Asta Olivia Nordenhof's Latest Analysis: A Scandinavian Literary Sequence Aflame with Purpose

In the early hours of April 7 1990, a catastrophic fire erupted on board the MS Scandinavian Star, a car and passenger ferry operating between Oslo and Frederikshavn. Inadequate staff preparedness along with jammed fire doors aided the spread of the flames, while deadly hydrogen cyanide gas released from combusting laminates led to the deaths of 159 individuals. Initially, the tragedy was attributed to a traveler—a lorry driver with a record of fire-setting. Since this suspect too perished in the incident and was unable to refute himself, the full facts regarding the event remained hidden for a long time. It wasn't until 2020 that a comprehensive investigation revealed the fire was likely started intentionally as part of an fraud scheme.

Nordenhof's Literary Series: A Glimpse

In the first volume of Nordenhof's epic sequence, the preceding volume, an unnamed protagonist is traveling on a bus through the Danish capital when she observes an elderly 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 landscape that is both unfamiliar and deeply familiar. She introduces us to Maggie and Kurt, whose relationship is strained by the pressures of their conflicted histories. In the final pages of that book, it is suggested that the source of the character's disaffection may stem from a poor investment made on his account by a man known 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 write T's narrative. “In this second volume,” she states, “we were supposed / to trace him / from youth up until / the evening / when he sat anticipating for / the report that / the fire / on the ferry / had effectively been / set.” Overwhelmed by the task she has set herself and derailed by the global health crisis, she tackles the story obliquely, as a type of parable. “It occurred to me / that I / can do / anything I want / so this / is my work / this is / for you / this is / an sensational story / about entrepreneurs and / the dark force.”

A tale gradually unfolds of a woman who spends quarantine in the UK capital with a virtual stranger and during those days relates to him what happened to her a ten years before, when she accepted an proposal from a figure who claimed to be the evil entity to grant all her desires, so long as she didn't question his intentions. As the threads of the two stories become more intertwined, we start to suspect that they are one and the same—or at the very least that the identity of T is multiple, for there are devils everywhere.

Another blaze is present: a passionate, compelling dedication to literature as a political act

Deals with the Devil: A Literary Exploration

Literature instruct us that it is the devil who does deals, not a divine being, and that we enter into them at our risk. But what if the narrator herself is the malevolent force? A third storyline eventually emerges—the story of a young woman whose early years was marred by mistreatment and who spent time in a psychiatric hospital, under duress to conform with societal norms or endure more of the same. “[The devil] understands that in the game you've set for it, there are a pair of outcomes: submit or stay a monster.” A third way out is ultimately unveiled through a series of poems to the darkness that are also a rallying cry against the influences of wealth and power.

Connections and Readings: From Fiction to Reality

Many UK readers of the author's series novels will think immediately of the Grenfell Tower fire, which, though unintentional in cause, bears parallels in that the ensuing disaster 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 books of what is projected to be a multi-volume sequence, the blaze aboard the ship and the series of deceptive transactions that ended in multiple deaths are a sinister background presence, revealing themselves only in fleeting flashes of detail or implication yet projecting a growing influence over everything that transpires. Some readers may question how much it is possible to interpret The Devil Book as a stand-alone work, when its aim and significance are so intricately tied into a broader whole whose ultimate shape, at present, is unknowable.

Experimental Writing: Ethics and Aesthetics Intertwined

There will be others—and I count myself as one of them—who will become enamored with Nordenhof's endeavor purely as written art, as properly innovative writing whose ethical and creative purpose are so deeply interlinked as to make them inseparable. “Compose verses / for we require / that too.” There is another fire here: an intense, magnetic devotion to writing as a statement. I will persist to follow this literary journey, wherever it goes.