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In the late night of April 7 1990, a devastating fire erupted on board the ferry Scandinavian Star, a car and passenger ferry operating between Oslo and Frederikshavn. Insufficient crew training along with jammed safety doors accelerated the propagation of the fire, while deadly hydrogen cyanide gas released from burning materials caused the deaths of 159 individuals. At first, the disaster was attributed to a traveler—a lorry driver with a history of fire-setting. Given that this suspect also perished in the incident and was unable to refute the accusations, the complete truth regarding the event remained concealed for many years. Only in 2020 that a comprehensive investigation disclosed the fire was likely started intentionally as part of an insurance fraud.

Asta Olivia Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star Series: A Glimpse

Within the first volume of Nordenhof's epic series, Money to Burn, an unidentified narrator is riding on a bus through the Danish capital when she observes an elderly man on the sidewalk. As the vehicle moves away, she feels an “uncanny feeling” that she is carrying a part of him with her. Compelled to retrace the journey in search of him, the character enters a landscape that is both unfamiliar and strangely known. She introduces us to Maggie and Kurt, whose connection is strained by the burdens of their conflicted pasts. In the concluding section of that volume, it is suggested that the root of the character's discontent may originate in a poor financial decision made on his behalf by a man known as T.

This New Volume: A Unique Approach

This second installment opens with an lengthy poetic passage in which the writer describes her challenge to compose T's narrative. “In this second volume,” she writes, “we were supposed / to follow him / from youth up until / the night / when he sat waiting for / the report that / the blaze / on the Scandinavian Star / had successfully been / set.” Overwhelmed by the undertaking she has set herself and derailed by the global health crisis, she tackles the story indirectly, as a form of parable. “It occurred to me / that I / can do / anything 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 female character who spends lockdown in the UK capital with a virtual stranger and over the course of those days tells to him what happened to her a decade earlier, when she agreed to an offer from a figure who claimed to be the evil entity to grant all her desires, so long as she didn't doubt his motives. As the elements of the dual narratives become more interwoven, we start to suspect that they are one and the same—or at minimum that the identity of T is multiple, for there are devils everywhere.

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

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 protagonist herself is the devil? A third storyline comes finally to light—the story of a young woman whose childhood was scarred by mistreatment and who spent time in a psychiatric hospital, under duress to conform with societal norms or suffer more of the same. “[The devil] knows that in the game you've created for it, there are two outcomes: surrender or stay a beast.” A third way out is finally revealed through a collection of poems to the darkness that are simultaneously a rallying cry against the influences of wealth and power.

Parallels and Interpretations: From Literature to Real Events

Many British audience members of Nordenhof's series novels will reflect immediately of the Grenfell Tower tragedy, which, though unintentional in origin, bears 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 sequence, the fire aboard the ship and the series of fraudulent business deals that culminated in multiple deaths are a sinister background element, showing themselves only in brief flashes of information or implication yet projecting a growing influence over all that transpires. Certain individuals may doubt how far it is possible to interpret this volume as a independent work, when its purpose and meaning are so intricately tied into a broader whole whose final form, at this stage, is unknowable.

Experimental Writing: Art and Morality Fused

Some individuals—and I count myself as among them—who will become enamored with Nordenhof's project purely as text, as properly experimental literature whose ethical and creative intent are so profoundly interlinked as to make them inextricable. “Write poems / for we require / that too.” Another kind of blaze exists: a passionate, magnetic devotion to writing as a political act. I will persist to pursue this literary journey, wherever it leads.