Story Saturday: The King of the Frozen Lands

Once again, I promised a fellow storyteller to give them the bones of a Hungarian folktale - and since I am scheduling this post ahead of time, I might as well do it now. In the middle of a heat wave in Hungary, maybe a winter tale will cool things off a little...

Jégország királya (The King of the Frozen Lands)
Collected & published by Elek Benedek here.
(Not quite the way I tell it, but this is the original version)

- Poor man has an incredible number of sons, each apprentices for a different craft; the youngest doesn't have anything left for him - decides that he will be a king, or die trying
- blacksmith brother makes him three pairs of iron shoes, mother bakes him three pieces of ash bread, off he goes, travels for a long time, wears down the first pair of shoes
- arrives to the Black Kingdom (everything is black), asks the steward of the castle if they need a king - he laughs at the boy, the king has many children
- goes on, wears off second pair of shoes, arrives to the Red Kingdom (everything is red), goes to the king and asks if he is looking for an heir
- Red King has an only daughter, and is at war with his neighbor, the King of the Frozen Lands; sent many soldiers, but they all froze. The Ice King is all made of ice, he can freeze half the lands with his breath
- with the last pair of iron shoes the boy sets out to defeat the Ice King. He arrives to a little hut and asks the old woman there for shelter. The old woman says her son is the Sun, and they should not wake him
- in the morning János (the boy) asks the Sun politely to shine on the Frozen Kingdom. The Sun says he only helps people who deserve it - János has to prove his worth first
- János goes north and arrives to mountains that touch the sky - the border of the Frozen Lands
- hears a noise - finds a polar bear that has a splinter in its foot - the Ice King was hunting, and the bear got over the mountains to get away
- János helps the bear - gets a hair from him to be able to call when in need
- climbs halfway up the mountain - meets three dwarves around a fire - their beards are frozen - they escaped from the Frozen Lands, try to talk János out of going there - he helps them thaw their beards out, and in exchange they give him a whistle and a promise to help
- János gets to the top - has to lie down and crawl through between the sky and the mountaintop
- on the inside everything is frozen ("I should have become a shoemaker...")
- pulls out the hair, the polar bear appears - asks him to take him down the mountain - bear warns him, "you will freeze" - goes anyway
- they get to the bottom of the mountain, János falls off the bear, starts to freeze from the ground up
- blows the whistle - dwarves appear - sends them to the Sun to tell the story
- János freezes completely, polar bear lies down to guard him
- dwarves go and tell the Sun everything - the next day the Sun makes a change on his way and shines above the Frozen Lands - everything thaws, the animals, the plants, the red armies
- János thaws - now he has a crown of ice and a specter of ice
- mounts the polar bear and leads the armies to the castle of the Ice King - it has already melted, with the king in it
- János becomes the new Ice King - marries the Red Princess - they spend winters in the Red Kingdom, and summers in the Frozen Lands - brings all his family to his kingdom as well

(It was fun to re-read the original version, after I have been telling this story for several years. My version is essentially still the same, but there were also changes I didn't even notice I made. Note: It is an interesting exercise to sometimes go back and see how much your stories changed through repeated telling...)