They stopped by a little hut, a very poverty-stricken one; the roof sloped right down to the ground, and the door was so low that the people had to creep on hands and knees when they wanted to go in or out.  There was nobody at home here but an old Lapp woman, who was frying fish over a train-oil lamp.  The reindeer told her all Gerda’s story, but it told its own first; for it thought it was much the most important.  Gerda was so overcome by the cold that she could not speak at all.

‘Oh, you poor creatures!’ said the Lapp woman; ’you’ve got a long way to go yet; you will have to go hundreds of miles into Finmark, for the Snow Queen is paying a country visit there, and she burns blue lights every night.  I will write a few words on a dried stock-fish, for I have no paper.  I will give it to you to take to the Finn woman up there.  She will be better able to direct you than I can.’

So when Gerda was warmed, and had eaten and drunk something, the Lapp woman wrote a few words on a dried stock-fish and gave it to her, bidding her take good care of it.  Then she tied her on to the reindeer again, and off they flew.  Flicker, flicker, went the beautiful blue northern lights up in the sky all night long;—­at last they came to Finmark, and knocked on the Finn woman’s chimney, for she had no door at all.

There was such a heat inside that the Finn woman went about almost naked; she was little and very grubby.  She at once loosened Gerda’s things, and took off the mittens and the boots, or she would have been too hot.  Then she put a piece of ice on the reindeer’s head, and after that she read what was written on the stock-fish.  She read it three times, and then she knew it by heart, and put the fish into the pot for dinner; there was no reason why it should not be eaten, and she never wasted anything.

Again the reindeer told his own story first, and then little Gerda’s.  The Finn woman blinked with her wise eyes, but she said nothing.

‘You are so clever,’ said the reindeer, ’I know you can bind all the winds of the world with a bit of sewing cotton.  When a skipper unties one knot he gets a good wind, when he unties two it blows hard, and if he undoes the third and the fourth he brings a storm about his head wild enough to blow down the forest trees.  Won’t you give the little girl a drink, so that she may have the strength of twelve men to overcome the Snow Queen?’

‘The strength of twelve men,’ said the Finn woman.  ’Yes, that will be about enough.’

She went along to a shelf and took down a big folded skin, which she unrolled.  There were curious characters written on it, and the Finn woman read till the perspiration poured down her forehead.

But the reindeer again implored her to give Gerda something, and Gerda looked at her with such beseeching eyes, full of tears, that the Finn woman began blinking again, and drew the reindeer along into a corner, where she whispered to it, at the same time putting fresh ice on its head.