The Snow Queen (Sneedronningen in Danish) is the eponymous antagonist of Hans Christian Andersen's 1845 fairy tale.
The story focuses on two children, Kai and Gerda, who are the deepest of friends. All this changes when Kai's eyes are hit with tiny splinters of a broken mirror. A mirror, forged by a demonic troll, that made even the loveliest thing look hideous beyond compare. Kai could only see the bad in things, and so he shunned Gerda's love. He could only find beauty in snowflakes. Unable to find love elsewhere, he was taken by the Snow Queen and whisked away to her palace in Lapland. There she keeps him captive and tells him that he can only escape when he can spell "eternity" with shards of ice. Gerda then starts a quest to find him, going through Finland and Lapland to find him. She finds the Queen's palace, guarded by snowflakes under her control. Gerda dispels the snow by reciting the Lord's Prayer, enters the palace and finds Kai standing on a frozen lake called the Mirror of Reason. She embraces him and cries hot tears onto him, melting his heart and dislodging the splinter from his eye. They dance in celebration. And as they dance icicles crash around them, spelling "eternity" as they fall. Free of the spell, they return home and find themselves grown.
The story focuses on two children, Kai and Gerda, who are the deepest of friends. All this changes when Kai's eyes are hit with tiny splinters of a broken mirror. A mirror, forged by a demonic troll, that made even the loveliest thing look hideous beyond compare. Kai could only see the bad in things, and so he shunned Gerda's love. He could only find beauty in snowflakes. Unable to find love elsewhere, he was taken by the Snow Queen and whisked away to her palace in Lapland. There she keeps him captive and tells him that he can only escape when he can spell "eternity" with shards of ice. Gerda then starts a quest to find him, going through Finland and Lapland to find him. She finds the Queen's palace, guarded by snowflakes under her control. Gerda dispels the snow by reciting the Lord's Prayer, enters the palace and finds Kai standing on a frozen lake called the Mirror of Reason. She embraces him and cries hot tears onto him, melting his heart and dislodging the splinter from his eye. They dance in celebration. And as they dance icicles crash around them, spelling "eternity" as they fall. Free of the spell, they return home and find themselves grown.
