The Snow Queen Summary and Meaning: Andersen's Tale in Seven Stories

The Snow Queen is a fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen, published in 1844 and told in seven stories. A troll creates a mirror that distorts everything good, and when it shatters, splinters lodge in a boy named Kai's eye and heart, making him cold and cruel. The Snow Queen carries him off to her ice palace in the far north. His devoted friend Gerda travels across the world to find him, helped by a crow, a robber girl, a reindeer and two wise women. Her warm tears melt the splinter from his heart, and they return home together.

It is Andersen's longest fairy tale and one of his most loved, and it loosely inspired Disney's Frozen (2013).

The Snow Queen Summary: All Seven Stories

First Story: The Mirror and the Splinters

A wicked troll (in many translations, the devil himself) makes a mirror that shrinks everything good and beautiful and magnifies everything ugly. His students carry it up toward heaven to mock the angels, but it shakes so violently that it falls and shatters into billions of tiny pieces. Splinters blow around the world; anyone who gets one in the eye sees only the bad in things, and anyone who gets one in the heart has a heart like a lump of ice.

Second Story: A Little Boy and a Little Girl

Kai and Gerda are poor neighbors who love each other like brother and sister. They grow roses in window boxes between their attic windows. One day Kai feels a sharp prick in his heart and eye: splinters of the mirror. He becomes cruel, mocks Gerda and the grandmother, and only cares about cold, perfect things like snowflakes. In winter he ties his sled to a great white sleigh. The driver is the Snow Queen. She kisses him twice, so he no longer feels cold and forgets Gerda and home, and carries him away.

Third Story: The Flower Garden of the Woman Who Knew Magic

In spring, Gerda sets out to find Kai. She drifts down a river in a boat to the cottage of an old woman with a magic garden. The woman, lonely and wanting to keep Gerda, combs her hair with a golden comb to make her forget. When Gerda sees a painted rose, she remembers Kai and escapes.

Fourth Story: The Prince and the Princess

A crow tells Gerda about a clever princess who married a boy who sounds like Kai. Gerda sneaks into the palace, but the prince is not Kai. The kind couple gives her warm clothes, boots and a golden coach.

Fifth Story: The Little Robber Girl

Robbers attack the coach. A fierce, spoiled robber girl saves Gerda from her mother's knife because she wants Gerda as a playmate. That night, the robber girl's pigeons say they saw Kai with the Snow Queen, heading toward Lapland. The robber girl releases her reindeer, Bae, to carry Gerda north.

Sixth Story: The Lapp Woman and the Finn Woman

The reindeer takes Gerda to a Lapp woman, who writes a message on a dried fish, and then to a wise Finn woman. The reindeer begs the Finn woman to give Gerda the strength of twelve men. She refuses: Gerda's power is already greater than anything she could give, because it comes from her innocent, loving heart.

Seventh Story: The Snow Queen's Palace

Kai sits alone in the frozen palace, trying to form the word "eternity" out of shards of ice. The Snow Queen has promised that if he solves it, he will be his own master and she'll give him the whole world and a new pair of skates. Gerda finds him and weeps. Her hot tears melt the ice in his heart and wash out the splinter. Kai bursts into tears himself, washing out the splinter in his eye. The ice pieces dance for joy and spell out "eternity" by themselves. They return home and find that they have grown up, but are still children at heart.

Main Characters

What Does The Snow Queen Mean?

Reason vs. love

Kai becomes clever and cold. He loves geometry, perfect snowflakes and mental puzzles. Andersen suggests that intellect without love freezes the heart. Gerda, who is not especially clever, succeeds because she loves.

Growing up

The tale tracks the passage from childhood to adulthood. Kai's coldness resembles an adolescent rejecting home and childhood. Gerda's journey through ever more grown-up worlds (a royal court, robbers, the wilderness) is a coming-of-age quest of its own.

Faith and innocence

Andersen frames Gerda's strength as spiritual. She prays, recites a hymn about roses, and when the Snow Queen's guards attack, her breath becomes angels that protect her. The story ends with the grandmother reading a Bible verse about becoming like little children.

A female-led adventure

Unusually for its time, The Snow Queen is driven almost entirely by female characters: Gerda, the Snow Queen, the flower witch, the princess, the robber girl, the Lapp woman and the Finn woman.

The Snow Queen and Frozen

Disney developed adaptations of the tale for decades before Frozen (2013). The final film kept little more than a powerful ice queen, a devoted sister figure and the theme of love melting a frozen heart. Elsa was originally planned as a villain, much closer to Andersen's Snow Queen, before the story was reworked around two sisters.

To learn more about the author, read our guide to Hans Christian Andersen's life and best fairy tales. For another of his frozen tales, see The Little Match Girl.

Frequently Asked Questions

When was The Snow Queen written?

Hans Christian Andersen published The Snow Queen in 1844.

Why does Kai become cruel?

Splinters from an evil troll's mirror get into his eye and heart. They make him see only ugliness and turn his heart cold.

How does Gerda save Kai?

She finds him in the Snow Queen's palace and cries over him. Her warm tears melt the ice in his heart and wash out the splinter.

Is The Snow Queen evil?

Andersen never shows her doing anything openly cruel beyond taking Kai. She is cold and remote rather than wicked, which is part of what makes her memorable.

Is Frozen based on The Snow Queen?

Disney's Frozen was loosely inspired by The Snow Queen, though the plot and characters are very different.