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During the early hours of April 7 1990, a catastrophic blaze broke out aboard the MS Scandinavian Star, a car and passenger ferry operating between Oslo and Frederikshavn. Inadequate crew training along with jammed fire doors aided the propagation of the fire, while deadly hydrogen cyanide gas released from burning materials caused the deaths of 159 individuals. Initially, the disaster was blamed to a traveler—a lorry driver with a history of arson. Given that this suspect too died in the incident and was unable to defend himself, the complete truth about the event stayed concealed for a long time. Only in 2020 that a detailed investigation disclosed the blaze was likely set intentionally as part of an fraud scheme.

Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star Sequence: A Glimpse

In the first volume of Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star series, the preceding volume, an unidentified protagonist is traveling on a bus through the Danish capital when she observes an elderly man on the street. As the vehicle drives away, she feels an “eerie sense” that she is taking a part of him with her. Compelled to repeat the journey in search of him, the narrator finds herself in a landscape that is both alien and strangely known. She presents readers to a couple named Maggie and Kurt, whose connection is tested by the burdens of their conflicted pasts. In the concluding section of that volume, it is implied that the source of Kurt's disaffection may stem from a poor financial decision made on his account by a individual referred to as T.

The Devil Book: An Unconventional Narrative Style

The Devil Book opens with an lengthy poetic passage in which the narrator explains her challenge to write T's narrative. “In this volume, two,” she writes, “we were supposed / to follow him / from youth up until / the evening / when he sat waiting for / the report that / the fire / 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 tale obliquely, 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 erotic thriller / about businessmen and / the dark force.”

A narrative slowly unfolds of a female character who spends quarantine in the UK capital with a near-unknown person and over the course of those days relates to him what happened to her a decade before, when she accepted an proposal from a man 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 two stories become more intertwined, we begin to suspect that they are one and the same—or at the very least that the nature of T is legion, for there are demonic forces all around.

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

Pacts and Consequences: A Literary Exploration

Classic stories instruct us that it is the dark figure who does deals, not God, and that we engage in them at our risk. But what if the protagonist herself is the malevolent force? A third narrative eventually emerges—the story of a young woman whose early years was marred by abuse and who spent time in a psychiatric hospital, under pressure to comply with societal norms or endure more of the same. “[The devil] understands that in the game you've created for it, there are two outcomes: submit or stay a monster.” A alternative path is finally revealed through a collection of verses to the darkness that are also a call to arms against the forces of wealth and power.

Parallels and Interpretations: From Literature to Real Events

Numerous British readers of Nordenhof's series novels will reflect right away of the Grenfell Tower fire, which, though unintentional in origin, bears parallels in that the resulting tragedy and fatalities can be linked at in part to the devil's bargain of putting profit over human lives. In these initial books of what is projected to be a multi-volume series, the blaze on board the ship and the chain of deceptive transactions that culminated in mass murder are a sinister underlying element, showing themselves only in brief flashes of detail or inference yet projecting a deepening shadow over everything that transpires. Certain individuals may doubt how far it is possible to read this volume as a stand-alone piece, when its purpose and significance are so deeply bound into a larger narrative whose ultimate shape, at this stage, is uncertain.

Experimental Writing: Ethics and Aesthetics Fused

Some individuals—and I include myself as among them—who will fall in love with the author's project purely as written art, as properly innovative literature whose moral and artistic intent are so deeply entwined as to make them inseparable. “Write poems / for we need / that as well.” Another kind of blaze exists: a passionate, magnetic devotion to the craft as a political act. I will persist to follow this series, wherever it goes.