The Snow Queen

This article is about the fairy tale. For other uses, see Snow Queen (disambiguation).

The Snow Queen (Danish: Snedronningen) is a fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen (1805–1875). The tale was first published in 1845, and centers on the struggle between good and evil as experienced by a little boy and girl, Kai and Gerda.

The story is one of Andersen's longest, and one of his most highly acclaimed stories by readers and critics. It is regularly included in selected tales and collections of his work and is frequently reprinted in illustrated storybook editions for children. The tale has been adapted in various media including animated film and television drama.

Narrative division

The Snow Queen is a tale told in seven 'stories' (Danish: Historier):

1. About the Mirror and its Pieces
2. A Little Boy and a Little Girl
3. The Flower Garden of the Woman Who Knew Magic
4. The Prince and Princess
5. The Little Robber Girl
6. The Lapp Woman and the Finn Woman
7. What Happened at the Snow Queen's Palace and What happened Afterwards

Story

Vilhelm Pedersen illustration.

An evil "troll" ("actually the devil himself") makes a magic mirror that has the power to distort the appearance of things reflected in it. It fails to reflect all the good and beautiful aspects of people and things while it magnifies all the bad and ugly aspects so that they look even worse than they really are. The devil teaches a "devil school," and the devil and his pupils delight in taking the mirror throughout the world to distort everyone and everything. They enjoy how the mirror makes the loveliest landscapes look like "boiled spinach". They then want to carry the mirror into Heaven with the idea of making fools of the angels and God, but the higher they lift it, the more the mirror grins and shakes with delight. It shakes so much that it slips from their grasp and falls back to earth where it shatters into billions of pieces — some no larger than a grain of sand. These splinters are blown around and get into people's hearts and eyes, making their hearts frozen like blocks of ice and their eyes like the troll-mirror itself, only seeing the bad and ugly in people and things.

Vilhelm Pedersen illustration

Years later, a little boy, Kai, and a little girl, Gerda, live next door to each other in the garrets of buildings with adjoining roofs in a large city. One could get from Kai's to Gerda's home just by stepping over the gutters of each building. The two families grow vegetables and roses in window boxes placed on the gutters. Kai and Gerda have a window-box garden to play in, and they become devoted to each other as playmates.

Kai's grandmother tells the children about the Snow Queen, who is ruler over the snowflakes, that look like bees — that is why they are called "snow bees". As bees have a queen, so do the snow bees, and she is seen where the snowflakes cluster the most. Looking out of his frosted window, Kai, one winter, sees the Snow Queen, who beckons him to come with her. Kai draws back in fear from the window.

By the following spring, Gerda has learned a song that she sings to Kai: Where the roses deck the flowery vale, there, infant Jesus thee we hail! Because roses adorn the window box garden, Gerda is always reminded of her love for Kai by the sight of roses.

It was on a pleasant summer's day that splinters of the troll-mirror get into Kai's heart and eyes while he and Gerda are looking at a picture book in their window-box garden. Kai's personality changes: he becomes cruel and aggressive. He destroys their window-box garden, he makes fun of his grandmother, and he no longer cares about Gerda, since all of them now appear bad and ugly to him. The only beautiful and perfect things to him now are the tiny snowflakes that he sees through a magnifying glass.

The following winter he goes out with his sled to the market square and hitches it—as was the custom of those playing in the snowy square—to a curious white sleigh carriage, driven by the Snow Queen, who appears as a woman in a white fur-coat. Outside the city she shows herself to Kai and takes him into her sleigh. She kisses him only twice: once to numb him from the cold, and the second time to cause him to forget about Gerda and his family. She does not kiss him a third time as that would kill him. Kai is then taken to the Snow Queen's palace on Spitsbergen, near the North Pole where he is contented to live due to the splinters of the troll-mirror in his heart and eyes.

The people of the city, once they realize Kai is nowhere to be seen or found, get the idea that Kai drowned in the river nearby, but Gerda, who is heartbroken at Kai's disappearance, goes out to look for him. She questions everyone and everything about Kai's whereabouts. Gerda offers her new red shoes to the river in exchange for Kai; by not taking the gift at first, the river seems to let her know that Kai did not actually drown after all. Gerda next visits an old sorceress, who wants Gerda to stay with her forever. She causes Gerda to forget all about her friend and, knowing that the sight of roses will remind Gerda of Kai, the sorceress causes all the roses in her garden to sink beneath the earth. At the home of the old sorceress, a rosebush raised from below the ground by Gerda's warm tears tells her that Kai is not among the dead, all of whom it could see while it was under the earth. Gerda flees from the old woman's beautiful garden of eternal summer and meets a crow, who tells her that Kai was in the princess's palace. She subsequently goes to the palace and meets the princess and her prince, who appears very similar to Kai. Gerda tells them her story and they help by providing warm clothes and a beautiful coach. While traveling in the coach Gerda is captured by robbers and brought to their castle, where she is befriended by a little robber girl, whose pet doves tell her that they had seen Kai when he was carried away by the Snow Queen in the direction of Lapland. The captive reindeer Bae tells her that he knows how to get to Lapland since it is his home.

Vilhelm Pedersen illustration

The robber girl, then, frees Gerda and the reindeer to travel north to the Snow Queen's palace. They make two stops: first at the Lapp woman's home and then at the Finn woman's home. The Finn woman tells the reindeer that the secret of Gerda's unique power to save Kai is in her sweet and innocent child's heart:

“

I can give her no greater power than she has already," said the woman; "don't you see how strong that is? How men and animals are obliged to serve her, and how well she has got through the world, barefooted as she is. She cannot receive any power from me greater than she now has, which consists in her own purity and innocence of heart. If she cannot herself obtain access to the Snow Queen, and remove the glass fragments from little Kai, we can do nothing to help her...

”

Vilhelm Pedersen illustration

When Gerda gets to the Snow Queen's palace, she is first halted by the snowflakes which guard it. The only thing that overcomes them is Gerda's praying the Lord's Prayer, which causes her breath to take the shape of angels, who resist the snowflakes and allow Gerda to enter the palace. Gerda finds Kai alone and almost immobile on the frozen lake, which the Snow Queen calls the "Mirror of Reason" on which her throne sits. Gerda finds Kai engaged in the task that the Snow Queen gave him: he must use pieces of ice as components of a Chinese puzzle to form characters and words. If he is able to form the word "eternity" (Danish: Evigheden) the Snow Queen will release him from her power and give him a pair of skates. Gerda finds him, runs up to him, and weeps warm tears on him, which melt his heart, burning away the troll-mirror splinter in it. Kai bursts into tears, dislodging the splinter from his eye. Gerda kisses Kai a few times, and he becomes cheerful and healthy again, with sparkling eyes and rosy cheeks: he is saved by the power of Gerda's love. He and Gerda dance around on the lake of ice so joyously that the splinters of ice Kai has been playing with are caught up into the dance. When the splinters tire of dancing they fall down to spell the very word Kai was trying to spell, "eternity." Even if the Snow Queen were to return, she would be obliged to free Kai. Kai and Gerda then leave the Snow Queen's domain with the help of the reindeer, the Finn woman, and the Lapp woman. They meet the robber girl after they have crossed the line of vegetation, and from there they walk back to their home, "the big city." They find that all is the same at home, but they have changed! They are now grown up, and they are delighted to see that it is summertime. At the end, the grandmother reads a passage from the Bible:

"Assuredly, I say to you, unless you are converted and become as little children, you will by no means enter the Kingdom of Heaven" (Matthew 18:3).

Characters

• The Snow Queen, queen of the snowflakes or "snow bees", who travels throughout the world with the snow. Her palace and gardens are in the lands of permafrost, specifically Spitsbergen. She is successful in abducting Kai after he has fallen victim to the splinters of the troll-mirror. She promises to free Kai if he can spell "eternity" with the pieces of ice in her palace.
• The troll or the devil Satan, who makes an evil mirror that distorts reality and later shatters to infect people with its splinters that distort sight and freeze hearts. Some English translations of The Snow Queen denote this character as a hobgoblin.
• Kai (or Kay), a little boy who lives in a large city, in the garret of a building across the street from the home of Gerda, his playmate, whom he loves dearly. He falls victim to the splinters of the troll-mirror and the blandishments of the Snow Queen.
• Gerda, the heroine of this tale, who succeeds in finding and saving Kai from the Snow Queen.
• Grandmother of Kai, who tells him and Gerda the legend of the Snow Queen. Some of Grandmother's actions are essential points of the story.
• An old sorceress, who maintains a cottage on the river, with a garden that is permanently in summer. She seeks to keep Gerda with her, but Gerda's thought of roses (the flower most favored by herself and Kai) awakens her from the old woman's enchantment.
• A field crow or raven, who thinks that the new prince of his land is Kai.
• A tame crow or raven, who is the mate of the field crow/raven and has the run of the princess's palace. She lets Gerda into the royal bedchamber in her search for Kai.
• A princess, who desires a prince-consort as intelligent as she, and who finds Gerda in her palace. She helps Gerda in her search for Kai by giving her warm, rich clothing, servants, and a golden coach.
• Her prince, formerly a poor young man, who comes to the palace and passes the test set by the princess to become prince.
• A robber hag, the only woman among the robbers who capture Gerda as she travels through their region in a golden coach.
• The robber girl, daughter of the robber hag. She takes Gerda as a playmate, whereupon her captive doves and reindeer Bae tell Gerda that Kai is with the Snow Queen. The robber girl then helps Gerda continue her journey to find Kai.
• Bae, the reindeer, who carries Gerda to the Snow Queen's palace.
• A Lapp woman, who provides shelter to Gerda and Bae, and writes a message on a dried cod fish to the Finn woman further on the way to the Snow Queen's gardens.
• A Finn woman (also known as the "Witch of Finland"),^{[citation needed]} who lives just 2 miles away from the Snow Queen's gardens and palace. She knows the secret of Gerda's power to save Kai.

Media adaptations

Film and television

• Snezhnaya koroleva (1957) is Soviet animated film, later dubbed by Universal Studios with the voices of Sandra Dee as Gerda, Tommy Kirk as Kay and introduced by Art Linkletter. In the 1990s, the film was redubbed again, this time featuring the voices of Kathleen Turner, Mickey Rooney, Kirsten Dunst and Laura San Giacomo.
• Snezhnaya koroleva (1966), a live action adaptation from the Soviet Union, directed by Gennadi Kazansky.
• The Snow Queen (1976), a live-action/animated production released through BBC Enterprises (before restructured as BBC Worldwide), produced by Ian Keill and directed by Andrew Gosling.
• A 1985 episode of Faerie Tale Theatre starring Melissa Gilbert as Gerda and Lee Remick as the Snow Queen.
• Tayna snezhnoy korolevy (The Secret of the Snow Queen) (1986), another live action adaptation from the Soviet Union, featuring Alisa Freindlich as the Snow Queen.
• Lumikuningatar (1986), a Finnish live action adaptation.
• The Snow Queen (1992), an American animated short, narrated by Sigourney Weaver.
• The Snow Queen (1995), a British animated adaptation, directed by Martin Gates and featuring the voices of Helen Mirren (as the title character), David Jason, Hugh Laurie, Rik Mayall and Imelda Staunton. A sequel, titled The Snow Queen's Revenge, was released the following year.
• Snedronningen (2000), a Danish live action adaptation, directed by Jacob Jørgensen and Kristof Kuncewicz.
• Snow Queen (2002), a television movie by Hallmark, directed by David Wu and starring Bridget Fonda, Jeremy Guilbaut, Chelsea Hobbs, Robert Wisden, and Wanda Cannon.
• A 2000 episode of Happily Ever After: Fairy Tales for Every Child, featuring Eartha Kitt as the voice of the Snow Queen in an Inuit setting.
• The Snow Queen (2005), a BBC television adaptation utilising state of the art effects, merging live action and computer-generated art. Featuring songs by Paul K. Joyce and starring Juliet Stevenson and the voice of Patrick Stewart, the film was adapted from an 2003 operatic concert held at the Barbican Arts Centre.
• The Snow Queen (雪の女王) (2005–2006), a Japanese anime series, produced by NHK and animated by TMS Entertainment.
• Marko Raat's Lumekuninganna (2010) takes story to contemporary time and motivates character inspired by Kai with love towards older dying woman.
• Koscherfilm has been working on its own adaptation of The Snow Queen based on the children's book Gerda and Kai-The Snow Queen Book. Richard Koscher announced the script still looks for the right studio and it should be out Christmas 2012.
• Russian studio Wizart Animation, production studio Bazelevs Company, and film company Inlay Film have produced a CG-animated feature film adaptation, titled Snow Queen, which was released theatrically in Russia in December 31, 2012, and internationally in January 3, 2013.
• Barbie in The Pink Shoes (2013), an American computer animated direct-to-dvd Barbie musical fantasy produced by Rainmaker Animation and Universal Studios Home Entertainment. It is directed by Owen Hurley and will be released on February 26, 2013, as a combo pack of Blu-ray/DVD. The main antagonist is the Snow Queen.
• Frozen (2013), a 3D computer-animated musical film, produced by Walt Disney Animation Studios and directed by Chris Buck, will be released on November 27, 2013.

Plays

The story was adapted into numerous plays, notably including:

• An opera The Snow Queen was written in 1913 by Slovenian composer Lucijan Marija Škerjanc, but it was lost and never performed.^{[citation needed]}
• An opera The Snow Queen premiered at St Michael's Church, Blewbury, Oxfordshire, on 5 January 1982. Composed by Gary Carpenter to a libretto by Ian Barnett, the opera was commissioned by the village and performed largely by the villagers. The process - from commission to performance - was the subject of an ATV documentary, broadcast early in 1983.^{[citation needed]}
• An opera The Snow Queen, London Premiere at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, 1994. Composed by Matthew King for the British soprano, Jane Manning and her group Jane's Minstrels.^{[citation needed]}

Dance Productions

• The Snow Queen was adapted for ballet by Aerin Holt and her non-profit company, Dance Street Performers (now officially California Contemporary Ballet) with the writing of the libretto in September of 1998 (co-written by Marti Marshall). Aerin then approached composer Randall Michael Tobin to create the music for this original adaptation. The music was composed, performed and recorded between September and December 1998, and the soundtrack album was submitted to the Grammy® Awards first ballot in 1999. Aerin created the choreography following receipt of each music cue from the composer. The Snow Queen - ballet redefined premiered December 19, 1998, at Lanterman Auditorium in La Cañada, California, and received multiple standing ovations. The ballet ran its final performance of the season the following day as a matinee. This production is believed to be the first feature-length large-cast ballet adaptation of The Snow Queen. California Contemporary Ballet has continued to produce and elevate the ballet, and performed it's 15th anniversary season December 2012 at the Glendale College Performing Arts Theatre, the ballet's home since the year 2000 (the only year the ballet featured a live orchestra in the pit).
• An Off-Broadway dance theater adaptation of The Snow Queen was choreographed and produced by Angela Jones and Noel MacDuffie in 1999 with an original score by John LaSala. The soundtrack was released as an album on TownHall Records in 2000.
• On October 11, 2007, the English National Ballet premiered a three-act version of The Snow Queen choreographed by Michael Corder to a score drawn from the music of Sergei Prokofiev.^{[citation needed]}
• In 2011 a stage production was developed by David Pierini and performed at the B Street Theatre in Sacramento, California.

Other adaptations and inspired works

• The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (1950): It is possible that the White Witch from C. S. Lewis's novel may be based on the Snow Queen, as she turned Narnia into a snow-covered land, and is also depicted as wearing a white fur coat.
• The Snow Queen (1980): The fable inspired Joan D. Vinge's science-fantasy novel which added interstellar travel, sea-dwelling sentient mammals, and a galaxy-wide conspiracy to the basic love story.
• Sailor Moon (1996): The first arc of the final season of the anime adaptation (Sailor Moon Sailor Stars) tells a story heavily based around the tale of the Snow Queen. The Evil Queen Nehelenia is reawakened from her dream inside a mirror and freed from the closure by another villain Sailor Galaxia, who also makes Nehelenia's Mirror of Dreams appear. Nehelenia is agitated by the sight within it, showing Sailor Moon and her friends living a happy life on Earth following her defeat. She brakes the mirror in anger and it shatters into small pieces and falls to Earth. The love interest of the story's main character, Tuxedo Mask, gets a piece of Nehelenia's mirror shard stuck in his eye, and subsequently forgets about his love for Sailor Moon and surrounds himself with mirrors - the same happens to other people around. Nehelenia captures him and holds him, in revenge for humiliation. Sailor Moon sets out to save him and must go through a series of trials, including one scene in which she is trapped in a beautiful garden with flowers that tell her to forget about pain. Sailor Jupiter's rose-shaped earring is what reminds her of her devotion to Mamoru, and she must persist through a raging snowstorm to finally meet and save him from the queen.
• Revelations: Persona (1996): This video game developed in Japan for the PlayStation has a side quest which revolved around the tale of The Snow Queen. Originally removed from the American version due to time consumption, it was restored for the game's 2009 PlayStation Portable remake.
• "Travels with the Snow Queen" (1997): Kelly Link based the short story on Andersen's fairytale, portraying Kay and Gerda as adults and giving the story a romantic twist. The story is included in the collection Stranger Things Happen.
• The Rose and the Beast: Fairy Tales Retold (2000): Francesca Lia Block wrote her version of The Snow Queen in her collection of adaptations of fairy tales. Her story is called "Ice," and while she retains some of the main elements of the original fairy tale, such as the basic plot and the proximity of their houses and the window-box gardens, she does not mention the grandmother or much of the back story. In her adaptation, The Snow Queen is a metaphor for heroin addiction. The characters are teenagers in a modern world.
• Spirit (2001): Graham Masterton's horror novel features characters and themes from The Snow Queen.
• Fables (2002): Kay and the Snow Queen appear in Bill Willingham's comic book series from DC Comics Vertigo Imprint. There, Kay is a grown man who still has the mirror fragment in his eye and so sees the sins of all around him. He constantly gouges out his eyes, but they regrow after a few years. The Snow Queen is one of the most powerful servants of the Adversary, an enemy of Fabletown, and is also the mother of the second Jack Frost. The Snow Queen's name in Fables is Lumi, which is Finnish for snow.
• The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Volume II (2002): In this comic by Alan Moore, the Snow Queen's palace is featured in the New Traveller's Almanac.
• The Wizard of London (2005): Mercedes Lackey's tale that is based upon the plot of The Snow Queen, albeit set in Victorian London with the trappings of Elemental Magic. Lackey later used Anderson's tale as the basis for her 2008 novel, The Snow Queen. This book focuses on the Snow Queen herself. In this tale, the "snow queen" is an alias of the Ice Fairy, a good Fairy Godmother charged with testing heroes and guiding princesses from the northernmost of the Five Hundred Kingdoms.
• The Snow Queen (2006): A Korean drama that centers around the Anderson classic starring Hyun Bin and Sung Yu Ri as Han Tae Woong and Kim Bo-Ra, a mismatched yet heartwarming couple. Han Tae Woong, once a math genius winning the IMO (International Math Olympiad), dropped out of his Science Academy as a result of his friend's suicide. By chance, he meets his friend's sister and melts her heart with love, reminiscient of Anderson's Snow Queen.
• The Devil Wears Prada (2006): One of Miranda Priestly's (Meryl Streep's character in the film) tabloid nicknames is "The Snow Queen" because of her icy demeanor.
• Northern Lights (2007): A novel by Philip Pullman that loosely parallels the plot of The Snow Queen in that a young girl travels north to find her kidnapped friend.
• Breadcrumbs (2011): Anne Ursu's children's novel that is an extended reinterpretation of the story.
• The Snow Queen's Shadow (2011): The fourth book in Jim C. Hines' Princess series. When Snow White's magic mirror breaks, a demon that was imprisoned within it by her mother is released, with the residue of its magic in the mirror's shards distorting the vision of everyone 'infected' by the shards so they see only ugliness and hate (Paralleling what happens to Kai when the shard of the Snow Queen's mirror entered his eye). Snow White, contaminated by the broken mirror and possessed by the demon, becomes the Snow Queen, taking Prince Jakob- the son of Princess Danielle, AKA Cinderella- prisoner like the Snow Queen captured Kai, with 'Gerta' being a manifestation of Snow White's goodness in the form of her imaginary sister from childhood, sent into a new body as part of Snow's last act to provide her friends with an ally against her demon-corrupted self.
• Winter's Child by Cameron Dokey is based on The Snow Queen.

See also

• Yuki-onna

External links

• The Snow Queen at the Hans Christian Andersen website
• SurLaLune's Annotated The Snow Queen
• Free audiobook from LibriVox