The Devil Book Analysis: A Danish Series Aflame with Intent
During the early hours of the 7th of April 1990, a catastrophic fire broke out aboard the ferry Scandinavian Star, a passenger ferry operating between Frederikshavn and Oslo. Inadequate crew training along with malfunctioning safety doors accelerated the propagation of the flames, while toxic cyanide gas emitted from burning materials caused the loss of 159 individuals. Initially, the disaster was blamed to a passenger—a lorry 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 event remained concealed for a long time. It wasn't until 2020 that a comprehensive investigation revealed the blaze was likely set intentionally as part of an fraud scheme.
Asta Olivia Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star Series: An Overview
In the initial book of Asta Olivia 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 vehicle moves away, she feels an “uncanny feeling” that she is carrying a piece of him with her. Driven to repeat the route in pursuit of him, the character finds herself in a landscape that is both unfamiliar and strangely known. She presents readers to a couple named Maggie and Kurt, whose connection is tested by the pressures of their troubled pasts. In the final pages of that volume, it is implied that the root of Kurt's discontent may stem from a disastrous investment made on his account by a man referred to as T.
The Devil Book: An Unconventional Narrative Style
This second installment begins with an extended prose poem in which the narrator describes her challenge to write T's narrative. “In this volume, two,” she states, “we were supposed / to trace him / from youth up until / the evening / when he sat anticipating for / the news that / the fire / on the ferry / had successfully been / set.” Overwhelmed by the task she has set herself and disrupted by the global health crisis, she approaches the story indirectly, as a type of parable. “I came to think / 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 narrative gradually unfolds of a woman who experiences quarantine in London with a near-unknown person and during those weeks relates to him what occurred to her a ten years before, when she accepted an proposal from a figure who professed to be the devil to fulfill all her wishes, so long as she didn't doubt his motives. As the elements of the dual narratives become more intertwined, we begin to suspect that they are one and the same—or at minimum that the identity of T is multiple, for there are demonic forces all around.
There is another fire here: a passionate, magnetic commitment to writing as a form of activism
Deals with the Devil: A Literary Exploration
Classic stories teach us that it is the devil who makes bargains, not God, and that we enter into them at our peril. But what if the narrator herself is the devil? A third storyline comes finally to light—the account of a girl whose childhood was marred by mistreatment and who spent time in a psychiatric hospital, under duress to comply with societal norms or endure more of the same. “[The devil] understands that in the scenario you've set for it, there are two outcomes: surrender or stay a monster.” A third way out is finally revealed through a series of verses to the night that are simultaneously a call to arms against the forces of wealth and power.
Connections and Interpretations: From Fiction to Reality
Many UK audience members of Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star novels will think immediately of the London tower fire, which, though accidental in cause, bears similarities in that the resulting tragedy and fatalities can be linked at in part to the devil's bargain of prioritizing financial gain over human lives. In these initial volumes of what is planned to be a seven-book series, the blaze on board the ferry and the chain of deceptive business deals that culminated in multiple deaths are a sinister background presence, showing themselves only in fleeting glimpses of information or inference yet casting a growing influence over all that occurs. Some readers may doubt how far it is feasible to interpret this volume as a independent work, when its purpose and significance are so intricately bound into a larger whole whose ultimate shape, at this stage, is unknowable.
Experimental Writing: Ethics and Aesthetics Fused
Some individuals—and I count myself as one of them—who will become enamored with Nordenhof's endeavor purely as text, as properly experimental writing whose moral and artistic intent are so profoundly interlinked as to make them inextricable. “Compose verses / for we require / that too.” There is another fire here: a passionate, magnetic commitment to the craft as a statement. I intend to persist to pursue this series, wherever it leads.
