Origins and setting
Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Snow Queen” (Snedronningen) first appeared in 1844. Unusually for a wonder tale, it unfolds in seven stories, a chambered journey from hearth to ice and back again, following the children Gerda and Kay (often “Kai”) as love and loyalty contend with the glittering chill of cleverness without warmth. Its images have become part of Europe’s shared dream: a troll’s mirror that breaks into splinters, an endless summer garden that makes one forget, a wild robber girl and her reindeer, a wise Lapland woman and a Finland woman, and at last a palace of blue-white geometry where a boy must spell “Eternity.”
The tale (in seven stories)
I. The mirror and its splinters
A malicious troll (some say a schoolmaster of devils) forged a mirror that distorted all good. Beauty shrank to a speck; ugliness swelled. The pupils were delighted, clattering it about the world until they tried to carry it up to heaven to laugh at the angels. The mirror shivered—and down fell a million splinters. Some stuck in people’s eyes so they “saw” only what was crooked; some slipped into their hearts so they grew hard and cold as ice. Those tiny shards set the whole story turning.
II. A little boy and a little girl
In a northern town two attic windows stood almost roof to roof. Between them, in summer, an old wooden box held a rose-bush that bloomed for both households. The children—Gerda and Kay—were neighbours and playmates. They spoke often of the Snow Queen, whom Kay’s grandmother described: “She flies by on winter nights and looks in at the windows.”
One day, as the snow came in great white bees, two splinters found Kay—one in his eye, one in his heart. At once the world looked mean to him. He mocked the roses he had loved, pinched poor Gerda, and laughed at warmth and stories. When winter hardened, he joined the boys with their sledges and fastened his little sledge to a big one that glided like wind. It was her sledge—the Snow Queen’s. She—tall, fair, with eyes like clear frost—lifted him beside her.
“Are you cold?” she asked, and kissed him on the brow. The kiss was like a piece of ice set upon his heart. “Another kiss, and you would die,” she said, smiling. Then she drew him under her bearskin cloak, and the sledge rose over forests and seas, away to the far north.
III. The flower garden of the woman who could do magic
When Kay did not return, Gerda wandered to the river and offered it her red shoes if only it would bring him back. By a gentle deceit the current bore her to a garden where an old woman with a broad-brimmed hat lived among flowers. She wished to keep the child, and with her comb and her charms she made Gerda forget. The garden was endless summer; there were flowers of every kind—save roses. Gerda noticed at last that roses were missing; at the name, memory broke through. She begged the flowers for news; each blossom answered with its own tale, but none had seen Kay. Gerda thanked them and ran on.
IV. The Prince and the Princess
A crow told Gerda of a wise young prince whose bride was as clever as he—a whisper that set her heart pounding: might the prince be Kay? The crow smuggled her into a palace. Gerda saw the tender, sensible pair asleep—but the prince was not Kay. The kind princess gave Gerda warm clothes, a golden coach, and a pair of boots to continue her search.
V. The little robber girl
The coach was waylaid in a pine forest by bandits. Gerda fell into the hands of the robber girl, wild-eyed and dagger-quick, who kept pigeons in the rafters and a reindeer in a stall. The pigeons cooed that they had flown behind the Snow Queen and seen Kay sitting in her sledge “as white as death.” The robber girl, moved by Gerda’s tears and fierceness, freed her, saying, “I won’t hurt you so long as you don’t become a princess; then I might.” She gave her the reindeer and a sausage for the journey, and off they sped towards Lapland.
VI. The Lapland woman and the Finland woman
In Lapland, a woman in a snow hut wrote a message on a dried cod and sent Gerda on to a Finland woman who lived in a turf-roofed house so hot that butter melted on the door-latch. The Finland woman read the cod and shook her head: “Kay is indeed with the Snow Queen. He is cold and clever with a shard in eye and heart. But the power you need I cannot give.”
The reindeer pleaded for charms and runes, but the Finland woman answered the most famous line of the tale:
“I can give her no more power than she has already. Her power is in her heart, in her innocence, and in a little child’s tears.”
She traced a few signs on Gerda’s mittens and set her on her way to the Snow Queen’s palace.
VII. What happened in the Snow Queen’s palace and afterwards
The palace was a glacier of architecture—halls of northern lights, windows of cutting winds, a floor of polished snow, and empty, endless rooms. The Snow Queen’s throne stood in the centre of a frozen lake broken into sharp geometrical pieces. There sat Kay, blue of lip, absorbed in sliding ice-shards to form patterns and words. The Snow Queen had told him: “If you can spell the word ‘Eternity’ (in the old tongue), you shall be your own master, and I will give you the world and a new pair of skates.” She kissed him again so he forgot Gerda entirely and flew away to black volcanoes to freeze them with her breath, leaving Kay alone at his cold puzzle.
Gerda came stumbling into the great hall—no shoes, no hat, and yet burning with purpose. She saw Kay and flung her arms round his neck: “Little Kay! Dear little Kay! I have found you at last!” He did not stir. Then Gerda wept—hot, faithful tears that fell upon his breast and ran down to his heart, thawing it. Kay began to cry, too; and as he wept, the glass splinter in his heart washed out. He rubbed his eyes; the sliver in his eye came free as well. He knew Gerda. He knew the roses on the roof, the old tales, the games by the stove. “Gerda!” he said, and the sound came back warm.
The ice pieces rattled; of their own accord they formed the word the Snow Queen demanded—ETERNITY—so the palace itself acknowledged defeat. When the Queen returned, she found only empty cold. Gerda took Kay by the hand; the winds laid themselves down like roads before the children, and the reindeer trotted them south. They were welcomed by the Finland woman and the Lapland woman, greeted by the robber girl (who pinched Kay and laughed, “Now you look human”), thanked the crow and his mate, and passed at last into their own town, where the roses were in bloom.
They went up the familiar stairs; the box with the rose-bush stood between the windows; and there they sat, grown up and yet children at heart. The grandmother read aloud: “Except ye become as little children, ye shall not enter the kingdom of heaven.” They looked at each other, and the roses nodded through the open panes in the summer sunshine.
Iconic lines and moments
- The mirror’s curse: a shard in the eye and one in the heart—to see only crookedness and to feel only cold.
- The Snow Queen’s kiss: “Another kiss, and you would die”—beauty without pity.
- Gerda’s remembering word: “Roses!”—stronger than enchantment.
- The Finland woman’s wisdom: “I can give her no more power than she has already.”
- Gerda’s cry in the palace: “Little Kay! Dear little Kay!”—and the tears that melt ice.
- The word on the lake: ETERNITY—spelled at last when love undoes the spell.
So ends “The Snow Queen”: not with the overthrow of a villain by force, but with a child’s steadfast love outlasting clever coldness, and with two friends who find that, though they have travelled far into winter, summer waits at home.
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