Ice, Snow and Frozen Landscapes

Ice and snow can alter both the appearance of a landscape and the conditions for moving through it. Water may acquire a solid surface, familiar landmarks may be covered and an open route may become blocked by accumulated snow.

Everyday expressions draw on coldness, freezing and thawing to describe relationships, delays and changes of state. Being frozen in place, skating across a surface and sinking into deep snow present different experiences of movement.

Types and Characteristics

• Surface ice: A frozen layer on water, ground or another surface. Its visible extent does not by itself establish its thickness or strength.
• Fresh snow: An accumulation of ice crystals with air spaces between them.
• Compacted snow: Snow whose structure has become denser under pressure or through changing conditions.
• Snowdrifts: Accumulations redistributed by wind, which can fill hollows or build up against obstacles.
• Slush: A wet mixture of snow or ice and liquid water.
• Glaciers: Bodies of ice that form through accumulated snow and move under their own weight.

The National Snow and Ice Data Center explains that snow's structure changes with weather conditions. Air within the snowpack also helps it insulate the ground beneath it. The same covering can therefore obscure a surface while reducing its heat loss. National Snow and Ice Data Center: Science of Snow

Frozen Material and Movement

A glacier provides an example of solid ice in motion. As accumulated snow becomes ice and the mass grows, the ice deforms and flows. Frozen material can therefore move even when its movement is not immediately apparent to an observer. National Snow and Ice Data Center: Science of Glaciers

In a described landscape, temperature, surface texture and the availability of a route are distinct features. A thaw may open a frozen waterway while turning a firm snowy surface into slush. Whether a change assists movement depends on the traveller and the route.

Literary Examples

Hans Christian Andersen's The Snow Queen combines snow and ice with a damaged mirror, altered perception and separation. Splinters from the mirror enter Kay's eye and heart. He later lives in the Snow Queen's frozen surroundings, where Gerda finds him. Her tears reach his heart and melt the ice there. Hans Christian Andersen: The Snow Queen

The story brings together a frozen setting and an image of a frozen heart. This relationship belongs to Andersen's narrative. Other stories can use snow for concealment, play, beauty or shelter without giving it the same significance.

Close reading: freedom made conditional on the ice puzzle

In the seventh story of The Snow Queen, Kay tries to arrange pieces of ice into the word eternity. The Snow Queen has promised:

If you can discover that figure, you shall be your own master

Excerpt from the Snow Queen’s speech as reported by the narrator, Hans Christian Andersen, “The Snow Queen”, seventh story, in Andersen’s Fairy Tales, Project Gutenberg eBook 1597.

The conditional sentence makes self-direction a reward controlled by someone else. Kay can manipulate the ice and think intensely without achieving the promised release. The scene therefore distinguishes activity within a constraint from freedom to leave it. His difficulty is not simply that cold material cannot move: the pieces can be rearranged while his situation remains fixed.

Gerda’s arrival changes the relations that sustain the task. Her tears reach his heart; his own tears clear his eye; recognition returns. In this telling, the ice pieces subsequently form the required word in their movement of joy. Release comes through a changed encounter and perception, rather than the solitary reasoning that had occupied him.

The Snow Queen develops these events alongside the mirrors, helpers and Christian frame of the tale. Its principal text is a different Gutenberg collection, eBook 27200; the wording quoted here belongs specifically to eBook 1597. In an editorial comparison with everyday expressions, being frozen out concerns exclusion, while being frozen in place concerns restricted movement. Neither phrase by itself supplies Kay’s bargain or the story’s solution.

Idioms

• On thin ice: In a precarious position where another mistake may have serious consequences.
• Break the ice: Begin an interaction in a way that reduces awkwardness.
• Frozen out: Excluded from participation or involvement.
• Put something on ice: Postpone it or suspend its development.
• Snowed under: Overwhelmed by the quantity of work or demands.
• A frosty reception: An unfriendly or unwelcoming response.
• A cold shoulder: Deliberate unfriendliness or disregard.
• A thaw in relations: A reduction in hostility or distance between people or groups.
• The tip of the iceberg: The visible part of something much larger.
• A snowball effect: A process that grows as its results generate further effects.

Wordplay

Freeze can describe water becoming solid, movement stopping, a computer ceasing to respond or a decision to hold something at its existing level. Thaw can describe melting and an easing of reserve or hostility. These are different uses of the same words.

Related Pages

Lakes, Oceans, Hills and Mountains, Heart, Atmospheres.

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