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During the early hours of the 7th of April 1990, a devastating blaze broke out aboard the ferry Scandinavian Star, a passenger ferry operating between Oslo and Frederikshavn. Insufficient staff preparedness combined with jammed safety doors accelerated the spread of the flames, while deadly hydrogen cyanide gas released from combusting laminates caused the loss of 159 individuals. Initially, the disaster was blamed to a traveler—a truck driver with a record of fire-setting. Since this suspect too died in the incident and was unable to defend himself, the full truth regarding the disaster remained concealed for a long time. Only in 2020 that a detailed documentary disclosed the blaze was probably set deliberately as part of an insurance fraud.

Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star Sequence: An Overview

In the initial book of Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star series, the preceding volume, an unnamed narrator is riding on a bus through the Danish capital when she notices an older man on the street. As the bus moves away, she feels an “eerie sense” that she is taking a piece of him with her. Compelled to repeat the route in search of him, the narrator enters a setting that is both unfamiliar and deeply familiar. She presents readers to Maggie and Kurt, whose relationship is strained by the pressures of their conflicted pasts. In the final pages of that book, it is suggested that the source of Kurt's discontent may stem from a disastrous financial decision made on his behalf by a individual known as T.

This New Volume: A Unique Narrative Style

The Devil Book opens with an extended poetic passage in which the narrator explains her struggle to write T's story. “Within this second volume,” she writes, “we were supposed / to follow him / from childhood 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 disrupted by the global health crisis, she approaches the story indirectly, as a form of parable. “It occurred to me / that I / can do / whatever I want / so this / is my book / this is / for you / this is / an sensational story / about entrepreneurs and / the devil.”

A narrative slowly unfolds of a woman who experiences lockdown in London with a near-unknown person and during those days relates to him what happened to her a decade before, when she accepted 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 motives. As the threads of the dual narratives become more interwoven, we begin to believe that they are one and the same—or at the very least that the nature of T is multiple, for there are devils everywhere.

Another blaze is present: a passionate, compelling dedication to writing as a form of activism

Deals with the Devil: A Literary Examination

Classic stories instruct us that it is the dark figure who makes bargains, not God, and that we enter into them at our peril. But suppose the protagonist herself is the malevolent force? A additional storyline comes finally to light—the story of a young woman whose childhood was marred by mistreatment and who spent time in a psychiatric hospital, under duress to comply with societal norms or endure further harm. “[The devil] understands that in the scenario you've created for it, there are two results: submit or remain a beast.” A third way out is finally revealed through a series of poems to the night that are also a call to arms against the forces of capital.

Parallels and Readings: From Literature to Real Events

Many UK readers of Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star books will think right away of the Grenfell Tower tragedy, which, though unintentional in cause, shares similarities in that the resulting tragedy and fatalities can be attributed at in part to the devil's bargain of putting financial gain over human lives. In these initial volumes of what is projected to be a seven-book series, the fire on board the ship and the chain of deceptive business deals that ended in multiple deaths are a ominous underlying element, revealing themselves only in fleeting flashes of detail or inference yet casting a deepening influence over all that transpires. Some readers may question how much it is feasible to read this volume as a stand-alone work, when its aim and meaning are so deeply tied into a larger narrative whose final form, at present, is uncertain.

Innovative Prose: Art and Morality Intertwined

Some individuals—and I include myself as one of them—who will fall in love with the author's endeavor purely as written art, as truly experimental literature whose ethical and artistic purpose are so deeply entwined as to make them inextricable. “Compose verses / for we need / that too.” Another kind of blaze exists: a passionate, magnetic devotion to writing as a statement. I intend to persist to follow this series, no matter where it goes.