The Snow Queen
Genre	fairy tale play
Author	Evgeny Schwartz
Original language	Russian
date of writing	1938
Quotations on Wikiquote

The Snow Queen- a fairy tale play in four acts, written by Evgeny Schwartz in 1938 based on the fairy tale of the same name by Hans Christian Andersen.

Characters

• Storyteller - a young man of about twenty-five; considers it his duty to help those who are in trouble
• Kay - a boy carried away by the Snow Queen; Grandmother's Adoptive Grandson
• Gerda - the girl who went looking for Kay
• Grandmother
• Advisor - man in black coat with cold hands
• The Snow Queen - woman in all white living in the north
• Raven Carl
• Crow Clara
• Prince Claus - former shepherd turned prince
• Princess Elsa
• King Eric the 29th
• Atamansha - elderly woman with glasses and a wide-brimmed hat
• First Rogue
• Little robber - pretty black haired girl
• Reindeer
• Guards, lackeys of the king, robbers

Related videos

Plot

Act one

In the small house where Kay, Gerda and their grandmother live, the Counselor appears. Interested in a rose bush that bloomed on the windowsill in the middle of winter, he offers his grandmother first 10, and then 100 thalers for it. She doesn't agree. There is a quarrel, and the Councilor promises to complain about the uncompromising family to the Snow Queen.

Soon, the Snow Queen herself appears before the inhabitants of the house. She says that she wants to take Kay with her: he will be her instead of her son. The grandmother explains that she took the boy after the death of his parents. He grew up in her arms, and she cannot part with him. Kay also protests fiercely against leaving home. Saying goodbye, the queen kisses him. After her departure, Kay's mood changes dramatically: roses seem ugly to him, Gerda - ugly, and grandmother - funny. The storyteller, who has been nearby all this time, explains that the heart of a person who is kissed by the Snow Queen turns into a piece of ice.

Action two

All winter Gerda and grandmother waited for Kay. In the spring, the main character went to look for him. On the way, she meets the crow Karl and the crow Clara, who assure that Kay has become a prince and lives in the royal palace. They were wrong: in fact, the prince's name is Klaus. He and Princess Elsa sympathize with Gerda, and therefore offer her a fur coat, a hat, a muff and a golden carriage. Despite the intrigues of the Councilor, who seeks to imprison the girl with the help of the king, she manages to leave the palace and continue on her way.

Act Three

The path of Gerda lies past the tower, in which the robbers, led by the Atamansha, live. It is to her that the Counselor comes to point out the "magnificent prey" - a girl riding in a golden carriage without guards. The robbers stop Gerda, but they do not have time to hand her over to the Counselor: the Little Robber appears, who rescues the captive, because she has no one to play with. When she learns the story of Gerda and Kay, she hardly, but still agrees to let the girl go. The Reindeer must deliver it to the possessions of the Snow Queen.

act four

Gerda finds Kay in the Snow Queen's palace. He almost does not pay attention to the appearance of his named sister. Kei is busy making the word "eternity" out of pieces of ice. His indifference and coldness upset Gerda. Embracing her brother, she cries, tells how nice they lived in a small house, and reminds him of his grandmother, swallows, Trezor's dog and the neighbor's cat. Gerda's tears melt Kay's icy heart, and he remembers everything.

In the meantime, guests come to the grandmother's house one by one: the Little Robber and the Storyteller, Karl and Clara, Klaus and Elsa. Everyone is waiting for news. Finally the door swings open and Kay and Gerda appear on the threshold. The storyteller greets the children with the words that any enemies are powerless as long as people's hearts are hot.

Artistic features

For Yevgeny Schwartz, the appeal to Andersen's plots was not accidental: according to the theater critic Sergei Tsimbal, the writer chose the Danish storyteller as a "planted father".

Recreating the stories composed by Andersen, Schwartz sometimes not only changed their structure, but also transformed the characters' characters. So, in Andersen's version, Gerda is too young to make independent decisions; in a moment of despair, she is even ready to admit that her named brother died and will not return. Schwartz's Gerda is different: a strong-willed, purposeful, determined girl.

Shvartsev's Little Robber surprisingly combines callousness and the ability to compassion, absurdity and the ability to empathize. The character of the Counselor is revealed not only in actions, but also in speech: it is replete with clerical turns, dry and lifeless. But the Storyteller is truly noble; he appears whenever Gerda needs his help.

Soviet censorship cut out 956 words from Andersen's famous fairy tale. "The Table" invites you to reflect on the meaning of banknotes: the logic of the censor is not always obvious

Four years ago, on the eve of the next anniversary of the birth of the great Danish storyteller, the NTV channel aired a story called “The Priests Rewrote The Snow Queen”, which deals with a new edition of the famous fairy tale by G.-H. Andersen, released on the initiative of the Kuban priests. With surprise and obvious irony, the TV news host talks about the fact that in the new edition “ the protagonist sings psalms instead of an empty game of dice and defeats the evil queen not by the power of his love, but with the help of angels.

The clergyman's explanation that this is exactly what Andersen's fairy tale looked like in the original is presented by the journalist as a very dubious version. And at the end of the plot, a reprinted fairy tale by A.S. Pushkin "About the priest and his worker Balda", where the "priest, oatmeal forehead" is replaced by the merchant "Kuzma Ostolop, nicknamed Aspen Forehead".

having blotted out God's fairy tale, the censors decided not to embarrass children's imagination with Satan

To clear up all the misunderstandings today (and even in 2013), it was enough just to open Wikipedia. Not thinking of standing up for unauthorized censors, of whom, indeed, there were quite a few, I will only note that the “merchant Kuzma Ostolop” really arose from censorship considerations, but not today in the Kuban, but in 1840, when this Pushkin’s fairy tale was first published. And the controversial edit belongs to the poet Vasily Zhukovsky, who was the publisher of the book.

A. Barinov. Troll apprentices with a mirror

As for The Snow Queen, here NTV journalists acted as defenders of just the censored version of the tale. It so happened that this version is familiar to most of us, even to those whose childhood was already in the free 1990s: new books were reprinted from Soviet publications, where Andersen's fairy tales, as it turned out, were published with significant cuts. Basically, these banknotes concerned references to God, the Christian faith of heroes, Christian images and symbols. But there were other abbreviations, the meaning of which cannot be explained right off the bat ...

The Stol compared two versions of the fairy tale "The Snow Queen" - full and censored - trying to clarify what meanings "fall out" in the Soviet version and how some innocent details could alert the censor.

Mirror and its fragments

Andersen's fairy tale begins with a parable about a magic mirror made by an evil troll. In a translation close to the Danish original, it is said about him like this: “... once upon a time there was a troll, angry and deceiving; it was the devil himself. The Soviet version sounds a little different: "... once upon a time there was a troll, an evil, wicked, real devil." At first glance, a minor change - ";" changes to “,” and “it was itself” to “existing” - in fact, it changes the whole meaning. The stable combination "real devil" in Russian means someone very evil and in this context looks like an epithet - a definition used in a figurative sense, containing a comparison: evil, like the devil. Meanwhile, Andersen focuses on the fact that it was the same biblical devil.

in the Soviet version, the boy did not even try to resist the dark forces that carried him away

The Soviet censor, having carefully blotted out God from the whole fairy tale, decided not to embarrass the children's imagination with Satan either. This is probably why another phrase a little lower will completely disappear, where the troll is once again directly called the devil: "The devil was terribly amused by all this."

And the devil was amused by the fact that his mirror distorted everything beautiful and good. The devil troll's disciples ran around the world with him, playing with the distorted reflections of people. Finally, they wanted to get to heaven, "to laugh at the angels and the Creator himself." In the Soviet version, the second part of the sentence is missing, which makes it not entirely clear why the troll's students needed to climb to the sky.

boy and girl

Getting rid of the direct mention of God and the devil, the censors continued to secularize the text. Next in line were the psalms mentioned in the NTV story (only there is no “empty game of dice” in any of the versions of the tale, here, obviously, the journalist’s imagination has already worked). According to Andersen, Kai and Gerda once, playing together, sang a Christmas psalm, two lines from it are given in the tale:

At the same time, the children looked at the spring sun, and it seemed to them that the infant Christ himself was looking at them from there. All this in the Soviet translation, of course, is missing.

I. Lynch. Illustration for the fairy tale "The Snow Queen"

In the same chapter, when the Snow Queen kidnaps Kai, he, according to the original, "wanted to read the Lord's Prayer, but only one multiplication table was spinning in his mind." In the Soviet version, the boy did not even try to resist the dark forces that carried him away.

Flower garden of a woman who knew how to conjure

The next bill, the largest in size in the entire tale, seems rather mysterious, because the excluded text does not contain direct Christian allusions. After going in search of Kai, Gerda spends some time at the sorceress's house. There, she engages in a conversation with the flowers, asking if they know if her friend is still alive? And each flower in response tells her a little story that has nothing to do with the subject of her search. Obviously, for the author, each of these stories - and there are only six of them - was important for some reason, since the flower garden was even included in the title of the chapter.

Edmund Dulac. Illustration for the fairy tale "The Snow Queen"

In the Soviet edition, only one of the six mini-stories remains - told by a dandelion. At the center of this story is a meeting between a grandmother and her granddaughter: “An old grandmother came out to sit in the yard. Her granddaughter, a poor maid, came from among the guests and kissed the old woman. A girl's kiss is more precious than gold - it comes straight from the heart." Hearing these words, Gerda immediately remembered her grandmother and mentally promised her to return soon with Kai. So one of the stories is relatively smoothly integrated into the main plot, and the Soviet reader is not even aware of the existence of five more. And these stories are:

1. The fiery lily depicts the scene of the sacrifice of an Indian widow, who, according to ancient custom, is burned alive on a funeral pyre along with the body of her deceased husband.
2. Bindweed talks about a pretty girl in a knight's castle, who, leaning over the railing of the balcony, looks out in excitement for her lover.
3. The snowdrop speaks in an inexplicably sad voice about two sisters and their little brother: the sisters are swinging on a swing board, and the little brother is blowing soap bubbles nearby.
4. Hyacinths tell about three beautiful sisters who, in the waves of a certain sweet aroma, disappeared into the forest, and then three coffins floated out of the thicket, in which the beauties lay. "The evening bell tolls for the dead!" - ends the story.
5. Narcissus sang about a half-dressed dancer in a closet under the roof, she dresses in all white and clean, dancing.

She read the evening prayer, and the winds subsided, as if asleep.

Why these stories "drop out" of the Soviet edition, one can only guess. There are distant religious allusions in only two - about a bell ringing for the dead, and about an Indian widow. Perhaps they were considered too adult, inaccessible to the understanding of the kids - and Gerda does not understand them, but are they there for something? There is something to think about, in any case: the children's classic turned out to be not so simple.

Prince and Princess

In the next chapter, an inexplicable bill comes across again. Here the raven tells Gerda about the princess who wanted to get married and arranged a casting for the position of her future husband, the prince. From the very doors of the palace stretched a queue of suitors-candidates. Further in the original text, a detail is reported: “The suitors wanted to eat and drink, but even a glass of water was not taken out of the palace. True, those who were smarter stocked up on sandwiches, but the thrifty no longer shared with their neighbors, thinking to themselves: “Let them starve, grow thin - the princess will not take them!” ”What could confuse the censors here is incomprehensible.

Anastasia Arkhipova. Illustration for the fairy tale "The Snow Queen"

Little Robber

In the chapter about the robbers who robbed Gerda, for some reason they decided to hide a small episode from the relationship between the bearded old robber woman and her naughty daughter. Deciding to let her captive go when her mother falls asleep, the little robber jumps out of bed, hugs her mother, pulls her beard and says: “Hello, my little goat!” For this, the mother gave her daughter clicks on the nose, so that the girl's nose turned red and blue. “But all this was done with love,” the author notes. This episode is not in the Soviet edition.

Lapland and Finnish

Further, almost all the interventions of the censor are logical, in any case, understandable. Once in the garden of the Snow Queen, Gerda encounters the "vanguards" of her troops: the girl is attacked by living snowflakes that have turned into monsters. Unlike Kai, who once found himself in a similar situation, Gerda manages to read the prayer "Our Father" - and immediately angels in helmets with shields and spears in their hands come to her aid. The legion of angels defeats the snow monsters, and the girl can now boldly move forward. There is no prayer and no angels in the Soviet fairy tale: Gerda simply boldly goes forward, but it is not clear where the monsters go. However, the “normal” communist logic: a person overcomes dangers on his own, and God has nothing to do with it; Gagarin flew into space - he did not see God, etc.

In the halls of the Snow Queen

In the last chapter, again, according to Andersen, the Lord helps Gerda: "She read the evening prayer, and the winds subsided, as if they had fallen asleep." The Soviet Gerda herself acts as the mistress of the winds: “And before her the winds subsided ...”

Finding Kai cold and indifferent, Gerda began to cry. Her tears melted his frozen heart, he looked at the girl, and she sang that same Christmas psalm:

Roses are blooming... Beauty, beauty!
We will soon see the Christ child.

Vladislav Yerko. Illustration for the fairy tale "The Snow Queen"

And then Kai burst into tears. In the Soviet version, he did not need a psalm for this.

They returned back on a deer, which had previously delivered the girl to the palace of the Snow Queen. In the original, the deer returned for the children not alone, but with a doe. “He brought with him a young deer mother, her udder was full of milk; she made Kai and Gerda drunk with them and kissed them right on the lips. This detail, for unknown reasons, disappears in the Soviet edition.

The fairy tale ends with the children returning home, who discovered that they had grown up during this time. They sit and listen as the grandmother reads the Gospel: “Unless you are like children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven!” And only then did they understand the meaning of the old psalm:

Roses are blooming... Beauty, beauty!
We will soon see the Christ child.

Needless to say, all this is cut out in the publications familiar to us from childhood and the film.

07.01.2016

Many of us at least once read the fairy tale of the famous children's writer Hans Christian Andersen "The Snow Queen" There is probably no better story about the triumph of good over evil and the value of true friendship. So many characters, emotions and feelings are intertwined in this fairy tale that it may well become a good textbook that will tell about human values ​​and shortcomings using examples. So what is the story of the Snow Queen that prompted the writer to come up with such an instructive tale?

The Snow Queen: creation story and autobiographical moments

The fairy tale "The Snow Queen" was written more than 170 years ago and first saw the light of day in the distant 1844. This is the longest fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen, which, moreover, is very closely connected with the life of the writer.


Andersen himself once admitted that he considers The Snow Queen to be the fairy tale of his life. She had lived in it since the time when the little boy Hans Christian played with his neighbor, the blond Lisbeth, whom he called his sister. She accompanied Hans Christian in all games and undertakings, and was also the first listener of his fairy tales. It is very possible that it was this girl from the childhood of a famous writer who became the prototype of little Gerda.


Not only Gerda actually existed. Andersen's biographers state that The Snow Queen was inspired by Swedish opera singer Jenny Lind. with whom the writer was in love.


The cold heart of the girl and unrequited love prompted him to write the story of the Snow Queen - a beauty who is alien to human feelings and emotions.
You can also find information that Andersen was familiar with the image of the Snow Queen from early childhood. In Danish folklore, death was often called the Ice Maiden. When the boy's father was dying, he said that his time had come and the Ice Maiden had come for him. Perhaps Andersen's Snow Queen has much in common with the Scandinavian image of winter and death. Just as cold, just as insensitive. Just one kiss from her can freeze the heart of any person.

History of the Snow Queen: interesting facts

In addition to Scandinavian mythology, the image of the Ice Maiden is also present in other countries. In Japan it is Yuki-onna, and in Russia it is Mara-Morena.
Andersen really liked the image of the Ice Maiden. In his creative heritage there is also the fairy tale “The Maid of Ice”, and the prose “Snow Queen” in seven chapters was given the fairy tale of the same name in verse about the mysterious Snow Queen, who stole her fiancé from a young girl.
The tale was written in a difficult year for history. There is an opinion that the image of the Snow Queen and Gerda Andersen wanted to show the struggle between science and Christianity.
They say that H.-G. Andersen wrote the tale with many grammatical errors. When pointed out by the editors, he pretended it was his idea.

It was Andersen's Snow Queen that inspired the writer Tove Jansson to create "Magic Winter".
It should be mentioned that in the Soviet Union this story was censored. There were no mentions of Christ, the Lord's Prayer and the psalm sung by Kai and Gerda. It was also not mentioned that the grandmother read the Gospel to the children, this moment was replaced with an ordinary fairy tale.


Andersen's fairy tale has gained immense popularity. It was translated into languages ​​of different countries so that the story of the Snow Queen would be known to children all over the world. In addition, there are multiple film adaptations and dramatizations, the most famous of which are the film "The Secret of the Snow Queen" and the cartoon "Frozen". The story of Kai and Gerda became the basis of the opera of the same name.
Be sure to read The Snow Queen again. Now, knowing the history of the creation of this fairy tale, you will definitely discover something new for yourself and realize it in a different way.

We have created more than 300 costless fairy tales on the Dobranich website. It is pragmatic to remake the splendid contribution to sleep at the homeland ritual, the recurrence of turbot and warmth.Would you like to support our project? Let's be vigilant, with new strength we will continue to write for you!

The Snow Queen is a tale of friendship, love and faith that you can read on this page. This is a story about the unbroken spirit of one little girl who goes a very long way. The path seems not only endless, but also hopeless for the sake of saving a person dear to her heart. She meets different people and characters discovers a huge and sometimes very dangerous world, but always finds help and support along the way, and in spite of any obstacles, does not give up.

Fairy tale snow queen like a maze that the more you read, the more ornate it becomes. You can break it into several stories and each will be a special lesson for your child.

Life romanticism in a fairy tale.

Faith can move mountains, hope dies last, and love allows you to work real miracles, even melt icy hearts and tears. In the image of Gerda, a little girl, the author put the power of these three postulates, fearless character, will - what a modern woman should have in order to get and maintain her happiness. And then no Snow Queen will destroy it.

Illustration for The Snow Queen by Wilhelm Pedersen, one of the first fairy tale illustrators by Hans Christian Andersen.

Plot

Story one. Mirror and its fragments

Trolls carrying a mirror.

The evil troll makes a mirror in which all good things seem evil, and evil only catches the eye more brightly. One day, the troll's disciples took this mirror and ran everywhere with it, pointing it at people for fun, and finally decided to get to the sky "to laugh at the angels and the Creator himself."

The higher they climbed, the more the mirror grimaced and writhed from grimaces; they could barely hold it in their hands. But then they got up again, and suddenly the mirror was so warped that it escaped from their hands, flew to the ground and shattered. Millions, billions of its fragments, however, have done even more trouble than the mirror itself. Some of them were no more than a grain of sand, scattered around the wide world, fell, it happened, into people's eyes, and so they remained there. A person with such a fragment in his eye began to see everything inside out or to notice only the bad sides in every thing - after all, each fragment retained the property that distinguished the mirror itself. For some people, the fragments hit right in the heart, and this was the worst: the heart turned into a piece of ice. There were large ones between these fragments, such that they could be inserted into window frames, but it was not worth looking at your good friends through these windows. Finally, there were also such fragments that went on glasses, only the trouble was if people put them on in order to look at things and judge them more correctly! And the evil troll laughed to the point of colic, the success of this invention tickled him so pleasantly.

Original text (Danish)

Jo høiere de fløi med Speilet, des stærkere grinede det, de kunde neppe holde fast paa det; høiere og høiere fløi de, nærmere Gud og Englene; da zittrede Speilet saa frygteligt i sit Griin, at det foer dem ud af Hænderne og styrtede ned mod Jorden, hvor det gik i hundrede Millioner, Billioner og endnu flere Stykker, og da just gjorde det megen større Ulykke end før; thi nogle Stykker vare knap saa store som et Sandkorn, og disse fløi rundt om i den vide Verden, og hvor de kom Folk i Øinene, der bleve de siddende, og da saae de Mennesker Alting forkeert, eller havde kun Øine for hvad der var galt ved en Ting, thi hvert lille Speilgran havde beholdt samme Kræfter, som det hele Speil havde; nogle Mennesker fik endogsaa en lille Speilstump ind i Hjertet, og saa var det ganske grueligt, det Hjerte blev ligesom en Klump Iis. Nogle Speilstykker vare saa store, at de bleve brugte til Rudeglas, men gjennem den Rude var det ikke værd at see sine Venner; andre Stykker kom i Briller, og saa gik det daarligt, naar Folk toge de Briller paa for ret at see og være retfærdige; den Onde loe, saa hans Mave revnede, og det kildede ham saa deiligt.

Second story. boy and girl

Kai and Gerda, a boy and a girl from poor families, are not relatives, but they love each other like brother and sister. Under the roof, they have their own garden "larger than a flower pot", where they breed roses. True, you can’t play in the kindergarten in winter, so they go to visit each other.

In the summer they could find themselves visiting each other with one jump, and in the winter they had to first go down many, many steps down, and then go up the same amount. There was snow in the yard.
- It's swarming white bees! - said the old woman-grandmother.
“Do they also have a queen?” - the boy asked; he knew real bees had one.
- There is! Grandma answered. - Snowflakes surround her in a thick swarm, but she is larger than all of them and never stays on the ground - she always rushes on a black cloud. Often at night she flies through the city streets and looks into the windows; that's why they are covered with ice patterns, like flowers.

Original text (Danish)

Om Sommeren kunde de i eet Spring komme til hinanden, om Vinteren maatte de først de mange Trapper ned og de mange Trapper op; ude fygede Sneen.
“Det er de hvide Bier, som sværme,” sagde den gamle Bedstemoder.
“Har de ogsaa en Bidronning?” spurgte den lille Dreng, for han vidste, at imellem de virkelige Bier er der saadan een.
“Det har de!” sagde Bedstemoderen. “Hun flyver der, hvor de sværme tættest! hun er størst af dem alle, og aldrig bliver hun stille paa Jorden, hun flyver op igjen i den sorte Sky. Mangen Vinternat flyver hun gjennem Byens Gader og kiger ind af Vinduerne, og da fryse de saa underligt, ligesom med Blomster.”

Some time passes. In the summer, Kai and Gerda are sitting in their garden among roses - and then a fragment of the devil's mirror falls into Kai's eye. His heart becomes callous and "icy": he laughs at his grandmother and mocks at Gerda. The beauty of flowers no longer touches him, but he admires snowflakes with their mathematically perfect shapes (“not a single wrong line”). One day he goes sledding and, out of pampering, ties his own, children's, to a luxuriously decorated "adult" sleigh. Suddenly, they accelerate - faster than he could imagine, soar into the air and rush away: he was taken with her by the Snow Queen.

Story three. Flower garden of a woman who knew how to conjure

Gerda goes in search of Kai. In her wanderings, she meets a sorceress who lets her in to spend the night and eventually decides to keep her in order to make her adopted daughter. She puts a spell on Gerda, because of which the latter forgets about her named brother, and magically hides all the roses underground in her garden so that they do not inadvertently remind the heroine of the roof garden that belongs to her and Kai. But she forgets to remove the roses from her hat.

One day this hat catches Gerda's eye. The latter remembers everything and begins to cry. Where her tears flow, the roses hidden by the sorceress bloom. Gerda asks them:

Having received a negative answer, she understands that Kai can still be saved, and sets off on her way.

Story four. Prince and Princess

Leaving the garden of the sorceress, where eternal summer reigns, Gerda sees that autumn has actually come a long time ago, and decides to hurry. On the way, she meets a raven who lives with his bride at the court of the local king. From a conversation with him, she concludes that the princess' fiancé, who appeared from unknown lands, is Kai, and persuades the raven to take her to the palace to look at him. It becomes clear that she was mistaken; but the princess and her fiancé, after listening to Gerda's story about her misadventures, pity her and give her "boots, and a muff, and a wonderful dress," and a golden carriage so that she can quickly find Kai.

Story five. Little Robber

On the way, the carriage is attacked by robbers. They kill postilions, coachmen and servants, and also take away the carriage, horses and expensive clothes of Gerda. The very same Gerda goes to the companions of a little robber, the daughter of the leader of the local gang - ill-mannered, greedy and stubborn, but in fact - lonely. She arranges it in her menagerie; the girl tells her story to the hostess, and the latter is inspired and introduces her to the reindeer - the pride of the menagerie. He tells Gerda about his distant homeland, where the Snow Queen rules:

There you jump at will on the endless sparkling icy plains! There will be a summer tent of the Snow Queen, and her permanent palaces - at the North Pole, on the island of Svalbard!

Original text (Danish)

Der springer man frit om i de store skinnende Dale! Der har Sneedronningen sit Sommertelt, men hendes faste Slot er oppe mod Nordpolen, paa den Ø, som kaldes Spitsberg!

Gerda guesses that it is the Snow Queen who keeps Kai at her place and, with the permission of the little robber, sets off on a reindeer.

Story six. Lapland and Finnish

On the way, Gerda and the deer spend the night with a hospitable Lapland woman, who, after listening to their story, advises travelers to visit a Finnish witch. The deer, following her words, goes with Gerda to the Finn and asks her for the girl "a drink that would give her the strength of twelve heroes." In response, the Finn says that Gerda will not need such a drink: “strength is in her sweet, innocent childish heart.” Having said goodbye to the Finn, Gerda and the reindeer reach the kingdom of the Snow Queen. There they part - the girl must go on herself.

Seventh story. What happened in the halls of the Snow Queen and what happened next

Despite all the obstacles, Gerda gets to the palace of the Snow Queen and finds Kai alone: ​​he is trying to put together the word “eternity” from fragments of ice - such a task was offered to him by the queen before leaving (according to her, if he manages to do this, he will “himself master of himself”, and she will give him “the whole world and a pair of new skates”). At first he cannot understand who she is, but then Gerda sings to him their favorite psalm:

Roses are blooming... Beauty, beauty!
We will soon see the Christ child.

Original text (Danish)

Roserne voxe i Dale,
Der faae vi Barn-Jesus i Tale!

Kai remembers her, and the icicles of joy themselves fold into right word. Now Kai is his own boss. The named brother and sister return home, and it turns out that they are already adults.

Censorship

Parallels in folk tales

In Scandinavian folklore, there are references to the Ice Maiden, the embodiment of winter and death (later this image was developed by many children's writers, in particular, Tove Jansson in "Magic Winter"). They say as if last words Andersen's father were: "Here comes the Ice Maiden and she came to me." Similar characters are known to many peoples - in Japan this is Yuki-onna, in the Slavic tradition, perhaps - Mara-Marena. It is interesting that Andersen himself also has a fairy tale "The Ice Maiden".

Screen adaptations and the use of fairy tales as a literary basis

Screen adaptations

• Tale of Wanderings (film using fairy tale motifs, 1982).
• The Snow Queen (cartoon, 1987) (Czechoslovakia).
• Revenge of the Snow Queen (cartoon, 1996).

Theatre

"The Snow Queen" - a performance by the Arkhangelsk Drama Theater named after M.V. Lomonosov, 2009.

"Gerda's Room" - a performance by the Theater Laboratory of Yana Tumina on the stage of the Osobnyak Theater, St. Petersburg, 2018.

Opera

Ballet

• The Snow Queen (chor. Kenneth Grieve, comp. Tuomas Kantelinen).