Fish Out of Water: Visiting The Little Mermaid Statue in Copenhagen

This past May, I went on a TPG trip to various Scandinavian cities, including Copenhagen, Denmark. The trip was entitled “Wellness in Scandinavia,” and was part of my work with wellness promotion and harm reduction on campus with The Bishop Way. The Scandinavian region was selected because of their consistently high ratings on the World Happiness Report, the two nations we visited–Sweden and Denmark–ranking fourth and second, respectively (for reference, the U.S. was #24). To gain a better understanding of the wellness practices and initiatives that yield these results, we interviewed several university health centers, a university chaplaincy, and community organizations. Luckily, while in Copenhagen we also had time to do some independent exploration, which is how I ended up paying a visit to The Little Mermaid statue. 

The statue is displayed on a rock at the edge of the harbor. As expected, there were an abundance of tourists (including myself). Honestly, I hadn’t been expecting much, because every Swede or Dane we talked to in our interviews remarked on its underwhelming size–even Wikipedia calls it “small and unimposing.” This had me expecting it to be the size of my twenty-pound dog, but the statue is 4 foot 1 and weighs almost twenty times that at 385 pounds. I think going into it with the lower expectations of locals and various Pinterest creators made it more impressive, but as an English major with a love for folklore and fairy tales, my favorite part of the statue was the story.

Of course, the statue itself makes more sense with the context of the original fairy tale “The Little Mermaid” by Danish writer Hans Christian Andersen. There are many key differences from the Disney version we typically think of, as this brief recap demonstrates. 

The titular little mermaid is the youngest daughter of the Sea King, and is desperate for her turn to visit the surface when she comes of age at fifteen, especially when she hears her five older sisters’ tales from their respective visits. When it’s finally her turn, the nameless little mermaid unexpectedly witnesses a shipwreck and saves a human prince from drowning, but he never sees her face. Infatuated with the prince, and even more infatuated with life on land, she asks her grandmother about the lives of humans. Her grandmother explains that humans live shorter lives, but have an immortal soul that lives on after their death. Mermaids have no such souls, and dissolve into sea foam upon death–that is, unless a human falls in love with a mermaid and marries them, in which case a part of the human’s soul will go to the mermaid. 

Unfortunately for mermaids, humans don’t appreciate the tail. The little mermaid goes to the Sea Witch for legs, who cuts off her tongue as part of the spell, and explains that if the prince does not fall in love with her and ends up marrying another, she will die the next day. As the sea witch warned, the transformation to the human form is excruciating, and every step felt like walking on knives. Fortunately, the prince and the little mermaid become dear friends, and he says that she is the only one who compares to his true love–the maiden who saved him from drowning–who he does not know is the little mermaid, and which she cannot tell him since she cannot speak). To appease his parents, he visits a neighboring princess as a potential bride, and thinking her to be his savior, is happy to marry her. 

Heartbroken, the little mermaid is visited by her older sisters, who have given their hair to the Sea Witch to find a way to save their beloved youngest sister from death. They give her a knife, explaining that if she kills the prince, she can turn back into a mermaid and live on. The little mermaid nearly goes through with it, but then throws herself into the sea instead. Because of her sacrifice, she’s turned into a spirit of the air, and will reach heaven after three hundred years. So…not quite the charming tale (pun intended) one might expect if only exposed to the red-haired Disney princess. 

Luckily for tourists and locals alike, the famed statue doesn’t depict any of the more grisly parts of the story, though that would certainly make for an interesting (if macabre) addition to the coast. Instead, sculptor Edvard Eriksen chose to portray a more emotional, symbolic moment. The statue depicts the little mermaid mid-transformation, her twin tails–contrary to the single fish-tailed mermaid described in the original story–turning into human legs. Her shoulders are drawn forward slightly as she looks wistfully to the side, towards the water. The expression on her face is one of reflection and melancholy. To me, the statue depicts the little mermaid’s regret, and her drawn posture–as well as the relative petiteness of the statue–serves as a reminder of her youthful naïveté, though this isn’t entirely what exists at the center of the story and the inspiration of the statue. Visit Copenhagen describes the statue (and the story): “Every day she sits on her rock, capturing the essence of Andersen’s mermaid, a figure shaped by quiet longing, love and the deep sacrifice at the heart of the story.” Whether or not this interpretation resonates with you, this essence was first captured in a ballet inspired by the story–a performance by the Royal Danish Ballet that inspired the sculpture. The statue was commissioned by Carl Jacobsen, a Danish brewer and philanthropist who became fascinated by the tale after watching a ballet inspired by the story starring dancer Ellen Price. He commissioned sculptor Edvard Eriksen to create a statue using Price’s image, but she declined to be a nude model, so the body is that of Eriksen’s wife Eline while the face is Price’s likeness. The statue is bronze (now appearing a blue-green color due to oxidation), displayed on a large rock at the Langelinie promenade of the Øresund coast of the Baltic Sea. Unveiled in 1913, the statue is a popular tourist destination and has become a symbol of Copenhagen like the Statue of Liberty, or Liberty Enlightening the World, in New York City. However, because of the statue’s cultural weight, it’s also been vandalized several times since its installation, and while some of these seem to have been random acts of violence, others are interesting examples of ordinary citizens “talking back” to a prominent Danish cultural icon.

The most common form of vandalism is decapitation. The statue’s head was first severed in 1964. The vandals were never caught, so the motives are unknown, nor was the head ever found, so it was replaced with a new one. Twenty years later, two drunken men sawed off part of the statue’s arm, but confessed and returned it to be restored. There was another unsuccessful attempted decapitation in 1990, which left behind a 7-inch gash in the neck, which was repaired. The most mysterious vandalism happened in 1998, when it was once again decapitated. The incident was taken very seriously–as in, actual murder detectives were called in. The Radical Feminist Fraction, who no one had heard of until then, took credit, citing their mission to “create a symbol of sexually fixated and misogynist male dream of women as bodies without heads.” Danish police weren’t so sure, but the head mysteriously reappeared at a television center days later. Regardless of who was actually responsible for this particular incident, the Radical Feminist Fraction’s qualms are admittedly not entirely unfounded–in Anderson’s story, the little mermaid does completely change herself and die for a boy who does not love her. 

Since this mysterious incident, the statue has been blown off its stone with explosives in what was thought to be a form of protest Danish involvement in Iraq (2003), dressed in a burqa in response to Turkey’s application to join the European Union in 2004 (the statue was dressed in Muslim-style clothing again in 2007), painted and positioned holding a sex toy on International Women’s Day in 2006, painted red in protest of whaling in the autonomous Faroe Islands (2017), painted with the message “Free Abdulle” apparently referencing a Somali citizen detained at a Danish psychiatric hospital in 2017 (1964-2017 incidents: The Little Mermaid (statue) | Research Starters), had the words “Free Hong Kong” painted in January of 2020, and vandalized with spraypaint “racist fish” in a deeply puzzling response to the Black Lives Matter Movement. The most recent vandalisms are thought to be in response to the Russo-Ukrainian war, with the “Z” symbol commonly used by the Russian military likened to the swastika in March of 2022 in support of Ukraine, then painted with the Russian flag a year later. Whether unprovoked or a form of gaining attention for social issues, The Little Mermaid has been a target for vandalism for sixty years. 

The statue’s accessibility–as it’s only a few feet from shore–as well as its high visibility as a popular tourist destination could explain its frequent vandalism. Regardless of the motivations, I find it a little ironic that the statue of a character who is voiceless for most of her story would be used as a way of amplifying the voice of protesters. Gaining attention using the statue with the story’s themes of silence and not truly being seen is a fascinating juxtaposition. Luckily for me, the statue was intact and free of paint (and soccer team jerseys, which has also happened) when I went to visit. 

Maybe it’s very touristy of me, but I was glad to see the statue, despite the locals’ insistence that it wasn’t particularly exciting. My love of fairytales (that began with a childhood obsessed with Disney princess movies) is rooted in the way they explore humanity–though The Little Mermaid is, well, about a mermaid. Contrary to the view of the story as one of love and sacrifice that led to the statue’s construction, and even contrary to vandals’ issue with the more questionable elements of the story, I’m the most fascinated by The Little Mermaid as a story of longing. And while I may have visited the statue on a trip with aims related to wellness and psychology, it inspired my creative writing for a significant portion of the summer afterwards. Mainly, I was interested in the concept of souls, often wondering if it was really the prince that the little mermaid wanted, or an immortal soul. Perhaps it’s my literature-lover’s willingness to empathize with fictional characters that makes me ignore the soul mechanics of mermaids established by Andersen, but I’ve since decided that if someone or something wants a soul, they already have one (even if they’re going to turn into seafoam when they die). 

As compelling as I find the story, I’m quite frugal, so I’m also glad I didn’t pay for some expensive boat tour to see the statue, or the countless mermaid stickers, magnets, totes, mugs, hoodies, and more in every souvenir store. However, there was even a mermaid-themed tea in one shop, which I impulsively bought for my mom.

Mostly I’m just glad I saw it. I think living near something has a way of making it seem unremarkable. I grew up fifteen minutes from the Football Hall of Fame, and have never been (nor do I have any desire to go). The Little Mermaid, though, was over four thousand miles from home, and I was eager to go. Besides, if there’s anything I can appreciate, it’s a good story.