In 1894, Austrian engineer Hanns Hörbiger claimed to have discovered the so-called "Welteislehre" (cosmic ice theory). Over the course of the 1930s, Hörbiger's theory was formally institutionalised in Germany under the auspices of the National Socialist Ahnenerbe research group, and furthermore promoted by several high ranking members of the NSDAP. Often rendered only as a "nazi" product, in this article I foreground the early roots of the cosmic ice theory (roughly, the period between 1900 and the mid-1920s), paying particular attention to how specific representational and symbolic forms, motifs and narrative structures came to reflect a cluster of traditions ranging from metaphysics and politics to the history of ideas.