Hans Westergard was dead. He had been executed. They bought him a coffin and buried him.
But that night he got out of his coffin, and he came to a forest. He saw a troll family that was sitting around the fire when he walked in.
He sat down next to his former fiancee, Anna, and he said, "What's going on? You all act like somebody had died. Who's dead?"
Anna said, "You are."
"I don't feel dead," he said. "I feel fine."
"You don't look fine," Anna said. "You look dead. You'd better get back to the grave where you belong."
"I'm not going back to the grave until I feel dead," he said.
Since Hans wouldn't go back, Anna couldn't collect the Southern Isles' reward for sending him back there. Without that, she would have to pay for the coffin out of her own pocket. And she would have preferred not to do that.
Hans didn't care. He just sat by the trolls' campfire rocking in a chair and warming his hands and feet. But his joints were cold and his heart was frozen, and every time he moved, the ice creaked and cracked.
One night the best ice harvester and mandolin player in the kingdom came to court Anna. Since Hans was dead, the ice harvester had begun dating her and wanted to marry her. The two of them sat on one side of the fire holding hands, and Hans sat on the other side, creaking and cracking.
"How long do we have to put up with this dead corpse?" Anna asked.
"Something must be done," the ice harvester said.
"This isn't very jolly," Hans said. "Let's dance!"
The ice harvester got out his mandolin and began to play "Reindeers Are Better Than People". Hans stretched himself, shook himself, got up, took a step or two, and began to dance.
With his old frozen bones rattling, and his blue teeth snapping, and his thin sideburns wagging, and his arms flip-flopping, around and around he went.
With his long cold legs clicking, and his icy kneebones knocking, he skipped and pranced around the room. How that dead prince danced! But pretty soon a bone worked loose and shattered against the floor.
"Look at that!" said the ice harvester.
"Play faster!" said Anna.
The ice harvester strummed his mandolin faster.
Crickety-crack, down and back, the dead prince went hopping, and his cold bones kept dropping. This way, that way, the pieces just kept popping.
"Play, man! Play!" cried Anna.
The ice harvester played, and dead Hans danced. Then Hans fell apart, collapsed into a pile of broken ice bones...all except his sideburned head that grinned at the ice harvester, cracked its teeth and kept dancing.
"Look at that!" groaned the ice harvester.
"Play louder!" cried Anna.
"Ho, ho!" said the head. "Ain't love an open door!"
The ice harvester couldn't stand it. "Anna," he said. "I'm going home," and he never came back.
The troll family gathered up what remained of Hans' icy bones and put them back in the coffin. They melted some and mixed the rest up so he could never fit them together ever again. After that, Hans stayed in his grave. But Anna never did get married. Hans had seen to that.