Smilla's Sense of Snow

A Copenhagen of black winter water and Greenlandic exile. A half-Inuit woman who reads snow the way others read print refuses to accept that a neighbour's child simply fell from a warehouse roof, and follows the cold trail from the flats of Christianshavn out through the harbour and the Freeport to a ship bound north. The map runs along the Inner Harbour waterfront and up the Østerbro shore.

Smilla Jaspersen

The White Palace flats, Strandgade

The City

The story begins with a small boy dead in the snow at the foot of the block where he and Smilla both live. She alone reads the single track of his footprints on the roof and sees that no child at play makes a line like that. His fall is where her investigation starts. The building is fictional; the street, Strandgade in Christianshavn, is real and still fronts the harbour.

Part One: The City

inspired by The apartment block the novel calls the White Palace is invented, but it is set explicitly on Strandgade, the real waterfront street of Christianshavn lined with converted warehouses. Sited at a representative point on that street.

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Smilla Jaspersen

The Cryolite Company of Denmark

The City

Smilla's search leads to the company that mined cryolite in Greenland, the mineral that once made Danish aluminium and Danish fortunes. Its records tie the dead boy's father to expeditions that went wrong. The firm was real, and its Copenhagen works stood on Strandboulevarden until 1990.

Part One: The City

inferred The Cryolite Company of Denmark is a real firm; the office Smilla visits is not pinned to an address in the book, so this marks the company's long-standing cryolite works on Strandboulevarden in Østerbro.

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Smilla Jaspersen

The Institute for Arctic Medicine

The City

Chasing what killed the boy's father and what waits on the ice, Smilla presses the specialists in cold and Arctic disease. The institute in the book is invented; the city's real centre for such medicine is the University of Copenhagen's Panum building, north of the lakes.

Part One: The City

inspired by The institute Smilla consults is a fictional research body; there is no such named address in Copenhagen, so this marks the University of Copenhagen's medical faculty at the Panum building, the real home of the city's Arctic and medical research.

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Smilla Jaspersen

The Freeport, Copenhagen

The City

The trail runs down to the water: cold-store sheds, bonded warehouses and the quay where the ship Kronos is fitting out for a voyage north. Smilla talks her way aboard. The Freeport of Copenhagen, in Nordhavn, is a real bonded harbour district and still handles the port's shipping.

Part One: The City

explicit Named in the book.

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