The cool thing about the lyrics of this song is that it's not just literally about winter, but it also tries to tell a story about it.
The song's symbolic and mystical lyrics seem to be inspired by Norse mythology which dates back to times where natural phenomena were explained with stories about humanized God like figures. I think the 'Ice Queen' is specifically a depiction of the Goddess Skadi, the Goddess of winter or the Goddess of Shades and Darkness. She was simply the symbol for winter in Nordic mythology, and was not necessarily an evil character, but rather stands as a symbol of the coldness, darkness and perhaps the loneliness that winter comes with.
It seems like the song actually tends to refer to old times. It tries to depict how people in prehistoric times/middle ages might have felt and thought about winter.
