The Little Mermaid is a bronze statue on a rock by the water at the Langelinie promenade in Copenhagen, Denmark. Edvard Eriksen made it, and Carl Jacobsen, son of the Carlsberg founder, commissioned it in 1909. It was unveiled on August 23, 1913.
The statue is 4.1 feet (1.25 meters) tall and weighs 385 pounds (175 kilograms). The sculptor's wife, Eline Eriksen, modeled for it. The statue on display is a replica, and the original is reportedly kept by the sculptor's heirs at an undisclosed location. More than thirteen undamaged copies exist worldwide.
The statue has been attacked many times. Its head was sawn off and stolen in 1964 and never recovered. It was beheaded again in 1998, and in 2003 it was knocked off its base with explosives. In 2010 it left Copenhagen for the first time, for the Shanghai Expo.
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