The White Queen

In northern Norway, a small town called Arendal still holds annual “Winter Lights” ceremonies to honor a queen who supposedly “breathed storms.”

Local archives tell of Elska Haraldsdottir, a noblewoman born during the Little Ice Age (1607–1619), when snow fell for nine months of the year.

Elska’s touch could “blister the skin with cold,” according to her family’s records. They called it witchcraft. She called it a sickness.

At 19, she was imprisoned in her own castle after a servant froze to death near her chamber door.

But the real horror came when the sea itself froze, trapping the trade ships that kept Arendal alive. Desperate, townspeople dragged Elska to the harbor, demanding she “release the sun.”

Witnesses said she wept — and then screamed.

A wall of frost erupted from the ground, killing 118 people in seconds.

Her body was never found, but divers in 1972 discovered something impossible: a perfectly preserved human hand deep within a frozen cavern under the fjord — skin unrotted, nails blue like glass.

DNA results were inconclusive.

When the ice thawed that spring, the sea glowed pale blue for three nights. Locals stopped the festival the following year.