The Snow Queen

First story (a fairy tale in seven stories) — about the mirror and itswhich deals with the mirror and the shards of glass.

Now, look! Time to start. When we’re at the end of the story we’ll know more than we do now. For it is about an evil troll, a magical creature—one of the very worst. Itnow, for it has to do with an evil troll! one of the very worst – it was ‘the devil’! One day he was in a really good mood. Hemood, for he had made a mirror that shrankwhich had the property of reducing everything good and beautiful beautiful that was reflected in it to practically nothing. But whatever was uselessnothing, while whatever was fit for nothing and looked bad became more noticeable andgrew more pronounced and became even worse. The loveliest landscapes looked like boiled spinach in it, and the best of people turned ugly or stood on their heads with no stomach. Their, their faces became so distorted that they were unrecognisable, and if someone had a freckle, you could be sureone could be sure that it spread out over both nose and mouth. It was most amusing, ‘the devil’ said. If a good, holygood pious thought went through someone’s mind,the mind of a person, a grin appeared in the mirror. That mademirror, so that the troll devil devil had to laugh at his cleveringenious invention. Everyone who went to troll school—fora troll school – for he ran such a place—spread the newsplace – said far and wide that a miracle had happened. Now, they thought, you could seetaken place; now for the first time time one could really see, they felt, what the world and people really looked like. They ran around with the mirror, and finally there wasn’t a country or a single person that had not been distorted in it. Now they wanted to fly up to Heaven itself to make fun of the angels and the ‘Good Lord’. The higher they flew with the mirror, the louder it laughed. Theylaughed, they could hardly hold onto it. Higherit; higher and higher they flew, closer to God and the angels. Thenangels; then the mirror shook so violently as it grinned that it shot out of their hands and crashed down onto the ground, where it shattered into hundreds of millions, billions and even more pieces. That, and that was precisely when it caused even more misfortune than before. Some of the pieces were barely, for some of the pieces were scarcely as big as a grain of sand, and these flew over the whole wide world. When, and wherever they got into people’s eyes, they stayed there. Thenput and then those people saw everything the wrong way, or could only seewrong, or only had eyes for what was bad about something. Everysomething, for every speck of the mirror had keptretained the same power as the whole mirror. Somemirror had possessed; some people even got a tiny mirror-shard in their heart, and that was quite horrible – the heart became like a lump of ice. Some pieces of the mirror were so large that they were used for window-panes. But it was no use looking at your friends through such a window. Other pieceswindow-panes, but it wasn’t worth looking at one’s friends through that window; others were put in spectacles. Thingsspectacles, and things went badly when people put on those glasses glasses so as to see clearly and judge fairly. Thebe just; the evil one laughed till his stomach burst, and that tickled him so wonderfully. But outside small shards of glass were still flying around everywhere in the air. As we shall nownow shall hear!