Location: Langelinie, Copenhagen
Bus: 1A, 15, 19, 26
The Little Mermaid is a sculpture on Langelinie in Copenhagen that welcomes you to Copenhagen Harbor and is one of Denmark's biggest tourist attractions. It illustrates H.C. Andersen's fairy tale The Little Mermaid. The sculpture was donated by brewer Carl Jacobsen and executed by sculptor Edvard Eriksen. As a model for the sculpture, Edvard Eriksen used his wife, Eline Eriksen. The statue was erected on Langelinie on 23 August 1913.
In September 2006, the sculpture group Det
genmodifiede Paradis by the artist Bjørn Nørgaard was inaugurated at
Langelinie. This sculpture group stands a few hundred meters from The
Little Mermaid, and one of the sculptures in the group is also a mermaid
sculpture: The Genetically Modified Mermaid.
In 2010, the
original statue had moved to Shanghai for six months in connection with
Expo 2010. Instead, in its place on Langelinie, a screen was set up that
showed the statue live at the pavilion in Shanghai.
The Little
Mermaid returned to her place November 20, 2010 at 2 p.m. Minister of
Economy and Business Brian Mikkelsen, Lord Mayor Frank Jensen and
Chinese Ambassador Xie Hangsheng received the statue at Langelinie.
The mermaid first lost her head in 1964. It was sawn
off, and neither the head nor the culprit have been found. The artist
Jørgen Nash claimed to know the criminal, but refused to reveal the
identity. In 1997, he described in his memoir A mermaid killer crosses
his trail that he had thrown the severed head into Utterslev Mose.
On July 22, 1984, it went beyond the left arm. It was sawed off; but
the perpetrators reported a few days later, bringing the arm, which
could be put back on relatively quickly. However, the bill for the
perpetrators was considerable.
The second time the mermaid lost
her head was in 1998. During the night, unknown perpetrators had sawed
off the statue's head with a hacksaw. They contacted per phone freelance
photographer Michael Forsmark Poulsen early in the morning and he
informed the police after taking pictures of the statue. In the
following days, the story went around the world on all kinds of TV
stations and newspapers. Three days later, the statue's head was found
when the perpetrators again contacted the photographer, who earned
around DKK 100,000 from his pictures of The Little Mermaid with the
missing head. Michael Forsmark Poulsen was arrested and charged with
having practiced the vandalism himself, but was released again two weeks
later. In November 1998, the charges against him and two others were
dropped.
On September 11, 2003 by unknown perpetrators knocked
down from its rock, possibly using explosives.
On May 30, 2017,
the mermaid was painted red. The vandalism was apparently politically
motivated, because "Danmark defend the whales of the Faroe Islands" was
written in red on the ground in front of the statue.
On 3 July
2020, the text "RACIST FISH" was painted over the plinth, while stickers
were placed over the statue's breasts and one knee.
On the night
of March 2, 2023, the plinth was painted in the colors of the Russian
flag.
When re-establishing the statue after vandalism, the bronze caster
can rely on the fact that there are two plaster copies of it. The statue
at Langelinie in Copenhagen has always been a copy of the original
sculpture, which Edvard Eriksen's heirs possess. The family sells
replicas of the statue. There are therefore copies of the statue in
Solvang, California; in Kimballton, Iowa; at Forest Lawn Cemetery in
Glendale, California, where Walt Disney is buried.
In Vancouver,
Canada, there is a figure which is not an exact copy, but rather a
paraphrase, but also a bronze casting, called girl in wet suit ("girl in
wet suit").
The copyright for images and other reproductions of the statue is
held by the company Edvard Eriksens Arvinger I/S. In several cases, the
company has put forward claims in the order of DKK 10,000 against media
that have used images where the statue is the main subject. David Trads,
who has been the editor-in-chief of a media outlet that has received a
claim, has described the handling of copyright as absurd: "It is absurd
that some lazy heirs should score the cash on a small statue sitting out
in the sea". In 2020, Copenhagen City Court gave the heirs the right to
a large claim of 285,000 kroner against Berlingske for having used a
satirical drawing made by Rasmus Meisler of The Little Mermaid. In 2022,
the verdict was upheld in the High Court. Berlingske has been approved
to try the case at the Supreme Court.
On 1 January 2030, the
copyright protection period for the statue ends, as Edvard Eriksen has
been dead for 70 years by that time.