Northern Genealogies in ‘The Snow Queen’ and Frozen

• Published in: Nordlit
• Main Author: Bartnæs, Morten
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Septentrio Academic Publishing 2020
• Subjects: The Snow Queen; Sneedronningen; H. C. Andersen; Frozen; Genealogy; Northerness; Arctic literature; Arctic
• Online Access: https://septentrio.uit.no/index.php/nordlit/article/view/5478; https://doi.org/10.7557/13.5478

H. C. Andersen’s ‘The Snow Queen’ (1844) and its self-professed adaptation Frozen (2013) both maintain a combined focus on origins and development. I approach the two texts as narratives that explain aspects of human life by showing how they came into being – as accounts that, although not primarily historical, are still bound up with genealogical ways of thinking: how, and from what beginnings, do humans and their communities evolve? What happens in the transition from non-existence to being? In both texts, the northern setting is a requisite part of these narratives of development – in the dual sense of growth and emergence. In this article, I describe the interaction between the texts’ genealogical discourses and their northern settings. I also discuss how the two texts reflect and rephrase current and past discourses where northerness is associated with genealogical issues.