🔗 Share this article

During the early hours of the 7th of April 1990, a catastrophic blaze erupted on board the MS Scandinavian Star, a car and passenger ferry traveling between Frederikshavn and Oslo. Insufficient staff training along with malfunctioning safety doors aided the spread of the fire, while deadly hydrogen cyanide gas emitted from combusting materials caused the deaths of 159 people. At first, the tragedy was attributed to a traveler—a truck driver with a history of fire-setting. Given that this individual too perished in the fire and was unable to defend himself, the complete truth about the event remained concealed for many years. It wasn't until 2020 that a comprehensive documentary disclosed the fire was likely set intentionally as part of an fraud scheme.

Asta Olivia Nordenhof's Literary Series: A Glimpse

In the initial book of Asta Olivia Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star sequence, the preceding volume, an unidentified protagonist is traveling on a bus through the Danish capital when she notices an older man on the street. As the vehicle moves away, she feels an “uncanny feeling” that she is carrying a piece of him with her. Driven to repeat the route in search of him, the character finds herself in a setting that is both alien and deeply familiar. She introduces us to a couple named Maggie and Kurt, whose relationship is strained by the pressures of their troubled histories. In the final pages of that book, it is suggested that the root of the character's discontent may originate in a disastrous financial decision made on his behalf by a man known as T.

This New Volume: An Unconventional Approach

The Devil Book begins with an extended poetic passage in which the narrator explains her challenge to write T's story. “Within this volume, two,” she writes, “we were meant / to trace him / from childhood up until / the night / when he sat anticipating for / the news that / the blaze / on the ferry / had successfully been / set.” Overwhelmed by the task she has assigned herself and disrupted by the pandemic, she approaches the tale obliquely, as a form 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 dark force.”

A narrative gradually unfolds of a woman who spends quarantine in the UK capital with a virtual stranger and during those days relates to him what happened to her a ten years 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 elements of the two stories become more intertwined, we start to suspect that they are identical—or at minimum that the nature of T is legion, for there are devils everywhere.

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

Pacts and Consequences: A Literary Exploration

Classic stories instruct us that it is the dark figure who does deals, not God, and that we enter into them at our peril. But what if the protagonist herself is the devil? A additional narrative comes finally to light—the account of a young woman whose early years was marred by mistreatment and who was placed in a psychiatric hospital, under pressure to conform with societal norms or endure more of the same. “[This entity] knows that in the game you've created for it, there are a pair of outcomes: surrender or stay a monster.” A alternative path is finally unveiled through a series of verses to the night that are also a call to arms against the influences of wealth and power.

Connections and Readings: From Literature to Real Events

Many British audience members of Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star books will reflect right away of the Grenfell Tower fire, which, though unintentional in origin, shares similarities in that the ensuing disaster and fatalities can be attributed at in part to the dangerous trade-off of putting profit over human lives. In these initial volumes of what is planned to be a multi-volume series, the blaze on board the ship and the series of deceptive transactions that culminated in mass murder are a sinister underlying presence, revealing themselves only in fleeting glimpses of detail or inference yet projecting a growing influence over everything that occurs. Some individuals may question how much it is possible to interpret this volume as a stand-alone piece, when its aim and meaning are so deeply bound into a broader narrative whose ultimate shape, at this stage, is uncertain.

Innovative Prose: Ethics and Aesthetics Intertwined

Some individuals—and I count myself as among them—who will fall in love with the author's endeavor purely as text, as truly innovative literature whose ethical and creative intent are so deeply interlinked as to make them inseparable. “Write poems / for we require / that too.” There is another fire here: a passionate, attractive commitment to writing as a statement. I will continue to follow this literary journey, no matter where it goes.