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In the late night of April 7 1990, a devastating fire erupted on board the ferry Scandinavian Star, a passenger ferry traveling between Oslo and Frederikshavn. Inadequate staff preparedness combined with jammed fire doors accelerated the spread of the flames, while toxic hydrogen cyanide gas emitted from burning laminates caused the loss of 159 individuals. Initially, the disaster was blamed to a passenger—a truck driver with a history of fire-setting. Since this individual too died in the fire and was not able to refute himself, the complete facts about the disaster stayed hidden for a long time. It wasn't until 2020 that a detailed documentary disclosed the blaze was probably started deliberately as part of an fraud scheme.

Nordenhof's Scandinavian Star Sequence: An Overview

Within the initial book of Nordenhof's epic series, Money to Burn, an unnamed protagonist is traveling on a public transport through the Danish capital when she notices an elderly man on the sidewalk. As the bus moves away, she experiences an “eerie sense” that she is taking a piece of him with her. Driven to retrace the journey in pursuit of him, the narrator finds herself in a landscape that is both alien and deeply familiar. She introduces us to a couple named Maggie and Kurt, whose relationship is tested by the burdens of their troubled pasts. In the final pages of that volume, it is suggested that the source of the character's discontent may stem from a disastrous financial decision made on his account by a individual known as T.

This New Volume: A Unique Approach

This second installment opens with an lengthy poetic passage in which the writer describes her struggle to compose T's narrative. “Within this second volume,” she writes, “we were supposed / to trace him / from youth up until / the night / when he sat anticipating for / the report that / the fire / on the ferry / had effectively been / set.” Burdened by the undertaking she has set herself and derailed by the pandemic, she approaches the story indirectly, as a type 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 erotic thriller / about businessmen and / the dark force.”

A narrative slowly emerges of a female character who spends lockdown in London with a near-unknown person and over the course of those weeks tells to him what happened to her a ten years before, when she agreed to an proposal from a figure who professed to be the devil to grant all her wishes, so long as she didn't question his intentions. As the elements of the dual narratives become more intertwined, we begin to believe that they are one and the same—or at minimum that the identity of T is legion, for there are devils everywhere.

There is another fire here: an ardent, compelling dedication to writing as a form of activism

Deals with the Devil: A Thematic Exploration

Classic stories instruct us that it is the dark figure who makes bargains, not a divine being, and that we enter into them at our peril. But suppose the narrator herself is the devil? A third narrative comes finally to light—the account of a girl whose childhood was marred by abuse and who was placed in a mental health facility, under duress to comply with social expectations or suffer further harm. “[The devil] knows that in the scenario you've set for it, there are two outcomes: submit or remain a monster.” A alternative path is finally unveiled through a series of poems to the darkness that are also a rallying cry against the influences of wealth and power.

Parallels and Interpretations: From Fiction to Reality

Numerous UK readers of Nordenhof's series novels will think right away of the Grenfell Tower fire, which, though unintentional in origin, shares parallels in that the resulting tragedy and fatalities can be attributed at least partly to the dangerous trade-off of prioritizing profit over human lives. In these first two volumes of what is planned to be a multi-volume series, the blaze on board the ferry and the chain of fraudulent transactions that culminated in mass murder are a sinister underlying element, revealing themselves only in fleeting glimpses of information or inference yet casting a growing influence over everything that occurs. Some individuals may question how much it is feasible to interpret this volume as a independent piece, when its purpose and significance are so intricately bound into a larger whole whose ultimate shape, at this stage, is unknowable.

Innovative Prose: Ethics and Aesthetics Fused

Some individuals—and I count myself as one of them—who will fall in love with Nordenhof's project purely as written art, as properly experimental literature whose ethical and creative intent are so deeply interlinked as to make them inextricable. “Compose verses / for we require / that too.” There is another fire here: an intense, magnetic devotion to the craft as a political act. I intend to persist to follow this series, no matter where it leads.