There are cities around the world with statues so iconic they define the city itself. New York has the Statue of Liberty, Rio de Janeiro has Christ the Redeemer, Brussels has Manneken Pls. Similarly, the city of Copenhagen in Denmark has The Little Mermaid statue ( Danish: Den Lille Havfrue). The bronze statue sits on a rock right on the water at the Langelinie promenade. And, yes it’s based on the famous fairy tale.
So how did this statue come to be? Right around 1909, a man named Carl Jacobsen (son of the founder of Carlsberg) went to see a ballet performance in Copenhagen’s Royal Theatre themed around the little mermaid fairy tale. He was so fascinated by it, that he asked ballerina Ellen Price (played the mermaid) to model for a statue.
The statue was created by sculptor Edvard Eriksen and unveiled on August 23, 1913. A fun fact about the statue itself is that even though the statue resembles the ballerina’s face, the nude body was modeled after Eline Eriksen (the sculptor’s wife) because the ballerina didn’t want to pose nude.
Due to the threat of vandalism, the current statue on display is actually a replica of the original. If you can’t make it to Denmark to see the statue, you might be in luck because there are more than thirteen copies of the statue around the world known as Mermaids of Earth. Locations include Slovang, California; Kimballton, Iowa; Piatra Neamt, Romania; Torrejon de Ardoz, Spain; Seoul, South Korea; and a few other half sized versions.
Below are some photos posted by people who have visited the original location of the Little Mermaid Statue.
If you’d like to fly to Denmark and see The Little Mermaid for yourself, do it by making sure you get the lowest fare possible on your flight. Download the FlyEx app. It guarantees you the lowest fare. If you find a lower fare somewhere else, they’ll beat it.
