🔗 Share this article

During the late night of April 7 1990, a devastating blaze erupted on board the MS Scandinavian Star, a passenger ferry traveling between Oslo and Frederikshavn. Insufficient crew preparedness along with malfunctioning fire doors aided the propagation of the fire, while deadly hydrogen cyanide gas emitted from burning laminates caused the loss of 159 people. Initially, the disaster was attributed to a traveler—a truck driver with a history of arson. Since this suspect also died in the incident and was not able to defend the accusations, the complete truth regarding the event remained hidden for many years. Only in 2020 that a comprehensive documentary revealed the fire was probably set deliberately as part of an insurance fraud.

Asta Olivia Nordenhof's Literary Series: An Overview

Within the initial book of Asta Olivia Nordenhof's epic sequence, the preceding volume, an unnamed narrator is traveling on a bus through Copenhagen when she notices an older man on the street. As the bus moves away, she experiences an “eerie sense” that she is carrying a part of him with her. Driven to retrace the journey in pursuit of him, the character finds herself in a setting that is both alien and strangely known. She presents 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 root of Kurt's discontent may originate in a disastrous financial decision made on his account by a man referred to as T.

This New Volume: An Unconventional Approach

This second installment opens with an extended prose poem in which the narrator describes her challenge to write T's narrative. “In this volume, two,” she writes, “we were supposed / to follow him / from childhood up until / the evening / when he sat anticipating for / the news that / the blaze / on the ferry / had effectively been / ignited.” Burdened by the undertaking she has set herself and derailed by the global health crisis, she tackles the story indirectly, as a type of parable. “I came to think / that I / can do / whatever I want / so this / is my work / this is / for you / this is / an erotic thriller / about entrepreneurs and / the dark force.”

A tale slowly emerges of a woman who experiences lockdown in London with a near-unknown person and during those weeks 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 devil to fulfill all her wishes, so long as she didn't question his intentions. 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 demonic forces everywhere.

Another blaze is present: a passionate, magnetic commitment to writing as a form of activism

Pacts and Consequences: A Literary Examination

Classic stories instruct us that it is the devil who does deals, not God, and that we engage in them at our peril. But suppose the protagonist herself is the devil? A third storyline comes finally to light—the account of a girl whose early years was marred by abuse and who was placed in a mental health facility, under pressure 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 results: surrender or remain a beast.” A third way out is ultimately unveiled through a series of verses to the darkness that are also a rallying cry against the forces of wealth and power.

Connections and Interpretations: From Fiction to Reality

Many UK audience members of Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star books will reflect immediately of the London tower fire, which, though accidental in cause, bears parallels in that the ensuing disaster and fatalities can be linked at in part to the devil's bargain of prioritizing profit over people. In these first two books of what is planned to be a multi-volume series, the fire on board the ferry and the chain of deceptive transactions that ended in mass murder are a sinister underlying element, showing themselves only in fleeting flashes of detail or inference yet casting a deepening shadow over everything that occurs. Some individuals may doubt how far it is feasible to interpret The Devil Book as a stand-alone work, when its purpose and meaning are so intricately bound into a broader narrative whose ultimate shape, at present, is unknowable.

Innovative Prose: Ethics and Aesthetics Fused

There will be others—and I include myself as among them—who will become enamored with Nordenhof's endeavor purely as written art, as truly innovative writing whose ethical and artistic intent are so profoundly interlinked as to make them inextricable. “Write poems / for we need / that as well.” There is another fire here: a passionate, magnetic devotion to writing as a statement. I will continue to follow this literary journey, no matter where it leads.