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In the late night of the 7th of April 1990, a devastating blaze erupted on board the ferry Scandinavian Star, a passenger ferry traveling between Oslo and Frederikshavn. Insufficient staff preparedness combined with jammed safety doors accelerated the spread of the fire, while toxic hydrogen cyanide gas emitted from burning laminates led to the deaths of 159 individuals. At first, the tragedy was blamed to a traveler—a truck driver with a history of arson. Since this individual also perished in the incident and was not able to refute himself, the full facts regarding the disaster remained hidden for a long time. It wasn't until 2020 that a detailed investigation disclosed the fire was likely set deliberately as part of an fraud scheme.

Asta Olivia Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star Sequence: An Overview

Within the first volume of Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star sequence, the preceding volume, an unidentified protagonist is riding on a bus through the Danish capital when she notices an elderly man on the street. As the bus moves away, she feels an “eerie sense” that she is taking a part of him with her. Compelled to repeat the journey in pursuit of him, the character finds herself in a landscape that is both alien and deeply familiar. She introduces us to Maggie and Kurt, whose relationship is tested by the pressures of their troubled pasts. In the final pages of that book, it is implied that the root of the character's discontent may stem from a poor investment made on his account by a individual referred to as T.

This New Volume: A Unique Narrative Style

This second installment opens with an lengthy poetic passage in which the narrator explains her struggle to write T's narrative. “Within this volume, two,” she states, “we were supposed / to trace him / from childhood up until / the evening / when he sat waiting for / the report that / the blaze / on the ferry / had successfully been / set.” Burdened by the task she has assigned herself and derailed by the pandemic, she approaches the tale obliquely, as a type of allegory. “It occurred to me / 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 narrative slowly unfolds of a woman who experiences lockdown in the UK capital with a near-unknown person and during those days relates to him what happened to her a decade before, when she agreed to an proposal from a figure who claimed to be the evil entity to fulfill all her desires, so long as she didn't question his motives. As the elements of the two stories become more interwoven, we start to believe that they are one and the same—or at the very least that the identity of T is multiple, for there are demonic forces everywhere.

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

Pacts and Consequences: A Thematic Examination

Classic stories instruct us that it is the devil who makes bargains, not a divine being, and that we enter into them at our risk. But suppose the protagonist herself is the malevolent force? A third storyline comes finally to light—the story of a young woman whose early years was scarred by abuse and who was placed in a mental health facility, under duress to comply with social expectations or suffer further harm. “[The devil] understands that in the scenario you've created for it, there are a pair of outcomes: submit or stay a monster.” A third way out is ultimately revealed through a collection of verses to the night that are simultaneously a call to arms against the influences of wealth and power.

Connections and Interpretations: From Fiction to Real Events

Many British readers of Nordenhof's series books will think immediately of the London tower tragedy, which, though unintentional in origin, bears parallels in that the ensuing tragedy and fatalities can be linked at in part to the devil's bargain of prioritizing financial gain over people. In these first two books of what is projected to be a multi-volume sequence, the blaze aboard the ferry and the series of fraudulent transactions that culminated in multiple deaths are a ominous background presence, showing themselves only in brief flashes of detail or inference yet casting a growing influence over all that occurs. Some individuals may doubt how far it is feasible to interpret this volume as a stand-alone work, when its aim and meaning are so deeply bound into a broader narrative whose final form, at present, is unknowable.

Experimental Writing: Art and Morality Intertwined

Some individuals—and I include myself as one of them—who will become enamored with the author's project purely as text, as truly innovative literature whose ethical and artistic intent are so deeply interlinked as to make them inextricable. “Write poems / for we require / that as well.” Another kind of blaze exists: a passionate, magnetic devotion to the craft as a statement. I will continue to pursue this literary journey, no matter where it goes.