Queen Elsa’s “Frozen” Ice Palace Would Cost Over $7 million

When Disney came out with a quirky new computer-animated movie featuring a neurotic snowman, a clumsy heroine, and catchy tunes, who knew it was going to quickly become the highest grossing animated film of all time? I sure didn’t, and I’ll bet you didn’t call it either.

While it’s been analyzed for hidden agendas, a Disney Unification Theory, questionable feminist messages, and even musical value, no one has really set out to discover how “Frozen” fits into the real estate market… yet.

Well, lucky for me that means I have a chance.

In addition to seeming like an attempt to boost Norway’s tourism business, this movie features some pretty incredible places to live. Secluded mountain cabins, a sacred stone circle, a sweeping city and palace, and many more. The most breathtaking building, however, is easily Queen Elsa’s solitary ice fortress (not to be confused with the Fortress of Solitude we reviewed earlier). I mean, c’mon, just look at the thing:

Source: Rotoscopers

It’s like the castle from The Neverending Story and Barra Dur from Lord of the Rings had a baby. Made of ice.

Besides being a magical elemental queen, what would it take to live in a place like this? Even though I didn’t have magic beyond basic mathematics, and my knowledge of the Norwegian language was pretty shaky, I set out from Movoto Real Estate to find the answer.

Research Never Bothered Me Anyway

While I’m a super wimp about the cold, I was lucky enough to stay in my nice warm office in California and just figure out all this cool stuff with a little research. So I got out my copy of the movie, played it over and over until I had its soundtrack stuck permanently in my head, and looked for what I’d need. As with most fictional evaluations, that was:

• How big the castle is


• Where it’s located


• How much a similarly sized home there would cost


• How much that would be in Norwegian Kroner

You may notice I mention Norway a lot, and that’s because it’s the general location of Elsa’s palace. I’d need something a bit more precise for this, though, right down to city, so that was going to be a bit of a challenge.

Not A Bit Of A Fixer Upper

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Furnishings aren’t the only things this lovely home is missing (seriously, how does Elsa not even have a bed or toilet?). In fact, there’s a lot less to it than you’d think. The palace looks tall, looks like it has many rooms, and seems like it would be able to contain whole cities inside its crystalyn doors. However, this house only consists of:

• Two floors


• A balcony


• A few very long staircases


• A lobby ice sculpture


• A chandelier

No, seriously. That’s it. It’s beautiful, and it’s huge on the outside, but unlike the Tardis, this is much much smaller on the inside. There are no bedrooms or bathrooms, no kitchen, nothing.

That leads me to wonder where Elsa sleeps, eats, and does her… business, but it also makes the matter of finding out the cost of this place a little easier.

Math Is An Open Door

In order to figure out the size of this place, I first had to find a way to measure it, which meant finding something for scale. Did I use the doors? The chandelier? Olaf? Nope. I used Sven.

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Now, I know you’re thinking that Sven didn’t even set foot in the palace, and you’re right. Both Elsa and Anna did, however, and using their furry friend I was able to determine both their heights.

The average Reindeer is about 59 inches at the shoulder, a random fact that I will now remember for all eternity. I’m assuming that Sven is average here, of course, and not some mutant creature (despite the fact that he acts like a dog).

From there, I determined that Anna is about 66 inches tall, or 5’6”. She’s just a little bit shorter than her sister, who I assessed to be about 68 inches, or 5’8”.

With those heights, it was just a matter of looking at some scenes from “Let it Go” and the reprise of “For the First Time in Forever” to measure the three different areas. In that case:

• The balcony came out to about 800 square feet


• The first floor was about 1,643 square feet


• The second floor was about 1,042 square feet

Again, that’s it. Adding those together, I found that the total size of the palace is 3,485 square feet. Considering the whole building is over 340 feet high, that’s not very much floor space. Still, it’s plenty of room, especially without furniture, and certainly enough for people living in ye olde Norway—but where exactly in Norway were we looking?

You Can’t Evaluate A Home You Just Met

Source: Wikipedia

I knew this place was in Norway somewhere, but I really got some direction by looking at where the Disney creators visited for inspiration.

While they trekked to many different areas, they paid particularly close attention to Oslo, Trondheim, and Bergen. Neither Oslo nor Trondheim fit the landscape, so I ended up looking at places near Bergen for where Allendale might actually be located.

It had to be a place that had nearby snowy mountains and was directly on a fjord. That narrowed things down much less than you think (have you seen a map of Norway? All those fjords!) but it did eventually lead me to where I believe Allendale really is.

The area of Aurland, Norway, fits the bill and even has a picturesque setting that suits Disney’s major hit. There’s also a nearby mountain range that can easily be the setting of the home we are evaluating. So, with that knowledge, I went about finding similarly priced homes in the area.

A Kingdom Of Ice-olation

Now, here’s where I ran into a stumbling block. It seems that people don’t really sell many houses around Aurland. Mostly it’s renting, and that doesn’t give us price per square foot.

So, after much searching through poorly Google-translated Norwegian real estate sites, I finally located one massive house nearby Aurland. While it’s not your average place to live, neither is an ice palace, so I figured that worked.

Using the price per square foot of that millionare house as a base, $2,096 per square feet, I determined that the cost of the beautiful ice castle would be $7,210,465. It may not be as much as the Beauty and the Beast Castle, but you really would have to be a queen of cold hard cash to afford that!

But you’re headed to Norway, so you’re also going to have to learn to deal in their currency. Elsa’s frigid fortress would set you back about 42,414,500 Norwegian Kroner, their money over there. With that much, you could buy about 2,356,361 bags of ice, just in case you want to build it yourself, and assuming you don’t have ice powers. For most, this means that living like a snow queen will be a dream never achieved, better to just let it go.

Really, that song is going to be stuck in my head forever.

Do You Wanna Build A Listing?

You’re not getting the cost of construction in this deal, or any cool ice sculptures, though you could probably make them yourself if you really tried. You’re also not getting any of the bridges across mountain ravines, so make sure you pack your climbing gear as you get to this place. But if you’ve got a cool $8 million, or 43 million Kroner, you could easily afford this icy abode and have some money to spare for furniture.

Seriously, someone get Elsa some furniture, okay?

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