Story
The story of The Little Mermaid
Many visitors are surprised by how small she is: just 1.25 metres tall. Yet since her unveiling on 23 August 1913, this bronze mermaid on her rock at Langelinie has been an icon of Copenhagen. She is based on Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale of 1837. The statue was commissioned in 1909 by Carl Jacobsen, son of the founder of Carlsberg, after he was captivated by a ballet of the tale at the Royal Theatre.
He asked the ballerina, Ellen Price, to model, but she would not pose nude, so sculptor Edvard Eriksen modelled the figure on his own wife, Eline. Her life on the rock has not been peaceful. In 1964 her head was sawn off and never recovered, in 1984 her right arm was taken and returned two days later, and in 2003 explosives knocked her into the harbour.
Each time she has been restored. The first time she was officially moved from her rock was for the Expo 2010 in Shanghai.
This story is compiled from Wikipedia and other open sources; dates and numbers are checked against the source. The text is shared under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence. Source ↗
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