The origin of one of my most important stories · 10:52pm May 22nd, 2015
Would you believe that my inspiration for a goddess of love named Ardor was a story about the Snow Maiden?
No, not her.
A much older story than Hans Christian Andersen's Snow Queen is the Russian fairy tale of the Snow Maiden. Unlike the Snow Queen, which is a parable about having one's soul saved by either the power of love, or the power of God, or something like that, Snegurochka is closer to the Oglaf version than the Disney version--she dies because she foolishly wants mortal companionship. Interestingly, the Hans Christian Andersen version has a happy ending, whereas the Russian story has a kind of Red Riding Hood vibe to it where the character is a young child who dies as punishment for her foolishness and/or disobedience to her parents.
None of the Google searches I used to find those links gave me any clue as to where we got the idea that someone had to kill either the Snow Queen or Snegurochka in order to end an eternal winter.
Which is funny, because Jonathon Keats did use that element of the story when he wrote his own short story about Snegurochka that I heard because he read it on an NPR show called Selected Shorts. It's a beautiful, beautiful story in which the mysterious young girl who must be slain in order to bring back the sun falls in love with an unlikely hero (think Luka) and neither of them are ever seen again.
And yes, in his version, the Snow Maiden's name is Ardor--an intentionally ironic name, because it is associated with warmth. In this case, the warmth of mortal love.
