Thank you Pia for
this nice card from Denmark with The Little Mermaid which is a statue of a mermaid in Langelinie,
Copenhagen, the capital of Denmark. Based on the fairy tale of the same name by
Hans Christian Andersen, the small and unimposing statue (with a height of 1.25
metres (4 ft) is a Copenhagen icon and a major tourist attraction. The
statue was commissioned in 1909 by Carl Jacobsen, son of the founder of
Carlsberg, who had been fascinated by a ballet about the fairytale in
Copenhagen's Royal Theatre and asked the prima ballerina, Ellen Price, to model
for the statue. The sculptor Edvard Eriksen created the bronze statue, which
was unveiled on 23 August 1913. The statue's head was modelled after Price, but
as the ballerina did not agree to model in the nude, the sculptor's wife, Eline
Eriksen, was used for the body.
The Copenhagen City Council decided to move the statue
to Shanghai at the Danish Pavilion for the duration of the Expo 2010 (from May
to October), the first time it had been moved from its perch since it was
installed almost a century earlier.
Vandalism of the
statue. This statue
has been damaged and defaced many times since the mid-1960s for various
reasons, but has each time been restored. In 2006, Copenhagen officials
announced that the statue may be moved farther out in the harbour, as to avoid
further vandalism and to prevent tourists from climbing onto it. On April 24,
1964, the statue's head was sawn off and stolen by politically oriented artists
of the Situationist movement, amongst them Jørgen Nash. The head was never
recovered and a new head was produced and placed on the statue. On July 22,
1984, the right arm was sawn off and returned two days later by two young men.
In 1990, an attempt to sever the statue's head left a cut in the neck 18
centimeters (7 in) deep. In 2004, she was draped in a burqa as a
statement against Turkey joining the European Union. In May 2007, the statue
was again found draped in a Muslim dress and head scarf.
The statue displayed in Copenhagen
harbour has always been a copy; the sculptor's heirs keep the original at an
undisclosed location. Undamaged copies of the statue are located in Solvang,
California; Kimballton, Iowa; Piatra Neamţ, Romania and a half-sized copy in Calgary,
Canada. The grave of Danish-American entertainer Victor Borge, includes a copy
as well. A copy of the statue forms the Danish contribution to the
International Peace Gardens in Salt Lake City. The half-size replica was stolen
on 26 February 2010, but was recovered on 7 April, evidently abandoned in the
park after the thief became nervous about being caught with it.
