadequate staff training along with jammed safety doors accelerated the propagation of the fire, while toxic hydrogen cyanide gas emitted from combusting laminates led to the loss of 159 people. Initially, the disaster was attributed to a passenger—a lorry driver with a record of arson. Since this suspect too perished in the incident and was not able to defend himself, the complete truth about the event remained concealed for many years. It wasn't until 2020 that a detailed documentary revealed the blaze was probably set deliberately as part of an fraud scheme.

Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star Sequence: An Overview

In the initial book of Asta Olivia Nordenhof's epic sequence, Money to Burn, an unnamed narrator is riding on a bus through Copenhagen when she observes an older man on the sidewalk. As the bus drives away, she feels an “eerie sense” that she is carrying a part of him with her. Driven to repeat the route in pursuit of him, the narrator finds herself in a landscape that is both alien and deeply familiar. She introduces us to Maggie and Kurt, whose connection is tested by the burdens of their conflicted pasts. In the concluding section of that volume, it is implied that the source of the character's disaffection may originate in a disastrous investment made on his behalf by a individual referred to as T.

This New Volume: An Unconventional Approach

This second installment opens with an lengthy poetic passage in which the writer describes her struggle to compose T's story. “In this second volume,” she states, “we were meant / to follow him / from childhood up until / the night / when he sat anticipating for / the news that / the blaze / on the ferry / had effectively been / set.” Overwhelmed by the undertaking she has assigned herself and derailed 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 book / this is / for you / this is / an sensational story / about businessmen and / the devil.”

A tale gradually emerges of a woman who spends quarantine in London with a virtual stranger and during those weeks tells to him what occurred to her a ten years before, when she accepted an proposal from a figure who claimed to be the evil entity to fulfill all her desires, so long as she didn't doubt his intentions. As the threads of the dual narratives become more intertwined, we start to suspect that they are identical—or at the very least that the nature of T is multiple, for there are demonic forces everywhere.

There is another fire here: a passionate, compelling commitment to writing as a form of activism

Deals with the Devil: A Literary Exploration

Literature instruct us that it is the dark figure who does bargains, not God, and that we engage in them at our risk. But suppose the narrator herself is the malevolent force? A third narrative eventually emerges—the story of a young woman whose early years was marred by abuse and who was placed in a psychiatric hospital, under pressure to conform with societal norms or endure further harm. “[This entity] knows that in the game you've created for it, there are a pair of outcomes: submit or remain a monster.” A third way out is finally unveiled through a series of poems to the night that are also a call to arms against the influences of wealth and power.

Connections and Interpretations: From Literature to Reality

Numerous UK audience members of the author's Scandinavian Star novels will reflect right away of the London tower tragedy, which, though unintentional in origin, shares similarities in that the ensuing tragedy and loss of life can be attributed at in part to the devil's bargain of prioritizing profit over human lives. In these first two books of what is projected to be a multi-volume series, the blaze on board the ferry and the series of deceptive business deals that ended in mass murder are a ominous underlying presence, revealing themselves only in brief flashes of information or inference yet casting a growing influence over all that occurs. Some readers may doubt how far it is possible to read The Devil Book as a stand-alone work, when its purpose and meaning are so intricately tied into a larger whole whose final form, at this stage, is uncertain.

Experimental Writing: Art and Morality Fused

There will be others—and I include myself as among them—who will fall in love with Nordenhof's endeavor purely as text, as truly innovative writing whose ethical and artistic intent are so deeply entwined as to make them inseparable. “Write poems / for we require / that as well.” There is another fire here: an intense, magnetic devotion to writing as a statement. I intend to persist to follow this series, wherever it goes.