Asta Olivia Nordenhof's Latest Review: A Danish Literary Sequence Aflame with Purpose

During the early hours of April 7 1990, a catastrophic blaze broke out on board the ferry Scandinavian Star, a car and passenger ferry operating between Oslo and Frederikshavn. Inadequate staff training along with malfunctioning safety doors accelerated the spread of the fire, while deadly cyanide gas emitted from combusting materials caused the deaths of 159 people. At first, the disaster was attributed to a traveler—a truck driver with a history of arson. Since this suspect also died in the fire and was unable to defend himself, the full facts about the event stayed concealed for a long time. It wasn't until 2020 that a detailed documentary disclosed the blaze was probably started intentionally as part of an insurance fraud.

Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star Sequence: An Overview

In the initial book of Nordenhof's epic series, Money to Burn, an unidentified protagonist is riding on a public transport through the Danish capital when she notices an older man on the street. As the vehicle moves away, she feels an “uncanny feeling” that she is carrying a part of him with her. Compelled to repeat the route in search of him, the narrator enters a landscape that is both unfamiliar and deeply familiar. She introduces readers to a couple named Maggie and Kurt, whose relationship is tested by the pressures of their troubled pasts. In the concluding section of that volume, it is suggested that the root of the character's discontent may stem from a poor financial decision made on his behalf by a man referred to as T.

This New Volume: An Unconventional Narrative Style

This second installment opens with an extended poetic passage in which the narrator describes her challenge to write T's narrative. “Within this second volume,” she states, “we were supposed / to trace him / from childhood up until / the evening / when he sat waiting for / the report that / the blaze / on the ferry / had successfully been / set.” Overwhelmed by the task she has set herself and derailed by the pandemic, she tackles the story indirectly, as a type 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 erotic thriller / about entrepreneurs and / the dark force.”

A tale slowly unfolds of a woman who experiences quarantine in the UK capital with a virtual stranger and during those days relates to him what occurred to her a ten years before, when she accepted an offer from a figure who professed 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 intertwined, we start to suspect that they are identical—or at the very least that the nature of T is multiple, for there are demonic forces everywhere.

Another blaze is present: a passionate, magnetic dedication to literature as a form of activism

Deals with the Devil: A Thematic Exploration

Literature teach us that it is the devil who makes bargains, not a divine being, and that we engage in them at our peril. But what if the narrator herself is the devil? A third storyline comes finally to light—the account of a young woman whose early years was marred by abuse and who was placed in a mental health facility, under pressure to comply with social expectations or suffer further harm. “[This entity] understands that in the scenario you've created for it, there are two outcomes: surrender or stay a monster.” A third way out is ultimately revealed through a collection of verses to the darkness that are also a call to arms against the forces of capital.

Parallels and Readings: From Literature to Reality

Numerous UK readers of the author's series books will think immediately of the London tower tragedy, which, though unintentional in origin, bears similarities in that the resulting disaster and fatalities can be attributed at in part to the dangerous trade-off of putting profit over people. In these initial books of what is planned to be a seven-book sequence, the blaze on board the ship and the chain of fraudulent transactions that ended in multiple deaths are a ominous underlying presence, showing themselves only in brief glimpses of information or implication yet projecting a growing shadow over all that transpires. Certain readers may doubt how much it is possible to interpret this volume as a stand-alone piece, when its aim and meaning are so deeply bound into a broader narrative whose final form, at present, is uncertain.

Experimental Writing: Ethics and Aesthetics Fused

There will be others—and I include myself as one of them—who will become enamored with the author's project purely as written art, as properly innovative writing whose ethical and creative intent are so profoundly interlinked as to make them inseparable. “Write poems / for we need / that as well.” Another kind of blaze exists: an intense, attractive commitment to writing as a statement. I intend to continue to follow this literary journey, no matter where it leads.