Snow Queen

         It’s an unseasonably warm, windy, rainy day here, and all our snow is gone.  But we can still be in the seasonal spirit by considering the Snow Queen.  Hans Christian Andersen’s is the most famous, and today I have a couple of illustrations of that fairy tale, by Dugald Stewart Walker in 1914.  There are many illustrations of the Snow Queen, but I’ve picked these as being closest to the block print vibe, even though they’re presumably pen and ink.  At any rate, here’s the Snow Queen materializing from a snowflake.  I particularly like the snowy city below and the background of the sky.  Then I also have a tailpiece illustration which shows little demon babies falling with the snow, which obviously would be scary, but kind of amuses me because it’s so different from my usual image of snowflakes as fairies or butterflies or something happy-pretty.

          As for Andersen’s tale, I’ve never much liked it (I’m afraid I’m not a big fan of most of Anderson’s stories), although it does have some interesting imagery, such as snow-bees, and the shards of distorting mirror.  However, Andersen’s is not the only Snow Queen in fiction.  The Disney movie “Frozen” was vaguely inspired by Andersen’s “The Snow Queen,” but takes the character in a completely different direction.  (You can read my review of the movie here.)  Then there’s C.S. Lewis’s White Witch from The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, who may also have been inspired by Andersen’s Snow Queen, and is certainly very similar in being a cold, heartless antagonist who rides in a sleigh and freezes people.  I feel sure there must be others, and I feel sure the general idea must predate Andersen, but I can’t cite any characters.  Can you?

        Finally I have a somewhat strange color woodcut by Andrea G Artz from 2024.  This represents a figure sculpted of snow, which was part of a large project that apparently included digital work, video, etc.  I don’t know that this Snow Queen has anything to do with Andersen or other folklore, but I can see the figures in the background as trolls!  It’s certainly a very different style and emotion.

        Maybe next time we have snow I’ll have to build a snow queen of my own.  But I wouldn’t want mine to be a mere cold-hearted villain with all those stereotypes.  No, I think she’d be gently blanketing all the roots and burrows to keep them safe through the winter, and she’d be all about sparkling and shining light.  How do you imagine a Snow Queen?

[Pictures: “The biggest snowflake became the figure of a woman,” illustration by Dugald Stewart Walker from Fairy Tales from Hans Christian Andersen, 1914;

Tailpiece of “The Snow Queen,” illustration by Walker (Images from New York Public Library, Internet Archive);

Snow Queen, woodcut by Andrea G Artz, 2024 (Image from Ghost Weight Fine Art).]