The Little Mermaid is a fairy tale about a young mermaid by the Danish author Hans Christian Andersen. It was first published in 1836.

In 1989 it was made into an animated movie by The Walt Disney Company; for the film see The Little Mermaid (movie).

Story overview

Andersen begins the tale of The Little Mermaid begins with the following:

Far out at sea the water's as blue as the petals of the loveliest cornflower, and as clear as the purest glass; but it's very deep, deeper than any anchor can reach. Many church steeples would have to be piled up one above the other to reach from the bottom of the sea to the surface. Right down there live the sea people.

The Little Mermaid lives at the sea bottom with her father the Sea King, her grandmother and her 4 older sisters, born one year apart. When a mermaid turns 15, she may swim to the surface to watch the world above. As the sisters become old enough one of them visits the surface every year, and The Little Mermaid listens longingly to their descriptions of the surface and human beings.

When The Little Mermaid turns 15 she ventures to the surface. She sees a ship with a beautiful prince, and falls in love with him. There comes a great storm, and the prince almost drowns, but The Little Mermaid saves him and she delivers him to the shore near a temple. But the prince never sees her because he is unconscious.

The Little Mermaid spends her days longing for the prince, and longing to have a soul and eternal afterlife like humans do, instead of turning to foam when she dies. At last she goes to the Sea Witch, who sells her a potion that gives her legs, in exchange for her tongue, because The Little Mermaid has the prettiest voice in the world. But drinking the potion will feel like a sword being passed through her, and walking on her feet will feel like walking on knives. And she will only get a soul if the prince loves her and marries her, otherwise she will die and turn to foam the day the prince marries another woman and her heart breaks.

She drinks the potion and meets the prince, who is attracted to her beauty and grace. She is mute so she cannot talk to him, but he loves her like one loves a little child.

One day the prince sails to a neighboring king to find a bride. It turns out that the king's daughter is the woman from the temple who found the prince after the little mermaid delivered the prince to the shore. The prince loves her, and shortly after they announce the wedding.

The Little Mermaid's heart is broken, and she despairs as the wedding night comes. But her sisters come to her, and gives her a knife which they got from the Sea Witch in exchange for their hair. If The Little Mermaid slays the prince with the knife she will become a mermaid again and be able to live with them for the rest of her life.

But The Little Mermaid cannot bring herself to kill the sleeping prince lying with his bride, and instead throws herself into the sea and dissolves into foam. But she doesn't die, she becomes a daughter of the air, a being invisible to humans. By striving for 300 years to do good deeds she will earn a soul, and float into the kingdom of heaven. But for every good child a daughter of the air finds she substracts a year, and for every naughty or wicked child she sheds tears, and add a day for every tear.

The Little Mermaid Statue

A statue of the Little Mermaid sits on a rock in Copenhagen harbour. The small and unimposing statue is a symbol of Copenhagen, and a major tourist attraction.

The statue was commissioned in 1909 by Carl Jacobsen, the founder of Carlsberg, after he had been fascinated by a ballet about the fairytale. The sculptor Edward Eriksen created the statue, which was unveiled on 23 August 1913. He used his wife Eline Eriksen as model.

This statue has been vandalized several times, but has each time been restored. On April 24, 1964 the statue's head was sawn off and stolen by politically oriented artists of the situationist movement, among them Jørgen Nash. The head was later recovered and restored. Red paint has been thrown on it several times, and on September 11 2003 the statue was blasted off her rock, possibly with dynamite.

There are similarities between the Little Mermaid statue and the Pania Of The Reef statue on the beachfront at Napier in New Zealand, and some similarities in the Little Mermaid and Pania tales.

External links

• The Little Mermaid Full text of H. P. Paull's translation (1836)
• The Annotated Little Mermaid by Heidi Anne Heiner, Paull's translation, with scholarly annotations, scans from six illustrated editions, bibliography.
• Little Mermaid Statue thumbnail photo gallery, from Mermaids on the Web