MY FIRST SNOW QUEEN

When I was eight, in the year 2000, my dad gave me an ad usum adaptation (without any blood or guts) of Andersen's most famous stories (The Firelighter, The Little Mermaid, The Christmas Tree, The Ugly Duckling, The Tin Soldier, The Princess and the Pea...), illustrated by Cathie Shuttleworth. The translation, however, was not faithful to Nicola Baxter's source text, but a more or less free retelling by a Swedish translator called Ingrid Warne.
At a whopping sixteen pages long (the length of the longest story she had read for an eight-year-old!), the ad usum Snow Queen in this compilation was, together with Norse myths starring Loki, shonen anime like One Piece, Genesis's Nursery Cryme and Foxtrot, and Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon and Wish You Were Here, one of the works that shaped my tweenage years.
This article is my English translation from Warne's Swedish of the Snow Queen in that collection. Together with the Lev Atamanov film, which I saw for the first time at Club Super 3 around the same year, it was my childhood introduction to this tale.
This is my contribution for the International Day of Children's Literature 2018.


And thus, without further ado, I am proud to introduce:

THE SNOW QUEEN 

Translated from the Swedish child-friendly adaptation by Ingrid Warne

into English by Sandra Dermark

(With vintage illustrations by Elizabeth Ellender)

Story the Zeroth: Which Serves as an Introduction

Maybe the secret of Andersen stories is that they he writes as if he were speaking out loud. Through this orality, we can hear his voice between the lines, how he tells his tales to friends, to little children. Or maybe the secret lives in that his tales inform us about the world and the possible dangers that lie in wait for us, even though there is always a simple and reassuring happy-ever-after ending; conditio sine qua non for young readers.

In their original form, Andersen's tales are often very long and a little complicated when it comes to language; they can be incredibly sorrowful and sometimes even gory. Here, they have been retold and adapted with a careful hand. The gore and the tragedy have been toned down, and thus, these stories can also be told to, and read by, the youngest audiences.
Each and every time that a tale is told, little touches are added, according to the narrator's interpretation and the adaptation to a target audience. Nevertheless, these tales stay faithful to the content of the original source tales and preserve, still, all of their magic.


Story the First: Of a Shattered Mirror and the Shards Thereof

All right, let us begin, and, when this tale comes to an end, we shall know much more than we know already, for we have among our characters a real villain, the most evil one of them all! First, you ought to know a little about this wicked sorcerer and his mirror. This story begins with a maleficent looking-glass. In that mirror, everything turned hideous and frightening and twisted, no matter how beautiful or how pleasant it was in reality; and, if someone smiled at their own reflection, the only thing that could be seen was a sinister Cheshire-Cat grin. When people looked into the sorcerer's mirror, they said: "I have been such an idiot. Everything is horrible. Ewww, how ugly and how wretched everything is! It does not pay at all to be kind..."

One day, the mirror shattered. The shards flew over the whole wide world, scattered all over the Earth's atmosphere, and some of them were so small that they lodged in human eyes, where they warped the sight of their victims. But no one could even feel that they had got such a shard in one eye as it entered, since the shards were so tiny. All they could notice was that everything in the world around them had turned so hideous and filthy... 
Even worse was it when several sharp shards lodged within people's hearts, that instantly froze to ice. Nevermore could anyone feel any hope or joy or love.


Story the Second: Of a Young Boy and a Young Girl

In those days, there lived two children, each one in a garret, their windows opposite one another, high above their bustling street. In the meantime, they had been playing and tending to their plants most happily. They had the custom of waving at each other across the street; in both their townhouses, each and every floor jettied forwards, being wider than the one below, and the eaves of the rooftops nearly touched. Outside the windows of those two topmost floors, upon the sills, there were two large planter boxes, where, for three quarters of the year, roses bloomed and sweetpeas entwined, and, in springtime and summer, since their respective homes were so close to one another, the children frequently climbed over and across these boxes, like a suspended bridge, whenever the girl visited the boy's place or vice versa, or they played or made their homework together in their little garden, while the perfume of roses and peaseblossoms surrounded them. Her name was Gerda, and his name was Kai.
In winter, when it was time to shut the windows to keep the cold at bay, their parents took the planter boxes indoors, and thus, Gerda and Kai had to run down all the stairs, and then  and climb up all the stairs across the street, if one of them wanted to visit the other. Or they had to climb down all the stairs, each child on their side, and meet at the entrance to their townhouses. Sometimes, the snow whirled around the corners, and sometimes, little white snowflakes danced around. From the thresholds of the townhouses or through peepholes made by holding a warm coin to the frosted windowpanes, they watched the snowflakes that waltzed about like swarms of white frosty bees.

"You do know that there is a snow queen?" asked Gerda's old grandmamma. "There is a snow queen, just like there are queen bees, queen ants, queen wasps... Try to find the biggest snowflake of them all, for that flake is the Snow Queen. She is the largest flake of those that form a swirl in the snowstorm."
Grandmamma always told stories, and both children just loved to listen to them.

Later the same evening, when Kai was going to bed, he walked to the window and peered out. Right then, he saw a large snowflake that alighted upright upon the windowsill. As Kai stood there watching, his gaze transfixed, the flake began to grow into a most beautiful lady all dressed in white. Her icy blue eyes glittered like stars, and her whole self shone with a strange, cold light, just like ice.
Kai immediately understood that it was the Snow Queen. She was the loveliest sight he had ever seen, the most beautiful female in the world, but, when she waved at him, he was frightened by the piercing cold look in her eyes. He turned his back to the windows and curled up in his warm bed. Right as he pulled the cover over his head, for a second, it seemed to him that a dark shadow, winged and black, flew by outside, past the window.

The next day, when Kai was playing outdoors with Gerda as usual, he let out a loud scream of pain. "My heart is hurting so much..." he groaned, wincing and clutching the left side of his chest. "And my left eye as well. I felt like I got an eyelash inside. But now I'm all right..."
Little to nothing could Kai know about the fact that a tiny mirror shard had just lodged in his heart, that turned to ice, and another, a splinter, in one of his eyes.
"Does it hurt much?" asked little Gerda in a friendly tone.
"Don't stand there gawking and looking at me like that!" Kai sneered, seeing that she was concerned. "Besides, I don't want to play with you anymore. You are stupid, and you look hideous."
"But we were about to look at my new storybook... Shouldn't we?" asked an astonished Gerda.

"Storybooks are only for babies," Kai sneered, letting some snow fall on his coattails and letting Gerda see it through his magnifying glass. "Ice crystals, on the other hand, are completely perfect, as long as they don't melt. Now I'm off with the other guys, to the Market Square to sled." He brusquely turned his back to her and sledded down the street. It was not he himself who spoke, but the ice in his heart.
That day a thick layer of snow blanketed the marketplace. The local bad boys found a frequent thrill in lassoing some horse-drawn carriage as they sat upon their sleds. Thus, they would set off and be pulled along through the streets at breakneck speed! As Kai was now looking around for the perfect carriage to hitch a ride on, he saw a two-horse open sleigh, pulled by two beautiful white horses, in the middle of the Market Square. "That's the sleigh that shall pull me," Kai thought. And thus, he lassoed that carriage, lifted his arms to feel the momentum, and the sleigh set forth with such tremendous power, racing at the speed of a piercing gale, that Kai was pulled off his sled, and had to lift his arms and cling to the back of the seat, behind the white-clad driver.

Out of town the carriage drove, into the open countryside, and the snow whirled around Kai, who had been whisked away at breakneck speed, nearly flying. He began to feel really frightened, but he did not even dare to let go; the word "help" choked in his throat, and he could only recall the nine times table.  The snow kept on falling heavier and heavier, and the boy nearly could not see anything, as the carriage flew across snow-covered fields and hills. The snowfall had become so heavy around Kai that he froze in fear. In the end, the sleigh stopped in the open countryside and the driver, the figure in white who held the reins, stood up and turned around. Then, Kai saw that it was the Snow Queen, dressed in a white overcoat of what appeared to be polar bearskin, with a matching winter bonnet and muff.

"Are you cold, little Kai?" she asked him, stealing from him a kiss that quenched all his feelings and erased all his remembrance of the past. As she kissed him, everything turned dark and he felt the blood freeze in his veins, yet that malaise only lasted for an instant. "Come here, and sit here by my side and wrap my fur coat around you..." The Snow Queen was lovelier than ever before. Kai looked at her and found her even more beautiful; he felt no longer afraid when the sleigh picked up speed once more and literally flew forth over the sparkling snow, in the light of the full moon. High up in the sky twinkled the stars, and he watched them glisten upon the white carpet of snow.

Story the Third: Of the Flower Garden of a Witching Woman

But at home, little Gerda went about and mourned her playmate. Where could Kai have gone? All winter long, she had felt alone, and wondered where her only friend had to be. People said that he was most likely dead, having been missing for all winter long, but Gerda refused to believe something that dreadful. As soon as springtime came, she donned her brand new red shoes and went forth to look for her missing friend.
Soon, she was out in the countryside and she came to a wonderful orchard full of fruit treetops, where cherry trees stood in full bloom among the quaint little cottages. One of the doors opened, into one of those thatched cottages with red and blue stainglass windows, and there stood, stepping out onto the threshold, an old lady in a flowered straw hat. Her smile was so friendly that Gerda, elated to find a friendly face, could not resist telling her about her friend Kai, and how he had vanished without a trace.

"I have not seen him," the old lady said, "but most surely he will drop by around here, sooner or later. Why not stay here and wait for him?"

In fact, the old lady had, for a long long time, wished for a sweet little girl to call her own. Now, she fed Gerda with fruits from her orchard and let her play in the beautiful orchard and flowering garden all springtime and summer long, but she had taken the care to magically wish all the roses away; otherwise, the girl would sadly be seized with homesickness, and remember both her home and her quest, the old lady thought.

But she had forgotten the roses that decorated her hat! One lovely day, Gerda took a look at it and realised it all. "Oh, no!" she gasped. "It will soon be autumn, and I have wasted all the springtime and summer away. I forgot why I once ventured out into the wide world... It was to look for Kai! I have lost too much time..."
The autumn equinox had come and she had not found Kai yet.
And, without even donning her red shoes, without even waiting to put them on, she hastened away from the beautiful orchard. On she walked and walked.

Story the Fourth: Of the Prince and the Princess

,

Soon, her feet were sore, and she sat down for a rest. Then, a male crow swooped down in front of her and began to skip all around, pecking at the seeds on the ground.
Gerda asked the crow if he had seen Kai, but not without telling what she was doing there, or asking for advice, before that.
"Maybe I could have seen him," the crow began. "But he has forgotten you. All he can think of now is the princess. Ever since he was betrothed, he can only think of her."
"Does he live with a princess?" asked a concerned Gerda.
And thus, he began to explain. 

The princess of the kingdom where Gerda and the crow were at the moment was very clever and learned. When she had read all the books in the castle library, she decided to look for someone she could marry. But her husband should not be a twit at all! She had already read all the books in that country and now she wanted to find a husband. But she did not want him to be a twit or someone tiresome, and rather someone as intelligent as she, or even more.
The princess had an announcement, which she had written out herself, printed in the press, and, moreover, she had it copied out and affixed to the doors of every University in three kingdoms; and soon the castle courtyard, and the long staircase of the castle, were full of dashing young suitors, each and every one brighter than the other, who wanted to see her. So many fine gentlemen came to the palace! But when they at last stood before the princess, they were so impressed by her, by the golden throne she sat upon, and by the sumptuous decoration of the throne room that they could not even breathe a word. When they met her, they couldn't think of anything to say except echoing the last words she had uttered, and thus, knowing what to expect from these suitors, she was no longer interested in them, and sent them all away. One right after the other.
Sadly, when they stood before her, they felt their hearts taken away by the princess herself, her throne, and the sumptuous decoration, and lost their voices; and the princess had all those twits sent away from her presence.

"But, what about Kai?" Gerda lost her patience. She wanted to know the whole affair immediately.
One day, there came a boy in worn clothes who was neither afraid of the princess nor of her great fortune. This strapping young lad who was not afraid of anything charmed the princess, by speaking to her about all the things and everything that she was interested in, and that, during their lively conversation, turned out to be their common interests.
Well, he talked to the princess in such a friendly way, and she liked him so much, that he won her through his clever liveliness in the fateful test-interview, and now he is a prince consort.
"Of course it was Kai! He's so bright!" Gerda gasped. "Now I must get to the castle and try to reach him there. But how could we do it?"
"It's difficult. The princess's guards will send you away, for sure. I shall see what I can do," the crow promised before he flew away. 
In the evening, he returned: "My fiancée, the princess's pet crow who lives at the castle, will let us in through the back door. Allons-y! Make haste! And waste no time!"

Gerda hastened running towards the royal castle, where the fiancée crow really stood there waiting by the back door, that stood ajar. Right when Gerda was about to sneak up the spiral staircase, lantern in hand, some soldiers passed by on horseback. But both men and horses were merely like twilight shadows. "These are dreams," the crows explained. "The things that the sleepers within the castle are dreaming of."
In the end, Gerda found the royal bedchamber. There stood two beds; in one of them lay the princess, and in the other slept a young man, whose head of messy hair popped up from the covers. Gerda came closer and pulled the covers off the sleeping lad. Then, she saw that it was not Kai at all, but a young prince. It was not Kai! What a nightmare!
Gerda began to cry with such heart-rending sobs of disappointment that she woke up both the prince and the princess. At first, she thought they would get cross, but they felt sorry for the little maiden and decided to help her. They promised her, then gave her, new shoes (a fine pair of little booties) and a carriage with inlays of gold. Two footmen were to drive Gerda further on through her quest, so that she could resume the journey comfortably.

Story the Fifth: Of the Robber Maiden

But, Gerda's adventures had not come to an end. As they were driving through some thick, dark woods, and the carriage shone brightly as a star between the tall treetrunks, some bandits who lay in ambush in the underbrush attacked them, seized the frightened horses, knocked the coachman and footmen out, and took the golden carriage. The attack was so sudden, so brusque, that the brigands made Gerda fall off her seat. They had immediately realised that the carriage was worth a fortune.
Their leader, a muscular and fierce-looking woman, armed with the sharpest and longest knife that Gerda had ever seen, pulled the passenger out of the carriage. "Look at this beauty! What a feast, when we have her for supper ton-...Owwwch!"
A wild young girl about Gerda's age suddenly sauntered from among the ferns and bit the bandit leader in the left ear, keeping her from harming Gerda. "Leave her alone!" the maiden commanded.

Maybe they should have killed Gerda, if that young girl who was part of the robber band had not pleaded and nagged for her sake. Now, she was escorted instead to their den, a crumbling old ruin, in the company of her unexpected saviour, who had decided to whisk her away into the lair to play with her and show her around.

The robber maiden had a pet reindeer, that she rode into battle and wanted Gerda to say hello to. She had expected the robber maiden's fiery steed to be a pony or a little mule instead. The reindeer didn't appear to feel at home in the robbers' den, Gerda thought.
That night, she lay and listened to the owls who roosted and hooted high up there in the rafters above her head, while the adults sang loud songs and drank themselves into a stupor, and the robber maiden snored so loud that she could be heard throughout the ruined keep. And, quite unexpectedly, one of them softly said:
"We have seen Kai, hoot hoot! It was last winter, and he flew with the Snow Queen in her carriage!"

"They were surely heading towards Lapland," another owl replied, "for there melts neither the snow nor the frost. Never, nevermore."

"That's right," the reindeer joined in. "The Snow Queen has her castle there, a palace of ice by the North Pole, and I know for I was born in Lapland, near the icy walls themselves."
The robber maiden heard the whole conversation as well, and the next day, at the crack of dawn, she told Gerda:
"Last night I listened to everything as well. I shall set my reindeer free if he promises to carry you on his back all the way up north to Lapland, to search for your Kai." The reindeer took to high leaps of joy, and Gerda too; she shed tears of elation. On that very same morning at sunrise, while all the adult bandits --leader, lookouts, and all-- were sleeping off their drinks, she climbed up on the deer's back, and off they set forth.

By day and by night they travelled, through deep forests and across high mountain ranges. Until in the end, the reindeer stopped in the middle of the tundra, drew the rider's attention to the brightly coloured lights in the night sky, and said:
"All right, this is Lapland. Don't you see my wonderful Northern Lights?"


Story the Sixth: Of the Wise Old Crones of the Far North

Shortly afterwards, they found a little deerskin tent where they asked to spend the night. The deer and Gerda told the Saami woman who lived alone in that tent the whole story of their quest. When she  heard where they were heading, she replied:
"Poor little ones! There is still quite a long way to go for you. The Snow Queen's palace? It's a long way to go, for that palace is in the Finmark, near the North Pole. But I know a wise Finmark woman, a friend of mine, who surely will help you find the way when you come to her place. Now I will write a message to her, for you to send it to her with my regards. Could you be so kind and do this poor old lady a favour?"
The next day, they set off once more. When Gerda and her deer had warmed themselves by the fireside and received the message, the quest resumed. Gerda carried a letter that she was to give the Finmark woman. On deerback she flew across the frozen, snowy tundra, until she reached the home of the wise woman. Inside her tent, there was a fire burning, it was warm and cozy, in spite of the snowstorm raging outside. In fact, it was so hot that the Finmark woman was very scantily dressed for the Arctic. After a while, Gerda could take off her cloak, her hat, and her shoes. Then, she gave the message to the wise woman, who read it most carefully.

 

Once she had read the letter from her friend, she cast a look at Gerda and the reindeer.
"If Gerda could only do magic!" the reindeer sighed mournfully. "Then, she could have forced the Snow Queen and get Kai back... I know you are very wise, so couldn't you please give Gerda some magic potion to vanquish the Snow Queen?" the deer asked.
"Little Gerda has no need for magic," the Finmark woman replied. "She has a kind heart, which has led her walking through fire and ice and bitter experience on her own two feet; that's all she needs. Kai is indeed at the Snow Queen's, and he is happy there only because his heart is frozen. And, furthermore, there's a shard of the sorcerer's mirror in one of his eyes."
The wise woman then turned to the reindeer and resumed:
"You shall carry Gerda to the Snow Queen's garden, and leave her there, by the holly bush with red berries that grows at the entrance to the castle grounds. You cannot do anything more. It is she who has to overcome the last obstacles, on her own."
Gerda climbed once more up to the reindeer's back. She forgot her cloak, her hat, and her shoes.
The reindeer did as the wise woman had told, even if he did not like at all, and felt sorry for, the idea of leaving Gerda all alone there, without any warm winter clothes, in the middle of the snowstorm in the dreary, cold Arctic night.

Immediately, a whole regiment of snowflakes whirled around Gerda. Some of them were icy blue, with monstrous shapes, and seemed to attack her, threateningly closing in all around her like soldiers; while others were white and soft, and, as they confronted the monsters, showed her the way to follow.

Story the Seventh: Of What Happened at the Snow Queen's Palace and What Happened Afterwards

And so Gerda came to the Snow Queen's palace, whose walls were made of driven snow and whose doors and windowpanes were of ice hardened by the north winds that flew through every half-open doorway and windowpane. She entered a vast frozen throne room and only Gerda's warm, kind heart kept her alive, from freezing to death. The throne of ice was empty and the Queen herself was nowhere to be seen, having just left her throne room to bring the winter down south again.
In a little oubliette behind the throne, she finally found Kai. He walked about pushing large blocks of ice as if he wanted to solve a puzzle; it was as if it were a rather meaningful duty that had been assigned to him.
"Oh, Kai!" Gerda called out loud, storming towards him.
But Kai merely kept on moving his blocks; he froze and did not say anything. He was as pale and frozen as a statue of ice. So pale that his earlobes, button nose, lips, and fingertips had turned a bluish colour. And he did not want to greet Gerda, who had come from so far away to rescue him...
Yet Gerda stormed forth towards him and clasped him in her arms. As she embraced him, her warm tears of joy coursed down her cheeks and splashed onto his face and chest, seeping straight into his heart and thawing the hard layer of ice; and that was the effect of her body warmth as well.
Within an instant, the ice that shackled the inside of his chest, and was strongest where the shard had lodged within the heartstrings of the left ventricle, was thawed, expelling the shard of crystal, which a heartbeat tore away into the bloodstream. 
Then Gerda began to sing a nursery rhyme, and roses bloomed in his pale cheeks,  the colour returned gradually to his features, and Kai... turning towards his friend... looking at her with green eyes that recovered more and more of their light, he burst into sobs upon seeing that familiar-looking maiden, while trying to remember the lyrics to the same tune, which both of them used to sing in happier days. He shed so many tears that the mirror dust, which had dissolved into the bloodstream, left his system through the eyes with that fiery flow, and fell upon the throne room floor. 
Only then did he recognise his beloved, adorable girl-friend. All at once, he remembered everything. He looked left and right, then up at the little maiden... and saw his best friend standing there.
"Gerda... my darling Gerda? What ever happened to me? And where are we? How vast and cold and lonely is this place! How could I have forgotten you...?" he whispered, his eyes filling with tears. The warm love in his heart had melted the ice splinters that had lodged inside him. At last, Kai was back to his old self.
He put his arms around Gerda and squeezed her tightly, lest she should leave him on his own in this strange throne room. And Gerda squeezed him even more tightly and they both burst out laughing. Their innocent laughter rang out across the hall, making the icicles chime and the great shards of ice sing in harmony.
She told him everything and, together, with four hands, they assembled the puzzle. Then something very strange began to happen. The elation of both young people was such that, when they placed the last piece of ice on the frozen surface of the lake, they formed a sun in whose middle beamed a flaming heart. There was no need to worry anymore. 
Now both of them were free, and the masters of their own destiny. Now Kai was free to leave, for the Snow Queen would no longer retain any power over him.
"Gerda, I'm free..." said Kai, too stunned to utter the words properly.
"Then, what are we waiting for?" Gerda replied, pulling him to his feet. "Come on, quickly. Let's go home!"
The two friends ran out of the hall. Hand in hand, Gerda and Kai left the Snow Queen's palace. In the northeastern skies, the darkness was giving way to the warm, rosy light of the dawn; soon, all the good things that springtime brought would return to the Arctic.

Outside the palace, the reindeer was waiting for them, and now they all began the long southward journey back home. Wherever they went, the snow melted away, and the grass and the flowers began to shoot up beneath their feet and hooves. They met the robber maiden on horseback, for she had emancipated herself on a quest through the wide world; she told them that the princess and her prince were travelling through foreign countries on honeymoon.

At last, they saw their hometown before them; they arrived in the town where they lived. Kai and Gerda quickened their pace. Hand in hand, they ran through the streets that both of them so well knew and loved.

It was as if time had frozen in their absence: everything in town was exactly the same. Kai and Gerda walked up all the staircases up to their respective garrets. Old Grandmamma sat, as usual, by the window, sunning herself, and the planter boxes were in full bloom with roses and sweetpeas. There the two of them stood, and there they sat down, like they had done so many times before locking eyes and facing one another, high above the bustling street. Had everything that had transpired only been an unquiet dream? Anyway, here they stood now, like ever before, as warmth and sunshine and the scent of flowers pervaded everything around them, from all directions. They were, both of them, older and wiser and more sensible, but they had the hearts of children, and were surrounded by a springtime full of light and warmth.