Looking Up at the Winter Sky

About this drawing

A Snow Queen portrait takes us back to 1844 and one of the longest fairy tales Hans Christian Andersen ever wrote. The Danish author told it in seven parts, and if you only know the name, the original may surprise you.

It starts with a demon's mirror that makes everything good look ugly. The mirror shatters, and tiny splinters fly around the world. One lands in the eye of a boy named Kai and another in his heart. He turns cold and mean overnight, and soon the Snow Queen sweeps him off in her sleigh to a palace of ice far in the north.

The real hero is his friend Gerda, a determined little girl who sets out to find him. Along the way she meets a woman with an enchanted garden, a helpful crow, a princess, a fierce young robber girl, and a reindeer. Each one moves her a bit closer to the Arctic.

When she reaches Kai, he has almost turned to ice. Gerda's warm tears melt the ice in his heart, and he cries the splinter out of his eye. So it is friendship, not magic, that wins in the end. The Snow Queen herself is a fascinating figure. She is never exactly a villain, more like winter given a face, beautiful and impossible to warm.

• fairy tales
• winter
• queens