Gerda Travels to the Snow Queen's Castle

Gerda Travels to the Snow Queen's Castle carries Gerda from the Robber Castle’s dangerous shelter into the frozen country where Kay is held. The journey narrows from a long passage across northern wilderness to an exposed approach on foot, then turns into a confrontation with the Snow Queen’s Living Snowflake Sentries. Its decisive revelation is that Gerda does not need strength bestowed by another: her purity and innocence are already the power that can bring her to Kay.

Departure and the Northern Route

The journey begins with practical help from the Robber-girl, who gives Gerda two loaves and a ham, fastens the provisions to the Reindeer, and cuts the cord holding him. She sends him off with Gerda, charging him to take care of the child. Gerda reaches out a mittened hand in farewell as the Reindeer carries her over stumps and stones, through forest, marshes, and plains. Wolves howl and ravens cry; red lights tremble overhead, and the Reindeer recognizes them as the northern lights. He runs day and night, faster and faster, until the food is gone by the time they arrive in Lapland.

The journey is also driven by news of Kay. Before Gerda reaches the northern huts, Wood Pigeons have told her that they saw him in the Snow Queen’s carriage, with a white fowl carrying his sledge. They saw the carriage pass through the wood; the Snow Queen’s breath killed all the young pigeons in their nest except the two who survived to tell the story. The pigeons think she was likely travelling to Lapland, and point Gerda toward the Reindeer. Their report gives her a direction, but not certainty about Kay’s destination. The Lapland woman’s information and the later arrival in Finland gradually bring the search closer to its goal.

The Lapland Woman and the Message on Fish

The first stop is a low, mean-looking hut whose roof nearly reaches the ground and whose door requires its occupants to crawl. Inside, an old Lapland woman cooks fish by the light of a train-oil lamp. The Reindeer tells their stories, though he begins with his own, which he considers more important; Gerda is so chilled that she cannot speak. The woman says they must travel more than a hundred miles farther, to Finland, where the Snow Queen now lives and burns Bengal lights every evening.

With no paper available, the Lapland woman writes a few words on a dried stock-fish and entrusts it to Gerda for the Finland woman. After Gerda has warmed herself and eaten and drunk, the woman ties her back onto the Reindeer. Blue northern lights flash through the night as they travel. At the Finland woman’s hut, which has no ground-level door, they enter through the chimney. The heat is so intense that the Finland woman wears scarcely any clothes; she loosens Gerda’s dress and removes her fur boots and mittens, then places ice on the Reindeer’s head. She reads the message three times, memorizes it, and puts the edible fish into her soup rather than waste it.

What the Finland Woman Reveals

The Reindeer asks the Finland woman to give Gerda the power of twelve men so that she can overcome the Snow Queen. He praises the woman’s command over the winds, describing how sailors can release knots in a piece of twine to summon winds of increasing force, up to storms capable of uprooting forests. But the woman rejects the idea that extra strength would help. She reads from a large skin marked with strange characters, then explains privately to the Reindeer that Kay is indeed with the Snow Queen. He finds everything there so agreeable that he believes it to be the finest place in the world.

The woman identifies the cause: a fragment of broken glass is in Kay’s heart and another in his eye. Unless they are removed, he will never again be a human being, and the Snow Queen will retain her power over him. This account links Kay’s condition to the Demon’s looking-glass, whose fragments distort perception and can make a heart cold. The danger is therefore not simply that Kay has been taken far away; the glass has altered how he sees and feels, making the Snow Queen’s domain seem desirable to him.

The Finland woman says she can give Gerda no greater power than she already possesses. Her strength, she explains, consists in her purity and innocence of heart, evident in how people and animals have helped her and how far she has travelled barefoot. If Gerda cannot reach the Snow Queen and remove the glass herself, the northern women can do nothing to help. The woman directs the Reindeer to carry Gerda two miles farther, to a large bush covered with red berries where the Snow Queen’s garden begins, and tells him to return without lingering.

The Living Guards and the Final Approach

When Gerda feels the cutting cold again, she cries out that she has forgotten her boots and mittens. The Reindeer does not dare stop. He carries her to the red-berried bush, sets her down, kisses her, and leaves with tears running over his cheeks. The tenderness of the parting marks the end of the protection he can offer. Gerda stands alone, without shoes or gloves, in the ice-bound country of Finland, and runs forward as quickly as she can.

A regiment of snowflakes gathers around her, moving along the ground rather than falling from the clear sky, which glitters with northern lights. They grow larger as they approach. Gerda remembers how magnified snowflakes had looked through a burning-glass, but these are larger still and truly alive: the Snow Queen’s Living Snowflake Sentries. Their dazzling white bodies take threatening shapes, including porcupines, twisted serpents with outstretched heads, and bristling little bears. The image of magnification shifts from an effect of glass to a physical danger surrounding Gerda.

Gerda repeats the Lord’s Prayer. In the intense cold, her breath emerges visibly like steam, and as she continues, the steam gathers into forms that grow into Angels when they touch the ground. They wear helmets and carry spears and shields; their numbers increase until a legion stands around her. They thrust their spears into the snow-creatures, shattering them into pieces. The Angels also stroke Gerda’s hands and feet, easing the cold, so she can go forward safely and courageously toward the Palace of the Snow Queen. The apparent source of her power is neither the Finland woman’s knowledge nor the Reindeer’s strength, but the prayer that gives her breath a protective form.

As the narrative turns toward what Kay is doing, the contrast sharpens: he does not think of Gerda and never suspects that she is standing in front of the palace. She has crossed the distance and broken through the guards, but the rescue itself still lies ahead. The journey ends at the threshold of the Snow Queen’s domain, with Gerda advancing alone and Kay unaware of how near she has come.