The Little Mermaid

One of the tourist attractions you will inevitably hear about in Copenhagen is a statue called The Little Mermaid, as in the Hans Christian Andersen story (and later the Disney adaptation). The Little Mermaid has sometimes been compared to to monuments such as the Eiffel Tower and the Statue of Liberty, comparisons that no doubt even the Danish find embarrassing. Still, the Mermaid apparently gets about a million visitors a year and is plastered all over tour guides and various memorabilia.

The Little Mermaid was built in 1913, and is located at Langelinie quay in Copenhagen. According to Mindy, it is a pretty stupid statue but I will probably visit it as part of a tour anyway so I might as well embrace Little Mermaid mania. Although some people might not find them funny, the most entertaining stories about the statue involve people cutting its head off or some other form of vandalism. Here is a recap of vandalism over the past couple of decades:

- 1961: The hair of the Little Mermaid was painted red and she was dressed in a bra.

- 1963: The Little Mermaid was covered in red paint.

- 1964: The statue was decapitated for the first time.

- 1976: The Little Mermaid was covered in paint again.

- 1984: The statue's right arm was taken off.

- 1990: There was an unsuccessful attempt to remove the statue's head again.

- 1998: The statue was decapitated again.

- 2003: The statue was knocked down from its stone.