Olaf had had a frozen heart for more than a month when the royal doctor said that he had finally died. He was buried on a cool winter day in a small cemetery about a mile from the castle.
"May he always rest in such peace," the queen said.
But he didn't. Late that night a shopkeeper with a pickaxe and a jar of lutefisk began to dig him up. Since the ground was still soft, he quickly reached the coffin and got it open.
His hunch was right. Olaf had been buried wearing two valuable stick arms: a golden arm with a diamond in it, and a silver arm with a ruby that glowed as if it were alive.
The shopkeeper got down on his knees and reached into the coffin to get the arms. But they were frozen fast on Olaf's body. So he decided that the only way to get them out was to pull them off.
But when he wrapped his arms around Olaf to pull out the sticks, the warm hug thawed his frozen heart, and Olaf stirred.
Suddenly he sat up! Terrified, the shopkeeper scrambled to his feet. He accidentally kicked over the jar of lutefisk, and panicked over the lost profits that he could have made from selling it later.
He could hear Olaf climb out of his grave. As he moved past him in the dark, he stood there frozen with fear, clutching the pickaxe in his hand.
When Olaf saw him, he pulled his ice shroud around him and said, "Hi! I'm Olaf and I like warm hugs!" When the shopkeeper heard this "corpse" speak, he ran! Olaf shrugged his shoulders and walked on to the castle, and never once looked back.
In his fear and confusion, the shopkeeper fled in the wrong direction. He pitched headlong into Olaf's grave and fell facefirst on the lutefisk. While Olaf walked home, the shopkeeper tasted the disgusting food in his mouth that he would have much rather sold to unsuspecting ice harvesters.