🔗 Share this article

In the early hours of the 7th of April 1990, a catastrophic fire erupted aboard the MS Scandinavian Star, a passenger ferry traveling between Oslo and Frederikshavn. Inadequate staff preparedness along with malfunctioning safety doors aided the propagation of the fire, while deadly cyanide gas emitted from burning laminates caused the deaths of 159 individuals. Initially, the tragedy was blamed to a traveler—a lorry driver with a history of arson. Since this individual too died in the incident and was unable to refute the accusations, the full facts regarding the event remained hidden for a long time. It wasn't until 2020 that a detailed documentary revealed the fire was likely set intentionally as part of an insurance fraud.

Asta Olivia Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star Series: A Glimpse

In the initial book of Asta Olivia Nordenhof's epic series, the preceding volume, an unidentified narrator is traveling on a public transport through Copenhagen when she notices an elderly man on the sidewalk. As the bus drives away, she experiences an “uncanny feeling” that she is carrying a part of him with her. Compelled to repeat the route in search of him, the narrator finds herself in a landscape that is both alien and deeply familiar. She presents us to a couple named Maggie and Kurt, whose relationship is tested by the pressures of their conflicted histories. In the concluding section of that volume, it is implied that the root of Kurt's discontent may stem from a poor investment made on his behalf by a man referred to as T.

This New Volume: An Unconventional Approach

This second installment opens with an lengthy poetic passage in which the narrator describes her challenge to write T's story. “Within this second volume,” she writes, “we were meant / to trace him / from youth up until / the night / when he sat waiting for / the news that / the blaze / on the Scandinavian Star / had effectively been / ignited.” Overwhelmed by the task she has set herself and disrupted by the pandemic, she approaches the story obliquely, 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 erotic thriller / about businessmen and / the dark force.”

A narrative slowly emerges of a woman who spends lockdown in the UK capital with a virtual stranger and during those days tells to him what happened to her a ten years before, when she agreed to an offer from a figure who claimed to be the devil to fulfill all her desires, so long as she didn't question his intentions. As the elements of the two stories become more interwoven, we begin to believe that they are identical—or at the very least that the nature of T is legion, for there are devils all around.

Another blaze is present: 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 enter into them at our peril. But what if the protagonist herself is the devil? A additional storyline eventually emerges—the account of a girl whose childhood was marred by abuse and who was placed in a psychiatric hospital, under duress to conform with social expectations or suffer further harm. “[The devil] understands that in the game you've set for it, there are two results: submit or stay a beast.” A alternative path is ultimately revealed through a collection of poems to the darkness that are also a call to arms against the forces of capital.

Connections and Readings: From Literature to Real Events

Numerous British audience members of the author's Scandinavian Star books will think immediately of the Grenfell Tower tragedy, which, though unintentional in cause, bears similarities in that the ensuing disaster and loss of life can be linked at least partly to the dangerous trade-off of putting profit over human lives. In these initial books of what is projected to be a multi-volume sequence, the fire aboard the ship and the chain of fraudulent transactions that culminated in multiple deaths are a sinister underlying element, revealing themselves only in fleeting flashes of detail or implication yet casting a growing shadow over everything that occurs. Certain individuals may question how far it is possible to read The Devil Book as a stand-alone work, when its aim and meaning are so intricately bound into a broader narrative whose ultimate shape, at present, is unknowable.

Experimental Writing: Art and Morality Intertwined

Some individuals—and I count myself as among them—who will become enamored with the author's project purely as written art, as truly experimental literature whose moral and creative purpose are so profoundly interlinked as to make them inextricable. “Write poems / for we require / that too.” There is another fire here: an intense, attractive devotion to writing as a political act. I intend to continue to pursue this series, no matter where it leads.