Twinn Swan

Once upon a time, there were two children who were the very best of friends. Their names were Greta and Kai and they lived next to one another. They grew roses, fruits and even vegetables in the window boxes between their two homes. They shared everything they had with each other. Their childhood love was strong, pure and innocent. Since they grew roses in their window box garden, the sight of roses always reminded Greta of her love for Kai.

Not so far away, the devil–in the form of a troll–had made a magic mirror that distorted the appearance of everything it reflected. The mirror diminished the good and beautiful aspects of people and things, and magnified their bad and ugly aspects.

One day, the Devil’s mirror shattered. Tiny broken pieces from the mirror flew across the earth. One piece landed in Kai’s eye. Ever since that incident, everything he saw became vile. Another piece of broken devil’s glass landed in his heart. With that, his heart became cold and cruel.

When cruelty took hold of his heart, Kai smashed the flower boxes that he had created with Greta. After he was done completely destroying their window-box garden, he made fun of Greta’s grandmother. One day during winter, the snow queen arrived. She was attracted to Kai’s cruelty. The Snow Queen kissed him twice. Once to make him immune to the cold and twice to cause him to forget all about Greta.

Kai was as good as gone.

The Journey Back Home

Even though everyone in the town was of the opinion that Kai had drowned in a nearby river, Gerta decides to investigate. She goes to the river and gets into a boat. She throws in a pair of shoes as an offering and the boat carries her away. What Greta does not realise is that the journey to find Kai again is set to be a long and tumultuous one. Along the way, much would happen to Greta.

After floating for many hours, Greta spies a house and she calls out for help. Firstly, Greta asked the old woman who lived in the house for directions. She ended up trapped in her garden until the roses freed her. Secondly, she met a crow who said that he had seen Kai, but it turns out that it was just a clever prince who had married a very wise princess. Thirdly, Greta was captured by a band of robbers, but was eventually set free by their violent female leader who had taken a liking to her. Finally–and in the end–she rode on the back of a reindeer all the way to the North. It was there that she met a Sami woman who told her that her purity of heart was all that she needed to defeat the Snow Queen.

Greta journeyed to the Snow Queen’s castle which was made of ice and surrounded by snowflakes. Inside, she found Kai alone on a completely frozen lake next to the Snow Queen’s throne. Greta hugged Kai’s cold body and began to cry. Her tears melted the shard of mirror in Kai’s heart that had made him so cruel. As genuine emotion began to fill him again, he began to cry. His own tears melted the shard in his eye and he could see things as they actually were once again.

He finally remembered his long lost childhood friend Greta. The two danced and rejoiced. Then, hand in hand, they began the long journey home with the aid of the reindeer, the Sami woman and the robber girl.

Thoughts on Loss

The Snow Queen, known in its original Danish as Snedronningen, is an original fairy tale by Danish author Hans Christian Andersen. It was first published in 1844. One particularly noteworthy moral in the story is that a person’s circumstances tend to shape their views and how they behave. Even though a person cannot be ‘blamed’ for how they behave, they can be cured from a particularly terrible mental and emotional ailment.

In the story, Greta is truly saddened by the loss of her friend and will go through anything to get her childhood friend back. But she knows that it is not only his physical body that she needs to get back, but also his emotional and mental state before he was infected by the negativity of the Devil’s broken shards of glass.

When Greta cries, she is sobbing over not only physically losing Kai, but mentally and emotionally losing him as well. That transition took place even before he was gone physically. She is genuinely sad that she had lost him. Kai, however, does not realise what he has lost; not till the tears of Greta reach him.

But when they do, his heart finally begins to thaw and he returns to his former self.