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In the late night of the 7th of April 1990, a devastating fire erupted aboard the ferry Scandinavian Star, a car and passenger ferry traveling between Frederikshavn and Oslo. Inadequate staff preparedness combined with jammed fire doors accelerated the propagation of the fire, while deadly cyanide gas emitted from burning materials led to the loss of 159 people. At first, the disaster was attributed to a traveler—a lorry driver with a history of fire-setting. Since this individual also perished in the incident and was not able to refute himself, the full truth regarding the event stayed hidden for a long time. It wasn't until 2020 that a comprehensive investigation revealed the blaze was probably started intentionally as part of an fraud scheme.

Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star Series: A Glimpse

Within the first volume of Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star series, the preceding volume, an unnamed protagonist is traveling on a public transport through Copenhagen when she observes an older man on the street. As the bus moves away, she feels an “uncanny feeling” that she is taking a piece of him with her. Driven to retrace the route in search of him, the narrator finds herself in a setting that is both unfamiliar and strangely known. She presents us to a couple named Maggie and Kurt, whose connection is strained by the burdens of their conflicted pasts. In the final pages of that book, it is suggested that the root of the character's disaffection may originate in a poor financial decision made on his account by a man referred to as T.

This New Volume: An Unconventional Approach

The Devil Book opens with an lengthy poetic passage in which the narrator describes her challenge to write T's story. “In this volume, two,” she states, “we were supposed / to trace him / from youth up until / the evening / when he sat waiting for / the report that / the fire / on the ferry / had successfully been / set.” Overwhelmed by the undertaking she has set herself and derailed by the global health crisis, she tackles the story indirectly, as a type 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 entrepreneurs and / the devil.”

A tale slowly emerges of a woman who spends lockdown in the UK capital with a virtual stranger and during those days relates to him what occurred to her a decade before, 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 doubt his motives. As the elements of the two stories become more interwoven, we start to suspect that they are one and the same—or at the very least that the nature of T is legion, for there are devils all around.

Another blaze is present: a passionate, magnetic commitment to literature as a political act

Pacts and Consequences: A Literary Exploration

Literature teach us that it is the dark figure who does bargains, not God, and that we engage in them at our peril. But what if the narrator herself is the devil? A additional storyline eventually emerges—the account of a girl whose childhood was marred by mistreatment and who spent time in a psychiatric hospital, under duress to conform with social expectations or suffer more of the same. “[The devil] understands that in the game you've set for it, there are two results: submit or stay a monster.” A alternative path is finally unveiled through a collection of verses to the night that are simultaneously a rallying cry against the influences of wealth and power.

Parallels and Readings: From Fiction to Reality

Numerous UK audience members of Nordenhof's series novels will think immediately of the London tower tragedy, which, though unintentional in cause, shares similarities in that the ensuing tragedy and loss of life can be linked at least partly to the devil's bargain of putting profit over human lives. In these first two books of what is planned to be a multi-volume series, the blaze on board the ship and the series of fraudulent transactions that culminated in multiple deaths are a sinister background presence, showing themselves only in brief glimpses of detail or inference yet projecting a deepening shadow over all that occurs. Certain readers may question how far it is possible to read this volume as a stand-alone work, when its purpose and meaning are so deeply tied into a larger whole whose final form, at this stage, 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 text, as properly innovative literature whose moral and artistic intent are so profoundly interlinked as to make them inseparable. “Compose verses / for we need / that too.” There is another fire here: a passionate, attractive devotion to writing as a statement. I will continue to pursue this series, no matter where it leads.