Den Lille Havfrue (The Little Mermaid)

Frommer's Review

The statue everybody wants to see in Copenhagen is the slightly smaller than life-size bronze of Den Lille Havfrue, inspired by Andersen's famous fairy tale The Little Mermaid. Edvard Eriksen sculpted the statue, unveiled in 1913. It rests on rocks right off the shoreline of the seagoing entrance to Copenhagen's harbor, close to Castellet and the Langelinie cruise piers.

In spite of its small size, the statue is as important a symbol to Copenhageners as the Statue of Liberty is to New Yorkers. Tragedy struck on January 6, 1998. An anonymous tipster called a freelance television cameraman in the middle of the night to check out the 1.2m (4-ft.) bronze Mermaid. She'd lost her head. Most of the city responded with sadness. "She is part of our heritage, like Tivoli, the Queen, and stuff like that," said local sculptor Christian Moerk.

The Mermaid had also been decapitated in 1964. The culprits at that time were never discovered, and the head was never recovered. In the early 1900s some unknown party or parties cut off her arm. The original mold exists so it's possible to recast the bronze and weld back missing body parts. The arm was replaced.

Although not taking blame for the last attack in 1998, the Radical Feminist Faction sent flyers to newspapers to protest "the woman-hating, sexually fixated male dreams" allegedly conjured by the statue's bronze nudity. After the last decapitation, the head turned up at a TV station, delivered by a masked figure. In the spring, welders put her head back on, making the seam invisible. Today The Little Mermaid -- head, fishy tail, and all -- is back to being the most photographed nude woman in Copenhagen.

Because of all these attacks, the statue, seen by about one million visitors a year, may actually be moved out of the reach of both vandals and tourists to a safer, more secure place. City officials are considering such a proposal. At present, many visitors claim they can't see the statue because throughout the day other tourists are constantly climbing all over her to have their picture taken.

In 2006 another Little Mermaid sculpture was unveiled, a "genetically modified sister," lying 400m (1,312 ft.) from the original Little Maid. The new bronze is by Bjørn Nørgaard, a professor at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts. Like the original, Nørgaard's mermaid also sits on a rock, but her features are twisted and her limbs exaggeratedly long and skeletal. Nørgaard created the sculpture for the Danish Pavilion at Expo 2002, the World's Fair held in Hanover, Germany.

Near The Little Mermaid statue is Gefion Springvandet (Gefion Fountain), sculpted by Anders Bundgaard. Gefion was a Scandinavian goddess who plowed Zealand away from Sweden by turning her sons into oxen.

Also in the area is Kastellet at Langelinie (tel. 33-11-22-33), a pentagonal citadel, replete with moats, constructed by King Frederik III in the then-virtually-impregnable style of the 1660s. Some of Copenhagen's original ramparts still surround the structure. Although today, the site is brightened with beds of seasonal flowers and statues honoring prominent Danes, the Citadel functioned as the capital's first line of defense from seagoing invasion until the 18th century. During the Nazi occupation of Copenhagen, the Germans made it their headquarters. Today the Danish military occupies the buildings. You can, however, explore the beautiful grounds of Churchillparken surrounding Kastellet. At the entrance to the park stands St. Albans, the English church of Copenhagen. You can still see the double moats built as part of Copenhagen's defense in the wake of the Swedish siege of the capital on February 10, 1659. The ruined citadel can be explored daily from 6am to sunset.

Note: This information was accurate when it was published, but can change without notice. Please be sure to confirm all rates and details directly with the companies in question before planning your trip.

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