The Snow Queen (Kernaghan novel)

The Snow Queen is a 2000 speculative fiction novel by the Canadian writer Eileen Kernaghan. It follows Gerda, a young Danish woman who sets out to the north to rescue her childhood friend Kai from Madame Aurore, a magician known as the Snow Queen. She is joined on her journey by a young Sámi woman, Ritva, the daughter to a shamaness and a robber. Based on Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale "The Snow Queen" (1844), the novel incorporates elements of Scandinavian shamanism and mythology, much of it derived from the epic poem the Kalevala (1835). It also explores feminist themes, reinterpreting several plot elements from Andersen's original with contemporary shifts. The Snow Queen was published by Thistledown Press and received mostly positive reviews. It received the Aurora Award for Best Novel in 2001 and was also nominated for an Endeavour Award.

The Snow Queen

Author	Eileen Kernaghan
Cover artist	Charles Robinson
Publisher	Thistledown Press
Publication date	May 2000
ISBN	978-1-894345-14-9
OCLC	1162809041

Plot summary

In Victorian-era Denmark, Gerda quarrels with her childhood friend Kai after he criticizes her poetry. Having become more interested in scientific pursuits, Kai becomes acquainted with Baroness Aurore – a visiting academic – and decides to take an apprenticeship at her estate in Sweden. After he fails to write back for several months, Gerda sets out to find him. Pretending to leave on a vacation, she travels to Aurore's estate, but discovers the two have gone north for the summer. Meanwhile, a young Sámi woman, Ritva, begins to have spiritual visions and nightmares. As the daughter to a shamaness and a robber, she begins to inherit her mother's powers of prophecy. However, Ritva despises her mother and how she behaves when possessed by spirits, and fears she will eventually have to take her mother's place in the clan.

Gerda continues journeying north, meeting two women who arrange a carriage for her. However, she is kidnapped by Ritva and her clan. Gerda is imprisoned in an abandoned castle through the winter and the following summer, growing increasingly depressed. After conversing with spirits, Ritva eventually decides to escape her clan and join Gerda in finding Kai. They set out in the fall with Ritva's reindeer, meeting a woman along the way who writes a message on a fish and directs them to an old wisewoman. They learn that Aurore is the Snow Queen – a magician with dominion over the northern lands – and plan to journey to her palace. The two join the crew of a northbound ship, but it is struck by pack ice at sea and capsized. The crew reaches a small island with supplies to wait out the winter, but the women continue walking over the frozen sea, coming to Aurore's palace at the North Pole.

Aurore has enchanted Kai to futilely labour in the pursuit of all knowledge, driving him nearly to madness. She offers to release him if they perform three impossible tasks, which the two complete through trickery and magic. Aurore then refuses to return Kai unless Ritva sacrifices her reindeer in exchange. Determined not to abide by her terms, Ritva enchants the palace's inhabitants to sleep. Pursued by Aurore, the two escape with Kai to the southward seas, and are rescued by a vessel heading to the mainland. Gerda discovers that Kai, who she had intended to marry, is no longer as she remembers, and remains solely interested in science. Ritva convinces Gerda that she cannot return to domestic life after her experiences; the two embrace, and Ritva tells her to return soon.

Development and themes

The Snow Queen is based on Hans Christian Andersen's 1844 fairy tale of the same name,^[1] which Kernaghan chose as the primary influence on her novel as it was her favourite work in the genre. She considered her work a "retelling" of the tale, noting that The Snow Queen is the only work for which she adopted this approach. Before the novel, Kernaghan had also published a poem and a short story based on the tale.^[2] However, she felt that the plot of her novel significantly diverges from Andersen's towards the conclusion due to the influence drawn from the Kalevala (1835),^[3] a compilation of Finnish mythology and epic poetry.^[4] The novel also includes elements of northern Scandinavian shamanism;^[5] Kernaghan became interested in literature on the subject while conducting research for her previous work Dance of the Snow Dragon (1995).^[3] She felt that there was a contrast between her novel's "older, darker" elements and Andersen's fiction, which is based in Christianity.^[2] The characters are also markedly older in Kernaghan's rendition, as adolescents, and the scholar Mary-Ann Stouck wrote that their transition into adulthood is depicted through their experiences. By contrast, Andersen's characters are children, and return to an innocent, nescient state by the tale's end.^[6]

Kernaghan stated that the Little Robber Maiden was her favourite character from the original, and intended to build on it to create "uniquely independent female characters".^[7] The Little Robber Maiden appears in the novel as Ritva, a young woman of a Sámi clan.^[8] The literary scholar Peter Bramwell finds aspects of the Lapland woman and Finnmark woman – who, in the original story, respectively write a message on a fish and bind the winds – in Ritva's character.^[4] In contrast with the original character, Ritva takes an active role in the plot, accompanying Gerda on her journey,^[9] a choice shared among several adaptations of Andersen's tale.^[10] The communications scholar Sanna Lehtonen viewed the matrilineal structure of the novel's shamanistic tradition as part of a broader trend in contemporary fiction, rooted in radical feminism, to replace the negative stereotypes associated with witchcraft, supplanting "wicked crones and evil enchantresses" with wise or sympathetic figures.^[11] She also wrote that the women's "way of life offers an alternative" to the depiction of uncleanliness and debauchery that define the men of Ritva's clan.^[12] However, Ritva ultimately rejects her matriarchal heritage in an assertion of individualism as she views her mother as an irritable "hag", which Lehtonen found to be a discouraging conclusion from the perspective of ethnic identity.^[13] She also wrote that the Finnish elements derived from the Kalevala are not clearly delineated from the details drawn from Sámi traditions, such as the presence of natural spirits and the shaman ritual of singing while beating a drum.^[12]

The literary scholar Joanne Findon analysed The Snow Queen as a depiction of the "idea of north" – in reference to Glenn Gould's radio documentary The Idea of North (1967) – and the "imaginative geography" of Arctic landscapes, which she viewed as important aspects of Canadian culture.^[8] According to Lehtonen, Kernaghan's prospective readers would view the north of Europe as a "distant fairytale country" holding the potential for supernatural events to transpire.^[5] Findon wrote that Madame Aurore – her name itself a reference to the northern lights – is "more than a moral force", representing the force of nature in the north in addition to being the antagonist.^[14] Aurore's character also diverges from the Snow Queen of Andersen's tale, and Findon found a closer similarity with the Kalevala's Hag of the North.^[8] The three impossible tasks that Aurore sets Gerda and Ritva are rooted in the epic, and Bramwell wrote that Ritva "proudly [identifies] herself" with the legendary hero Väinö.^[15] Findon also examined the north as a metaphor for adolescent rebellion and metamorphosis.^[8] The landscapes that Gerda encounters grow increasingly supernatural as she approaches the Pole, and Findon wrote that her rising unfamiliarity with her surroundings "[mirrors] her emotional journey" and search for identity as a young adult.^[16] She also felt that the huts of the Lapland and Finnmark women highlight Gerda and Ritva's growth in power on their journey.^[17] Both huts are integrated into the surrounding landscapes, which Findon found reflective of Ritva's connection to the "primal power of the land", and both old women comment on Gerda's hidden inner strength and determination.^[18]

Kernaghan stated in an interview with Strange Horizons that her rendition is a feminist interpretation of the tale,^[19] although she acknowledged that Andersen himself overturns the convention of the fairy tale genre by having his heroine save the boy.^[7] Findon felt that the novel "blurs the conventional boundaries between masculine and feminine" by portraying women as holders of powerful positions, including those related to roles in the home.^[20] Gerda, for example, embroiders a cloth as part of a task to rescue Kai.^[21] Gerda's initiative to pursue her love interest and her employment of deception to achieve her objectives are both roles typically occupied by male characters in traditional tales.^[22] Ritva also communes with the heroes of the Kalevala and assumes their responsibilities when setting out against the Snow Queen. Findon saw this moment as a crossing of traditional gender boundaries, as the legendary heroes are all male.^[9] She also wrote that although the tasks set out by Aurore have the trappings of a fairy tale confrontation, Kernaghan's version "violates gender expectations" by featuring women in all roles of the conflict.^[23] Kernaghan stated that she disliked the more "conventional mid-Victorian ending" of Andersen's original, in which Gerda and Kay^[a] end up together.^[2] By contrast, the novel calls their relationship into question when Kai reveals no emotional warmth towards her, continuing to pursue knowledge.^[24] The literary scholar Naomi Wood wrote that the novel, like other adaptations of the tale, renders Gerda's reunion with Kai "anticlimactic, even pointless"; Kernaghan's version instead focuses on the relationship between Gerda and Ritva, and it is implied that neither choose to settle into domesticity, opting instead to continue journeying together.^[10]

Publication and reception

The Snow Queen spirits Kay^[a] away in the original tale. Kernaghan's novel, by contrast, depicts Kai allured by Aurore's scientific knowledge,^[25] a choice sharply criticized by Russell Blackford.^[26]

The novel was published by Thistledown Press in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, in May 2000,^[27] and received mostly positive critical commentary in science fiction magazines. Reviewers commended the depiction of Gerda and Ritva's relationship.^[28] The Locus reviewer Carolyn Cushman, who appreciated the "strong foil" she felt Ritva created with the milder, city-dwelling Gerda,^[29] a view echoed by the critic and writer Don D'Ammassa in a review for Science Fiction Chronicle, who felt that the relationship between the two was the highlight of the novel.^[30] The writer and critic Russell Blackford, in an article for The New York Review of Science Fiction, wrote that the novel portrays the female protagonists supporting each other and having access to the same opportunities as men, presenting an appealing moral for an audience of teenage girls. However, he disliked the characterization of the antagonist as a woman of scientific accomplishment, which he felt was an attempt by Kernaghan to cater to a potential anti-intellectual stance among her younger readers that he found "completely gratuitous".^[26] Multiple reviewers praised Kernaghan's prose,^[31] including the science fiction writer Paul Di Filippo, in a review for Realms of Fantasy, who found her style to be "quiet, economical, but carefully considered".^[32] In a review for Cinescape, the writer and critic Denise Dumars commended the portrayal of the Sámi peoples in contrast with the Victorian-era Danes, and favourably compared it with the original tale.^[33] Cushman also felt that the novel surpasses the merits of Andersen's original in several aspects, including the ending, which she found "bittersweet".^[29]

Accolades

Accolades received by The Snow Queen

Award ceremony	Year	Category	Result	Ref.
Aurora Awards	2001	Best Novel	Won	[34]
Endeavour Award	2001	Distinguished Novel or Collection	Nominated	[35]

Notes

1. Kay is the spelling of the character's name used by Hans Christian Andersen.