Scholars Hans-Jörg Uther and Jack Zipes recognized that the tale belonged to the cycle of the "Animal as Bridegroom".

[2][3] In folktales classified as tale type ATU 425A, "The Search for the Lost Husband" or "The Animal as Bridegroom", the maiden breaks a taboo or burns the husband's animal skin and, to atone, she must wear down a numbered pair of metal shoes.

On her way to her husband, she usually asks for the help of the Sun, the Moon and the Wind, whereas inother variants, the heroine's helpers are three old women who live in distant cottages.

[4][5] According to Hans-Jörg Uther, the main feature of tale type ATU 425A is "bribing the false bride for three nights with the husband".

[6] According to Jack Zipes, the Brothers Grimm interpreted the Eisenofern as Eitofan, a place of fire and possibly Hell.

After spending a night there, the toad-frogs give her two needles and a plough-wheel - to use to climb a glass mountain - and three nuts.

The king's daughter cracks opens the nuts to produce dresses she uses to bribe the false bride for three nights with the stove prince.

The prince's bride does not exist and is instead replaced by a creature known as the imp fairy (who resembles a succubus), and she takes place as the princess' love rival for him.

The prince is put in a trance rather than to sleep, and the princess breaks said trance by going through a thorny mountain, crossing a lake without a boat, tricking guards with a nut that contains diamonds, refusing to believe that the prince would choose the fairy over him even when the fairy taunts her about it, and finally by openly telling him that she loves him.

When the prince is disenchanted, she jumps off from a huge flight of stairs towards him; her love for him creates protective shields that let her reach him, and then deflect the fairy’s magical powers and cause her to fall through the ground into a bottomless abyss.