Stories of the Mystic North

 The popularity of the Walt Disney movie Frozen has brought fresh attention to Hans Christian Andersen’s much loved story The Snow Queen. Andersen’s tale of a brave and determined girl who sets out on an epic adventure to rescue her friend from the Snow Queen’s frozen palace has inspired not only this new Disney film, but a very long list of other film, live theatre and fictional adaptations. Versions of Andersen’s wicked queen appear in C.S. Lewis’s Narnia books, in Phillip Pullman’s The Golden Compass, and in countless other retellings. There's a comprehensive list on the SurLaLune Fairy Tales site.

My own reworking of The Snow Queen follows Gerda’s journey quite closely, with the addition of some mythology from the Finnish epic The Kalevala -- but be warned, there’s a twist at the end.