Asta Olivia Nordenhof's Latest Review: A Danish Series Aflame with Intent

During the early hours of April 7 1990, a devastating fire broke out on board the MS Scandinavian Star, a passenger ferry operating between Frederikshavn and Oslo. Inadequate staff training combined with jammed safety doors aided the propagation of the fire, while toxic hydrogen cyanide gas emitted from combusting materials caused the deaths of 159 people. Initially, the tragedy was blamed to a passenger—a lorry driver with a record of arson. Given that this suspect too perished in the fire and was not able to refute the accusations, the complete truth regarding the event remained concealed for a long time. Only in 2020 that a comprehensive documentary disclosed the blaze was likely set deliberately as part of an fraud scheme.

Asta Olivia Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star Sequence: A Glimpse

In the first volume of Nordenhof's epic series, the preceding volume, an unidentified narrator is traveling on a bus through Copenhagen when she notices an older man on the sidewalk. As the vehicle drives away, she experiences an “uncanny feeling” that she is carrying a part of him with her. Driven to repeat the journey in search of him, the narrator enters a setting that is both alien and deeply familiar. She introduces readers to Maggie and Kurt, whose connection is strained by the pressures of their troubled pasts. In the concluding section of that book, it is suggested that the source of Kurt's discontent may stem from a disastrous financial decision made on his account by a individual referred to as T.

This New Volume: An Unconventional Approach

The Devil Book begins with an lengthy prose poem in which the writer explains her challenge to compose T's story. “In this second volume,” she states, “we were meant / to trace him / from youth up until / the night / when he sat anticipating for / the news that / the blaze / on the Scandinavian Star / had effectively been / set.” Burdened by the undertaking she has assigned herself and derailed by the pandemic, she tackles the tale obliquely, 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 sensational story / about businessmen and / the devil.”

A narrative slowly emerges of a female character who spends lockdown in London with a near-unknown person and over the course of those days tells to him what happened to her a decade before, when she agreed to an proposal from a man who claimed to be the devil to grant all her wishes, so long as she didn't doubt his motives. As the threads of the dual narratives become more intertwined, we begin to suspect that they are identical—or at the very least that the identity of T is legion, for there are demonic forces everywhere.

There is another fire here: a passionate, magnetic commitment to literature as a political act

Deals with the Devil: A Literary Exploration

Literature instruct us that it is the devil who makes deals, not God, and that we enter into them at our peril. But what if the protagonist herself is the malevolent force? A third narrative eventually emerges—the account of a girl whose childhood was marred by mistreatment and who was placed in a psychiatric hospital, under pressure to comply with societal norms or suffer more of the same. “[This entity] understands that in the scenario you've created for it, there are a pair of results: submit or remain a monster.” A third way out is finally unveiled through a series of poems to the darkness that are also a rallying cry against the influences of capital.

Connections and Interpretations: From Literature to Reality

Numerous UK readers of Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star books will think immediately of the Grenfell Tower fire, which, though accidental in cause, shares similarities in that the resulting disaster and loss of life can be linked at least partly to the devil's bargain of putting profit over human lives. In these initial volumes of what is projected to be a seven-book series, the fire on board the ship and the series of fraudulent transactions that culminated in multiple deaths are a ominous underlying presence, showing themselves only in brief glimpses of detail or inference yet projecting a deepening influence over all that transpires. Certain readers may question how much it is possible to read this volume as a stand-alone piece, when its aim and meaning are so intricately tied into a larger narrative whose final form, at present, is uncertain.

Innovative Prose: Ethics and Aesthetics Fused

Some individuals—and I include myself as among them—who will fall in love with the author's project purely as written art, as properly innovative writing whose ethical and creative purpose are so deeply entwined as to make them inseparable. “Write poems / for we need / that as well.” There is another fire here: a passionate, magnetic commitment to the craft as a political act. I will persist to follow this series, wherever it leads.