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During the late night of April 7 1990, a catastrophic fire broke out aboard the MS Scandinavian Star, a car and passenger ferry operating between Frederikshavn and Oslo. Insufficient staff preparedness along with jammed fire doors accelerated the propagation of the flames, while toxic cyanide gas released from combusting laminates led to the deaths of 159 people. At first, the disaster was attributed to a traveler—a truck driver with a history of fire-setting. Since this individual also died in the incident and was not able to defend the accusations, the full truth about the disaster remained hidden for many years. It wasn't until 2020 that a comprehensive documentary revealed the fire was probably started intentionally as part of an fraud scheme.

Asta Olivia Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star Sequence: A Glimpse

Within the initial book of Asta Olivia Nordenhof's epic sequence, the preceding volume, an unidentified protagonist is traveling on a bus through the Danish capital when she observes an elderly 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 route in search of him, the narrator enters a landscape that is both unfamiliar and strangely known. She introduces us to a couple named Maggie and Kurt, whose connection is tested by the pressures of their troubled pasts. In the final pages of that book, it is implied that the source of the character's disaffection may stem from a poor investment made on his account by a man known as T.

This New Volume: A Unique Approach

This second installment begins with an lengthy poetic passage in which the narrator describes her challenge to write T's narrative. “In this second volume,” she writes, “we were meant / to trace him / from childhood up until / the night / when he sat waiting for / the news that / the fire / on the ferry / had effectively been / set.” Overwhelmed by the undertaking she has set herself and derailed by the pandemic, she approaches the story indirectly, as a type of allegory. “I came to think / that I / can do / whatever I want / so this / is my book / this is / for you / this is / an sensational story / about entrepreneurs and / the dark force.”

A narrative gradually emerges of a woman who spends lockdown in London with a virtual stranger and over the course of those days relates to him what happened to her a ten years earlier, when she accepted an proposal from a man who professed to be the devil to fulfill all her desires, so long as she didn't doubt his intentions. As the elements of the two stories become more intertwined, we begin to believe that they are one and the same—or at the very least that the nature of T is multiple, for there are demonic forces all around.

Another blaze is present: a passionate, magnetic dedication to literature as a form of activism

Pacts and Consequences: A Literary Examination

Literature instruct us that it is the devil who makes deals, not God, and that we enter into them at our risk. But suppose the narrator herself is the devil? A third storyline comes finally to light—the account of a girl whose childhood was scarred by mistreatment and who was placed in a mental health facility, under duress to conform with social expectations or endure more of the same. “[The devil] understands that in the game you've set 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 night that are also a rallying cry against the forces of capital.

Connections and Interpretations: From Fiction to Real Events

Many British audience members of Nordenhof's series novels will think right away of the Grenfell Tower tragedy, which, though unintentional in origin, shares parallels in that the resulting disaster and fatalities can be attributed at in part to the dangerous trade-off of prioritizing financial gain over people. In these initial books of what is planned to be a multi-volume series, the fire on board the ship and the chain of fraudulent business deals that culminated in multiple deaths are a ominous background element, showing themselves only in brief glimpses of detail or implication yet casting a growing shadow over all that occurs. Some individuals may question how much it is possible to interpret this volume as a independent piece, when its aim and significance are so intricately bound into a broader narrative whose ultimate shape, at this stage, is unknowable.

Experimental Writing: Ethics and Aesthetics Fused

Some individuals—and I count myself as among them—who will become enamored with Nordenhof's endeavor purely as written art, as truly innovative literature whose moral and artistic purpose are so deeply interlinked as to make them inextricable. “Compose verses / for we need / that as well.” Another kind of blaze exists: a passionate, magnetic commitment to the craft as a political act. I intend to continue to pursue this series, wherever it leads.