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In the early hours of the 7th of April 1990, a devastating fire erupted aboard the ferry Scandinavian Star, a car and passenger ferry traveling between Frederikshavn and Oslo. Inadequate crew training along with malfunctioning fire doors aided the propagation of the fire, while toxic cyanide gas emitted from combusting materials caused the loss of 159 individuals. Initially, the tragedy was blamed to a passenger—a lorry driver with a history of arson. Given that this suspect also perished in the incident and was unable to refute himself, the full facts regarding the event stayed concealed for a long time. Only in 2020 that a detailed investigation disclosed the fire was probably set intentionally as part of an fraud scheme.

Asta Olivia Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star Series: An Overview

Within the first volume of Asta Olivia Nordenhof's epic sequence, Money to Burn, an unidentified protagonist is riding on a public transport through the Danish capital when she notices an elderly man on the sidewalk. As the vehicle drives away, she experiences an “eerie sense” 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 alien and deeply familiar. She presents readers to Maggie and Kurt, whose connection is strained by the pressures of their troubled pasts. In the final pages of that book, it is suggested that the source of Kurt's disaffection may stem from a poor financial decision made on his behalf by a individual known as T.

This New Volume: A Unique Narrative Style

This second installment opens with an lengthy prose poem in which the narrator explains her struggle to compose T's narrative. “Within this second volume,” she writes, “we were supposed / to follow 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.” Overwhelmed by the task she has assigned herself and derailed by the global health crisis, she approaches the tale indirectly, as a form of allegory. “It occurred to me / 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 devil.”

A tale slowly emerges of a woman who experiences quarantine in London with a virtual stranger and over the course of those weeks relates to him what occurred to her a decade earlier, when she accepted an offer from a man who professed to be the evil entity to grant all her wishes, so long as she didn't doubt his intentions. As the threads of the two stories become more intertwined, we begin to suspect that they are identical—or at minimum that the nature of T is multiple, for there are demonic forces everywhere.

Another blaze is present: an ardent, compelling commitment to writing as a political act

Pacts and Consequences: A Thematic Examination

Literature teach us that it is the devil who makes bargains, not a divine being, and that we engage in them at our risk. But what if the protagonist herself is the malevolent force? A third storyline eventually emerges—the story of a young woman whose childhood was scarred by mistreatment and who was placed in a psychiatric hospital, under duress to conform with societal norms or endure more of the same. “[This entity] knows that in the scenario you've set for it, there are a pair of outcomes: submit or remain a beast.” A third way out is finally unveiled through a collection of verses to the darkness that are also a rallying cry against the influences of wealth and power.

Parallels and Interpretations: From Literature to Real Events

Numerous British readers of the author's Scandinavian Star books will reflect immediately of the London tower fire, which, though unintentional in cause, bears similarities in that the resulting disaster and loss of life can be attributed at least partly to the dangerous trade-off of putting profit over human lives. In these initial volumes of what is projected to be a multi-volume series, the fire aboard the ferry and the chain of deceptive transactions that culminated in mass murder are a ominous underlying element, showing themselves only in brief flashes of information or implication yet casting a deepening shadow over everything that transpires. Some individuals may question how much it is feasible to read this volume as a independent work, when its purpose and significance are so deeply bound into a larger narrative whose final form, at this stage, is unknowable.

Innovative Prose: Ethics and Aesthetics Intertwined

Some individuals—and I include myself as among them—who will become enamored with the author's endeavor purely as text, as truly innovative literature whose ethical and artistic intent are so profoundly interlinked as to make them inextricable. “Write poems / for we need / that as well.” There is another fire here: a passionate, magnetic devotion to the craft as a political act. I will continue to pursue this series, no matter where it goes.