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During the late night of the 7th of April 1990, a catastrophic fire erupted aboard the ferry Scandinavian Star, a passenger ferry operating between Frederikshavn and Oslo. Insufficient staff training combined with jammed fire doors accelerated the spread of the fire, while toxic hydrogen cyanide gas emitted from burning materials led to the loss of 159 people. At first, the disaster was blamed to a passenger—a truck driver with a record of fire-setting. Given that this suspect too perished in the incident and was unable to refute himself, the full facts about the event remained hidden for many years. It wasn't until 2020 that a detailed 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 Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star sequence, Money to Burn, an unnamed narrator is riding on a bus through Copenhagen when she notices an older man on the sidewalk. As the bus moves away, she experiences an “uncanny feeling” that she is taking a piece of him with her. Driven to retrace the journey in search of him, the narrator finds herself in a landscape that is both unfamiliar 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 volume, it is implied that the root of the character's discontent may stem from a poor investment 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 explains her struggle to compose T's narrative. “In this second volume,” she states, “we were meant / to trace him / from youth up until / the evening / when he sat anticipating for / the news that / the blaze / on the Scandinavian Star / had effectively been / ignited.” Burdened by the task she has set herself and derailed by the pandemic, she tackles the story indirectly, as a type of allegory. “I came to think / that I / can do / anything I want / so this / is my work / this is / for you / this is / an sensational story / about businessmen and / the dark force.”

A tale slowly emerges of a woman who experiences quarantine in the UK capital with a near-unknown person and during those weeks tells to him what occurred to her a ten years earlier, when she accepted an proposal from a figure who professed to be the devil to grant all her desires, so long as she didn't doubt his intentions. As the threads of the dual narratives become more intertwined, we start to believe that they are identical—or at the very least that the identity of T is legion, for there are demonic forces all around.

There is another fire here: a passionate, compelling dedication to writing as a form of activism

Deals with the Devil: A Literary Examination

Classic stories instruct us that it is the devil who does bargains, not a divine being, and that we enter into them at our peril. But what if the protagonist herself is the malevolent force? A third storyline comes finally to light—the account of a girl whose early years was scarred by abuse and who spent time in a psychiatric hospital, under pressure to conform with societal norms or suffer further harm. “[This entity] understands that in the game you've created for it, there are two results: surrender or stay a beast.” A third way out is ultimately revealed through a collection of poems to the night that are also a call to arms against the influences of wealth and power.

Parallels and Interpretations: From Literature to Reality

Many UK audience members of Nordenhof's series books will think immediately of the London tower tragedy, which, though accidental in origin, shares similarities in that the resulting tragedy and loss of life can be attributed at least partly to the dangerous trade-off of putting financial gain over people. In these initial books of what is projected to be a multi-volume series, the blaze on board the ferry and the chain of fraudulent transactions that ended in multiple deaths are a sinister underlying presence, revealing themselves only in brief glimpses of detail or inference yet projecting a deepening shadow over everything that transpires. Some readers may question how far it is feasible to read this volume as a stand-alone work, when its aim and significance are so deeply bound into a larger whole whose ultimate shape, at present, is uncertain.

Innovative Prose: Art and Morality Intertwined

Some individuals—and I include myself as among them—who will fall in love with Nordenhof's project purely as text, as truly innovative literature whose moral and artistic intent are so deeply entwined as to make them inseparable. “Compose verses / for we need / that as well.” Another kind of blaze exists: an intense, attractive devotion to the craft as a statement. I intend to persist to follow this series, wherever it goes.