Elsa, the Queen of Arendelle voiced by Idina Menzel, hears a mysterious unknown voice in Disney’s Frozen 2 that calls her on a journey of self-discovery. While there are many theories as to whom the mysterious voice actually belongs to, one of the most compelling arguments is that the voice calling to Elsa is her own - or, more specifically, the spirit that lies within her.
In Frozen 2, the sequel to Disney’s Frozen which is being released early on Disney+, Elsa leads Anna (Kristen Bell), Olaf (Josh Gad), Kristoff (Jonathan Groff), and Sven into the Enchanted Forest on a quest to discover the source of a mysterious voice calling to Elsa on the wind. Arriving at Ahtohallan, the mythical river of memory, Elsa discovers the truth about Arendelle’s past, as well the origins of her magical abilities. When Elsa and Anna’s mother Iduna (Evan Rachel Wood) risked her life to save their father King Agnarr (Alfred Molina), the spirits decided to honor her act of selflessness by bestowing Elsa with magical powers as the reincarnation of the fifth spirit, the mediator between the natural world and civilization. While it may be assumed that the voice calling to Elsa from Ahtohallan is the memory of her mother’s voice, it is more likely another memory stored within Ahtohallan.
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In order to unravel the theory that Elsa’s own voice is the siren call she hears on the wind, one must first consider an important factor embedded into the mythos of the Frozen franchise. According to Olaf, water is able to retain memory throughout its natural cycle. Olaf claims that the water they currently contain within their bodies has passed through many humans and animals before being part of them and is able to remember everything. With this in mind, water would then have a vast knowledge of civilization throughout time and all of that knowledge is carried throughout water’s hydrologic cycle, eventually accumulating and crystalizing within Ahtohallan, the river of memory.
When Elsa reaches Ahtohallan, she views some of these memories that water has retained, including their grandfather King Runeard’s treachery against the Northuldra people and the moment when Iduna rescued Agnarr during the battle between the Arendellians and the Northuldra people. Since the river of Ahtohallan holds memories of the past from both the natural world and civilization, it stands to reason that Elsa’s past life as the fifth spirit would also be retained within Ahtohallan.
At the beginning of Frozen 2, Elsa is feeling out of place within Arendelle and almost instantly begins to hear the unknown voice reaching out to her. Through her own magical powers and an underlying need to understand her place in the world, the memory of the reincarnated spirit that lies within Elsa calls out to her current self from Ahtohallan, where her past as the fifth spirit and the origins of her ice powers are waiting to be discovered. This is supported by the lyrics to “Show Yourself,” which Elsa sings when she reached Ahtohallan. When she sings “You are the answer I’ve waited for/All of my life/Oh, show yourself/Let me see who you are,” she eventually gets the response, “You are the one you’ve been waiting for.”
Another aspect within Frozen 2 that supports this theory is the fact that Ahtohallan is not actually a river, but a frozen glacier. Within Frozen 2, the four elements are embodied by individual characters, including Bruni the fire salamander, Nokk the kelpie, “Gale” the wind spirit, and the rock giants from the Enchanted Forest. While those characters are representative of all four elements, those elements still exist outside of them. Since Elsa’s ice powers are a result of her reincarnation as the fifth spirit, any ice in general would have a spiritual connection to Elsa, making the glacier of Ahtohallan an extension of the fifth spirit that calls out to her.
While both theories concerning the identity of the mysterious voice from Frozen 2 can be proven with the same evidence that water contains memory, the unknown voice being Elsa’s past self calling out to her current self gives her journey a more a cyclical nature, which poetically matches the element to which Elsa has a connection.
