The Snow Queen (Eileen Kernaghan novel)

The Snow Queen is a 2000 speculative fiction novel by Canadian writer Eileen Kernaghan.

Plot summary
Gerda, a young woman living in Victorian era Denmark, has a disagreement 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. Against Gerda's wishes, he eventually decides to accompany Aurore as her apprentice back to her estate in Sweden. After Kai fails to write back to his family for several months, Gerda sets out to pursue him. Under the pretense of joining her friend on a vacation in Copenhagen, she hires a carriage and travels to Aurore's estate. However, she discovers both Aurore and Kai have left for another residence further north to spend the summer. Having expended her money on traveling, she is housed by a local woman until she can acquire the funds to return home.

Meanwhile, a young Sámi woman, Ritva, begins to have spiritual visions and nightmares. As the daughter of a shamaness and a bandit, she begins to inherit her mother's powers of prophecy and clairvoyance. However, Ritva despises her mother's overbearing demeanor and how she behaves when possessed by spirits, and fears she will eventually have to take her mother's place in the clan.

Gerda, deceiving her parents by claiming she needs money for a new dress, receives the requisite funds to travel and takes a stagecoach to Uppsala to continue journeying north. Along the way, she meets retired adventurer Madame Eriksson and her friend, a princess from a southern kingdom, who outfit Gerda with winter supplies and arrange a carriage for her to travel through the wilderness in the north. However, she is waylaid by a group of bandits led by Ritva, who kidnap Gerda and murder her attendants. Gerda is imprisoned in an abandoned castle controlled by Ritva's father's clan.

Through the winter and the following summer, Gerda is held captive, growing increasingly depressed. Ritva eventually decides to escape from her clan and join Gerda in her pursuit of Kai, stealing her mother's shamanistic artifacts and going on a short spiritual journey to foresee their path. They set out in the fall with Ritva's reindeer, meeting an old woman in Finnmark; they learn from her that Aurore is the Snow Queen, and plan their journey to her palace at the edge of the world, the North Pole. The two women join the crew of a ship bound for Svalbard, but the vessel is struck by pack ice at sea and capsized. The crew reach a small island with enough supplies to wait out the winter, but the women continue northward on foot over the frozen sea, passing the Cave of the North Wind to come to Aurore's palace at the Pole.

Aurore has enchanted Kai to futilely labor in the pursuit of all knowledge on the Mirror of Reason, driving him nearly to madness. Aurore offers to release him if the two women perform a series of impossible tasks. They complete the assignments through trickery and magic, but Aurore then refuses to return Kai unless Ritva sacrifices her reindeer in exchange. The two are determined not to abide by her terms, and Ritva enchants the palace's inhabitants to sleep. The two escape with Kai by boat, taking with them a chest containing the key to Aurore's magic. Aurore pursues them by ship to reclaim it, and in an ensuing confrontation the chest's contents are spilled into the sea, revealing to Kai that his labor was a fruitless deceit.

The group escapes southward and are rescued by a vessel on its way to the mainland. Gerda discovers that Kai, who she had intended to marry, is no longer the same as she remembers, and remains more interested in scientific endeavors. Ritva convinces Gerda that she cannot return to a domestic life after her experiences while traveling; the two embrace, and Ritva tells her to return to the north soon.

Development and themes
The Snow Queen is based on Hans Christian Andersen's 1844 fairy tale of the same name, which Kernaghan chose as the primary influence in her novel as it is her favorite work in the genre. Before writing her novel, Kernaghan also published a poem and a short story based on the tale. She considers her novel a "retelling" of Andersen's original story, and notes that The Snow Queen is the only work for which she adopted this compositional approach. The novel also draws influence from the Kalevala (1835), a compilation of Karelian and Finnish mythology and epic poetry. Kernaghan found a contrast between its "older, darker" elements and Andersen's fiction which is based in Christianity.

In a 2005 interview with Strange Horizons, Kernaghan commented that she had applied a feminist aspect to her rendition, a view echoed by writer and critic Russell Blackford in an article for The New York Review of Science Fiction. He also wrote that the novel presents an appealing moral for an audience of teenage girls, portraying the female protagonists supporting each other and having access to the same opportunities as men. Kernaghan acknowledged that Andersen overturns the conventions of the genre by having the story's heroine save the boy, and intended to build on the Little Robber Maiden's character, allowing her to create "uniquely independent female characters". Kernaghan stated that she disliked the more "conventional mid-Victorian ending" of Andersen's original, in which Gerda and her love interest Kai end up together, opting instead to allow Gerda and Ritva to continue on their journey. Locus reviewer Carolyn Cushman felt that Ritva – the more insubordinate and self-sufficient of the two – creates a "strong foil" with the milder, city-dwelling Gerda.

Publication and reception
The novel was published by Thistledown Press in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, in May 2000, and received critical commentary in science fiction magazines. Blackford thought the novel was an "engaging fantasy", particularly appreciating the character-focused conclusion, which he found "touching". However, he disliked the characterization of Madame Aurore – the novel's antagonist, who is later revealed to be the Snow Queen – as a woman of scientific accomplishment, a choice he found "completely gratuitous" and an unwarranted attempt by Kernaghan to cater to a potential anti-intellectual stance among her younger readers. Science fiction writer Paul Di Filippo praised Kernaghan's "quiet, economical, but carefully considered" writing style in a review published in Realms of Fantasy. Cushman called the story "intelligent [and] magical", and felt that it surpasses the merits of Andersen's original in several aspects, including the ending which she found "bittersweet". In a review for Cinescape, writer and critic Denise Dumars commended the portrayal of the Sámi peoples in contrast with the Victorian society, and felt the novel was a "wonderful retelling" of the original tale. The Snow Queen received the Aurora Award for Best Novel in 2001, and was also nominated for an Endeavour Award in the Distinguished Novel or Collection category.