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In the early hours of the 7th of April 1990, a catastrophic blaze erupted aboard the ferry Scandinavian Star, a car and passenger ferry operating between Oslo and Frederikshavn. Insufficient crew preparedness along with malfunctioning safety doors accelerated the spread of the fire, while deadly cyanide gas emitted from burning laminates led to the deaths of 159 people. Initially, the disaster was blamed to a passenger—a truck driver with a record of fire-setting. Since this individual too perished in the fire and was unable to refute the accusations, the complete truth about the event remained hidden for many years. Only in 2020 that a comprehensive investigation revealed the blaze was probably set deliberately as part of an fraud scheme.

Nordenhof's Literary Series: An Overview

In the first volume of Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star series, Money to Burn, an unidentified protagonist is riding on a public transport through Copenhagen when she notices an elderly man on the sidewalk. As the vehicle moves away, she feels an “eerie sense” that she is carrying a piece of him with her. Compelled to repeat the journey in pursuit of him, the narrator enters a setting that is both unfamiliar and deeply familiar. She introduces us to Maggie and Kurt, whose relationship is tested by the pressures of their troubled pasts. In the final pages of that volume, it is suggested that the source of the character's disaffection may originate in a disastrous investment made on his behalf by a individual known as T.

The Devil Book: An Unconventional Approach

This second installment opens with an extended poetic passage in which the writer describes her struggle to compose T's story. “Within this volume, two,” she states, “we were supposed / to follow him / from youth up until / the evening / when he sat anticipating for / the news that / the fire / on the Scandinavian Star / had effectively been / ignited.” Burdened by the undertaking she has set herself and disrupted by the pandemic, she tackles the tale indirectly, as a form 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 businessmen and / the devil.”

A narrative gradually unfolds of a female character who experiences lockdown in the UK capital with a near-unknown person and during those days tells 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 grant all her wishes, so long as she didn't question 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 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 Thematic Examination

Classic stories teach us that it is the devil who does deals, not God, and that we enter into them at our peril. But what if the narrator herself is the devil? A third storyline eventually emerges—the account of a young woman whose childhood was scarred by mistreatment and who spent time in a psychiatric hospital, under duress to comply with societal norms or endure more of the same. “[The devil] knows that in the game you've created for it, there are two outcomes: submit or remain a monster.” A alternative path is finally unveiled through a series of verses to the night that are also a rallying cry against the influences of wealth and power.

Connections and Readings: From Fiction to Real Events

Many British readers of Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star books will reflect immediately of the Grenfell Tower fire, which, though accidental in cause, bears similarities in that the resulting tragedy and loss of life can be linked at in part to the dangerous trade-off of prioritizing profit over people. In these first two books of what is projected to be a multi-volume series, the fire on board the ship and the series of fraudulent transactions that ended in mass murder are a ominous underlying presence, revealing themselves only in fleeting flashes of detail or inference yet casting a deepening influence over everything that transpires. Some individuals may question how far it is feasible to read The Devil Book as a independent piece, when its purpose and meaning are so intricately bound into a broader whole whose ultimate shape, at this stage, is uncertain.

Experimental Writing: Art and Morality Fused

Some individuals—and I include myself as among them—who will become enamored with Nordenhof's endeavor purely as text, as truly experimental literature whose moral and artistic purpose are so deeply interlinked as to make them inextricable. “Compose verses / for we require / that too.” There is another fire here: an intense, attractive devotion to writing as a political act. I intend to persist to pursue this literary journey, wherever it goes.