ArticleMerry Christmas

Christmas is a time for fairy-tales. That's why this Christmas entry will be devoted to the main character of a famous, controversial and somewhat glossed over fairy-tale. 

Wikipedia readily tells us that a statue of Her was created in 1913 by Edvard Eriksen – and Ellen Price, the ballet-dancer, who was posing for the statue, lived a long a productive life. The statue had been commissioned by a local brewer who fell in love with the original 1837 fairy-tale by one H. C. Andersen. It’s not completely without interest that the brewer’s name was Carl Jacobsen, and the beer he had produced echoed that name… In other words, the creator of Carlsberg beer was instrumental in bringing about the statue of The Little Mermaid… 

What Wikipedia doesn’t emphasize is the actual work of art – grey slippery boulders touched by weeds, right next to the water, and a tiny figure of a young girl on the top of that wet pyramid. As if embarrassed, the girl is hiding her tail somewhere behind her back, her face is calm and sad at the same time. Indifferent to all the fuss around her, she is looking wistfully and searchingly beyond the sea, wishing and hoping for her Prince to return. Wishing and hoping for 108 years, and counting. A longing that is never to materialize, yet never to give up, is a heart-rending but, strangely, also live-affirming feeling bringing both tears to one’s eyes and a smile to their face. Such is the power of that inner beauty that that slip of a girl, barely seen from passing ships, has turned into the most important symbol of Danish capital, Copenhagen, if not Denmark as a whole…