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During the early hours of the 7th of April 1990, a devastating fire erupted aboard the MS Scandinavian Star, a passenger ferry operating between Oslo and Frederikshavn. Insufficient staff preparedness along with malfunctioning fire doors accelerated the propagation of the flames, while toxic cyanide gas released from combusting materials caused the deaths of 159 individuals. Initially, the tragedy 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 not able to defend himself, the complete truth about the event stayed hidden for many years. It wasn't until 2020 that a comprehensive investigation revealed the fire was likely started deliberately as part of an insurance fraud.

Asta Olivia Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star Series: A Glimpse

Within the first volume of Asta Olivia Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star sequence, Money to Burn, an unidentified narrator is riding on a public transport through the Danish capital when she observes an older man on the sidewalk. As the vehicle drives away, she feels an “uncanny feeling” that she is taking a part of him with her. Compelled to retrace the route in search of him, the character finds herself in a setting that is both alien and deeply familiar. She introduces readers to a couple named Maggie and Kurt, whose relationship is strained by the burdens of their conflicted pasts. In the final pages of that book, it is suggested that the root of Kurt's disaffection may originate in a poor investment made on his account by a man referred to as T.

This New Volume: A Unique Approach

This second installment opens with an lengthy poetic passage in which the narrator describes her struggle to write T's story. “In this second volume,” she writes, “we were meant / to trace him / from youth up until / the night / when he sat waiting for / the report that / the blaze / on the Scandinavian Star / had effectively been / ignited.” Burdened by the task she has set herself and disrupted by the pandemic, she approaches the tale obliquely, as a type of allegory. “I came to think / that I / can do / whatever I want / so this / is my book / this is / for you / this is / an sensational story / about businessmen and / the devil.”

A narrative slowly unfolds of a female character who experiences quarantine in London with a virtual stranger and during those days relates to him what occurred to her a decade earlier, when she agreed to an offer from a figure who professed to be the evil entity to fulfill all her desires, so long as she didn't question his motives. As the threads of the dual narratives become more intertwined, we begin to believe that they are identical—or at minimum that the identity of T is legion, for there are devils all around.

Another blaze is present: a passionate, magnetic dedication to writing as a form of activism

Pacts and Consequences: A Literary Exploration

Literature instruct us that it is the dark figure who does bargains, not God, and that we enter into them at our peril. But what if the protagonist herself is the devil? A third storyline eventually emerges—the story of a young woman whose childhood was scarred by abuse and who was placed in a psychiatric hospital, under pressure to comply with societal norms or endure more of the same. “[This entity] understands that in the scenario you've set for it, there are a pair of outcomes: surrender or stay a monster.” A alternative path is ultimately revealed through a series of verses to the darkness that are simultaneously a call to arms against the forces of capital.

Connections and Readings: From Fiction to Reality

Many British audience members of the author's series novels will think immediately of the London tower tragedy, which, though unintentional in cause, bears similarities in that the ensuing disaster and loss of life can be linked at in part to the dangerous trade-off 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 ferry and the series of deceptive business deals that ended in multiple deaths are a sinister background element, showing themselves only in brief glimpses of detail or implication yet casting a deepening shadow over everything that transpires. Certain individuals may doubt how much it is possible to interpret this volume as a stand-alone work, when its aim and meaning are so deeply tied into a larger narrative whose ultimate shape, at this stage, is uncertain.

Innovative Prose: Ethics and Aesthetics Fused

Some individuals—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 purpose are so profoundly entwined as to make them inextricable. “Compose verses / for we need / that too.” Another kind of blaze exists: an intense, attractive commitment to writing as a statement. I will persist to pursue this series, no matter where it leads.