🔗 Share this article

During the early hours of the 7th of April 1990, a catastrophic fire broke out on board the MS Scandinavian Star, a car and passenger ferry traveling between Frederikshavn and Oslo. Inadequate crew preparedness along with jammed fire doors aided the propagation of the flames, while toxic hydrogen cyanide gas emitted from burning materials led to the loss of 159 people. At first, the tragedy was attributed to a passenger—a truck driver with a record of arson. Given that this suspect too perished in the incident and was not able to refute the accusations, the complete facts regarding the disaster stayed hidden for a long time. Only in 2020 that a detailed investigation revealed the blaze was likely started deliberately as part of an fraud scheme.

Asta Olivia Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star Sequence: An Overview

Within the first volume of Asta Olivia Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star sequence, Money to Burn, an unidentified protagonist is riding on a public transport through the Danish capital when she notices an older man on the street. As the bus moves away, she feels an “uncanny feeling” that she is carrying a part of him with her. Driven to repeat the route in search of him, the character enters a setting that is both alien and strangely known. She introduces us to a couple named Maggie and Kurt, whose relationship is tested by the burdens of their troubled pasts. In the concluding section of that book, it is suggested that the source of the character's discontent may originate in a disastrous financial decision made on his account by a man known as T.

This New Volume: A Unique Narrative Style

This second installment begins with an extended prose poem in which the narrator explains her challenge to write T's narrative. “Within this second volume,” she states, “we were supposed / to trace him / from childhood up until / the evening / when he sat waiting for / the news that / the blaze / on the ferry / had effectively been / ignited.” Overwhelmed by the undertaking she has assigned herself and derailed by the pandemic, she approaches the tale indirectly, as a type of parable. “It occurred to me / 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 tale gradually emerges of a woman who experiences lockdown in London with a virtual stranger and during those weeks tells to him what occurred to her a ten years before, when she agreed to an offer from a figure who professed to be the devil to fulfill all her wishes, 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 multiple, for there are demonic forces everywhere.

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

Pacts and Consequences: A Literary Examination

Literature teach us that it is the dark figure who makes bargains, not God, and that we engage in them at our peril. But what if the narrator herself is the devil? A third narrative comes finally to light—the story of a girl whose early years was marred by abuse and who was placed in a mental health facility, under duress to conform with social expectations or suffer further harm. “[The devil] knows that in the scenario you've created for it, there are a pair of outcomes: surrender or remain a monster.” A alternative path is finally unveiled through a collection of poems to the darkness that are also a rallying cry against the forces of capital.

Parallels and Interpretations: From Literature to Real Events

Many UK audience members of the author's series books will reflect immediately of the Grenfell Tower fire, which, though unintentional in origin, shares parallels in that the resulting tragedy and loss of life can be linked at in part to the devil's bargain of prioritizing profit over human lives. In these first two volumes of what is planned to be a seven-book series, the fire on board the ferry and the chain of fraudulent transactions that culminated in mass murder are a sinister background presence, showing themselves only in brief glimpses of detail or implication yet casting a deepening influence over all that occurs. Some individuals may doubt how far it is feasible to interpret this volume as a independent work, when its aim and significance are so intricately tied into a larger narrative whose final form, at present, is uncertain.

Innovative Prose: Ethics and Aesthetics Intertwined

There will be others—and I count myself as among them—who will become enamored with the author's project purely as text, as truly experimental writing whose ethical and artistic intent are so deeply entwined as to make them inextricable. “Compose verses / for we require / that as well.” Another kind of blaze exists: a passionate, attractive devotion to writing as a political act. I intend to continue to follow this series, no matter where it leads.