Asta Olivia Nordenhof's Latest Review: A Danish Literary Sequence Burning with Intent

In the late night of April 7 1990, a devastating blaze broke out aboard the ferry Scandinavian Star, a car and passenger ferry traveling between Frederikshavn and Oslo. Inadequate staff preparedness combined with malfunctioning fire doors aided the propagation of the fire, while toxic hydrogen cyanide gas emitted from burning laminates led to the deaths of 159 individuals. At first, the disaster was blamed to a traveler—a lorry driver with a history of fire-setting. Since this individual too died in the incident and was not able to refute the accusations, the complete facts regarding the event remained hidden for many years. It wasn't until 2020 that a comprehensive documentary disclosed the blaze was probably started intentionally as part of an insurance fraud.

Asta Olivia Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star Series: A Glimpse

Within the first volume of Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star series, Money to Burn, an unidentified narrator is riding on a bus through the Danish capital when she notices an older man on the sidewalk. As the bus drives away, she experiences an “uncanny feeling” that she is taking a piece of him with her. Driven to retrace the journey in pursuit of him, the character finds herself in a landscape that is both unfamiliar and strangely known. She introduces us to a couple named Maggie and Kurt, whose relationship is strained by the pressures of their troubled pasts. In the final pages of that volume, it is suggested that the source of the character's disaffection may originate in a disastrous investment made on his account by a individual known as T.

The Devil Book: A Unique Approach

The Devil Book begins with an lengthy prose poem in which the narrator describes her challenge to compose T's story. “Within this second volume,” she writes, “we were supposed / to follow him / from youth up until / the evening / when he sat anticipating for / the news that / the fire / on the Scandinavian Star / had successfully been / ignited.” Overwhelmed by the undertaking she has set herself and derailed by the global health crisis, she tackles the story indirectly, as a type of parable. “I came to think / that I / can do / anything I want / so this / is my work / this is / for you / this is / an erotic thriller / about businessmen and / the dark force.”

A narrative gradually emerges of a woman who spends quarantine in London with a virtual stranger and over the course of those weeks tells to him what happened to her a decade earlier, when she agreed to an offer from a figure who claimed to be the devil to grant all her wishes, so long as she didn't question his motives. As the elements of the dual narratives become more intertwined, we begin to suspect that they are identical—or at minimum that the nature of T is legion, for there are demonic forces everywhere.

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

Deals with the Devil: A Thematic Examination

Literature teach us that it is the devil who makes deals, not a divine being, and that we engage in them at our risk. But what if the narrator herself is the malevolent force? A third storyline eventually emerges—the account of a girl whose early years was scarred by abuse and who was placed in a psychiatric hospital, under pressure to comply with societal norms or endure further harm. “[The devil] understands that in the scenario you've set for it, there are two outcomes: surrender or stay a beast.” A third way out is ultimately unveiled through a collection of poems to the night that are also a call to arms against the forces of capital.

Parallels and Readings: From Literature to Real Events

Many British audience members of Nordenhof's series novels will reflect right away of the Grenfell Tower fire, which, though accidental in cause, bears similarities in that the resulting tragedy and loss of life can be linked at in part to the devil's bargain of putting financial gain over human lives. In these initial volumes of what is planned to be a seven-book sequence, the blaze aboard the ship and the chain of fraudulent business deals that ended in mass murder are a sinister background presence, showing themselves only in fleeting flashes of detail or inference yet casting a growing influence over everything that transpires. Some readers may question how much it is possible to interpret this volume as a stand-alone piece, when its purpose and significance are so deeply bound into a larger narrative whose final form, at present, is uncertain.

Innovative Prose: Art and Morality Fused

There will be others—and I count myself as among them—who will become enamored with the author's project purely as written art, as truly innovative writing whose ethical and creative intent are so deeply entwined as to make them inextricable. “Write poems / for we need / that too.” Another kind of blaze exists: an intense, attractive devotion to writing as a statement. I will continue to follow this literary journey, no matter where it leads.