The Snow Queen - Danish

My name is Gerda, and my best friend in the whole world was a boy named Kai. We lived next door to each other in a big city, where our families grew beautiful roses in window boxes that stretched between our homes. One winter, everything changed because of a story about an evil troll's magic mirror, a mirror that made everything good and beautiful look ugly. This is the story of The Snow Queen. The mirror shattered into a million tiny pieces, and one of those tiny, icy slivers flew into Kai’s eye and another into his heart. Suddenly, my kind, cheerful Kai became grumpy and cold. He made fun of our lovely roses and didn't want to play with me anymore. He stomped on the flowers and said mean things that he never would have said before. I was so sad and confused, and I missed my friend more than anything. I would look at his window, hoping to see the old Kai, but he just seemed to get colder and colder every day, just like the winter weather.

One day, while Kai was playing in the town square with his sled, a magnificent white sleigh appeared, pulled by horses as white as snow. The driver was a tall, beautiful woman wrapped in white fur, and her skin glittered like frost. It was the Snow Queen. She offered Kai a ride, and because his heart was cold, he thought she was wonderful and climbed in. She wrapped him in her fur coat, gave him a kiss that made him forget all about me and his home, and then she whisked him away to her frozen palace in the far, far north. No one knew where he had gone, but I refused to believe he was gone forever. So, I put on my little red shoes and decided I would find him, no matter what. My journey was long and difficult. I sailed down a river in a small boat, met a kind old woman with a magical garden who tried to make me forget Kai, and was helped by a clever crow who led me to a kind prince and princess. I even met a friendly robber girl who gave me her reindeer, Bae, to carry me the rest of the way to the Snow Queen's land. Every step was a challenge, but the thought of my friend Kai kept me going.

Finally, after a long, cold ride on Bae's back, I arrived at the Snow Queen’s palace of ice. It was enormous and glittered under the northern lights, but it was terribly cold and empty. I found Kai inside, all alone in a giant, frozen hall. He was trying to spell the word 'eternity' with flat shards of ice. He was blue with cold and didn't even recognize me when I called his name. My heart broke to see him like that, and I ran to him and gave him a big hug, but he was as stiff as an icicle. I began to cry, and I couldn't stop. As my warm tears fell on his chest, they melted the piece of the troll's mirror in his heart. He started to cry too, and his own tears washed the other sliver from his eye. He looked at me and shouted, “Gerda.”. He was my Kai again. Together, we journeyed home, and everything we passed seemed joyful and new. This story, first written down on November 5th, 1844, by a wonderful storyteller named Hans Christian Andersen, reminds us that love and friendship are powerful enough to melt even the coldest ice. It has inspired so many movies, books, and dreams, showing children everywhere that a brave and loving heart can overcome any obstacle.