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During the early hours of April 7 1990, a devastating blaze erupted on board the ferry Scandinavian Star, a passenger ferry traveling between Frederikshavn and Oslo. Inadequate staff training combined with jammed safety doors aided the propagation of the fire, while toxic hydrogen cyanide gas emitted from burning materials caused the deaths of 159 people. At first, the tragedy was blamed to a traveler—a truck driver with a record of fire-setting. Since this individual also died in the fire and was unable to defend himself, the full facts about the disaster stayed hidden for many years. Only in 2020 that a detailed documentary revealed the blaze was likely started deliberately as part of an insurance fraud.

Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star Series: An Overview

Within the initial book of Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star sequence, the preceding volume, an unidentified protagonist is traveling on a public transport through the Danish capital when she notices an elderly man on the street. As the vehicle moves away, she experiences an “uncanny feeling” that she is carrying a piece of him with her. Compelled to retrace the journey in pursuit of him, the character finds herself in a setting that is both unfamiliar and strangely known. She introduces us to Maggie and Kurt, whose connection is strained by the burdens of their conflicted pasts. In the final pages of that book, it is implied that the source of Kurt's disaffection may originate in a poor financial decision made on his behalf by a man known as T.

The Devil Book: An Unconventional Narrative Style

This second installment begins with an lengthy poetic passage in which the writer describes her challenge to compose T's story. “Within this volume, two,” she states, “we were meant / to follow him / from childhood up until / the evening / when he sat waiting for / the report that / the blaze / on the Scandinavian Star / had successfully been / set.” Burdened by the undertaking she has assigned herself and derailed by the global health crisis, she tackles the story obliquely, as a form of allegory. “I came to think / that I / can do / anything I want / so this / is my book / this is / for you / this is / an erotic thriller / about businessmen and / the devil.”

A narrative slowly emerges of a female character who spends lockdown in the UK capital with a near-unknown person and over the course of those weeks relates to him what occurred to her a ten years earlier, when she agreed to an proposal from a figure who claimed to be the devil to grant all her desires, so long as she didn't question his motives. As the threads of the two stories become more interwoven, we begin to suspect that they are one and the same—or at minimum that the identity of T is legion, for there are devils everywhere.

There is another fire here: a passionate, compelling commitment to writing as a political act

Deals with the Devil: A Thematic Examination

Classic stories instruct us that it is the devil who makes deals, not a divine being, and that we enter into them at our peril. But what if the protagonist herself is the malevolent force? A additional storyline comes finally to light—the account of a girl whose childhood was marred by abuse and who spent time in a mental health facility, under pressure to comply with social expectations or endure more of the same. “[This entity] understands that in the scenario you've set for it, there are a pair of results: submit or stay a beast.” A third way out is ultimately unveiled through a series of poems to the night that are also a rallying cry against the influences of capital.

Parallels and Readings: From Literature to Reality

Numerous UK audience members of Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star novels will think right away of the London tower fire, which, though accidental in cause, bears similarities in that the ensuing tragedy and fatalities can be attributed 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 multi-volume sequence, the fire on board the ferry and the chain of fraudulent transactions that ended in mass murder are a ominous underlying presence, showing themselves only in brief glimpses of information or inference yet casting a deepening shadow over everything that occurs. Certain readers may question how much it is feasible to read this volume as a independent piece, when its aim and significance are so intricately bound into a broader whole whose ultimate shape, at this stage, is uncertain.

Innovative Prose: Art and Morality Fused

There will be others—and I include myself as among them—who will fall in love with the author's endeavor purely as text, as properly experimental writing whose ethical and creative intent are so deeply entwined as to make them inseparable. “Compose verses / for we require / that as well.” There is another fire here: an intense, magnetic devotion to writing as a statement. I intend to continue to pursue this literary journey, no matter where it goes.