Table of Contents
- Where Is the Mermaid in Copenhagen?
- Why Is the Little Mermaid in Copenhagen Famous?
- The Little Mermaid Copenhagen Story
- Quick Facts: The Original Little Mermaid Statue
- A Rough Century: Vandalism and Repairs
- The "Big Mermaid": Copenhagen's Other, Stranger Statue
- When the Mermaid Left Copenhagen
- Getting There from Central Copenhagen
- What's Around Her: Langelinie and Nearby Landmarks
- Best Time to Visit (and How to Skip the Crowds)
- FAQ: The Copenhagen Mermaid Story
She's 125 centimetres of bronze on a rock, she gets mobbed by camera phones every single morning, and she's somehow still the first thing most people picture when they hear the word Copenhagen. In Danish she's Den Lille Havfrue, or just Havfruen to most locals, while the tourist crowd simply calls her the Little Mermaid. The statue sits at the end of the Langelinie pier, on the harbour's edge, staring out toward the Øresund strait like she's waiting for someone who's never coming back - which, if you know the story, is more or less the point.
This guide covers where she actually is, why a beer baron paid for her, and what's happened to her over the last century - short version: nothing good. There's also a second, stranger mermaid a few hundred metres up the promenade that almost nobody mentions, and she's arguably more interesting than the famous one. If you're planning to visit the Little Mermaid as part of a longer Copenhagen trip, getting there is simple, and it's easy to fold into a longer walk along the harbourfront.
Where Is the Mermaid in Copenhagen?
The Little Mermaid statue in Copenhagen sits on the Langelinie promenade, a walkway that runs along the harbour on the city's eastern edge, in the København Ø district. She's perched on a granite boulder right at the water's line, so close to the harbour that spray sometimes reaches her on rougher days. Langelinie itself is part of Copenhagen Harbour, and it's been a public promenade since the late 1800s - long before anyone thought to put a mermaid there.
If you're wondering where the mermaid statue is in Copenhagen relative to the postcard parts of the city, she's a good 20 to 25 minute walk north of Nyhavn's coloured houses, or a short bus or bike ride from the centre. She's not tucked away exactly, but she's also not somewhere you'll stumble on by accident. You have to actually go looking for her.
A few landmarks worth knowing about, because they'll come up on any map of the area:
- Kastellet - one of Europe's best-preserved star-shaped fortresses, a five-minute walk south, and free to wander through
- Gefion Fountain - a dramatic sculpture of the goddess Gefion driving oxen, right next to Kastellet
- Amalienborg Palace - the winter residence of the Danish royal family, about 15 minutes on foot
- The National Gallery of Denmark (SMK) - Denmark's largest art museum, roughly 20 minutes away
- Frederik's Church (the Marble Church) - the domed church near Amalienborg, worth a look even from outside
So the mermaid isn't really a standalone stop, and most people fold her into a longer walk that takes in the fortress, the fountain, and the palace square. Honestly, that's the better way to do it - the statue alone takes about two minutes to see properly, and you'd feel a bit short-changed if that's all you did with the trip out there.
Why Is the Little Mermaid in Copenhagen Famous?
Here's the thing that surprises a lot of first-time visitors: the Little Mermaid statue in Copenhagen isn't famous because it's grand. It's famous because of what it represents and who made it happen. However, her appeal has as much to do with the century of drama around her as with the sculpture itself, and that's a big part of Copenhagen mermaid history worth knowing before you go.
The statue was commissioned by Carl Jacobsen, son of the founder of Carlsberg, after he watched a ballet performance of Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale at the Royal Danish Theatre in 1909. He was so taken with prima ballerina Ellen Price's performance that he returned to see it several times, and eventually asked sculptor Edvard Eriksen to turn the story into something permanent for his home city.
Eriksen took the commission and ran into a small problem: Ellen Price agreed to model for the statue's face, but wouldn't pose nude for the body. So Eriksen used his own wife, Eline Eriksen, as the model for everything below the neck. That split is actually visible if you look closely - the face reads as delicate and dancer-like, while the body is stockier and more grounded. It's a strange little collaboration between two women who, as far as we know, never met.
The statue was cast in bronze, set on a boulder hauled up from the harbour seabed, and unveiled on 23 August 1913. Jacobsen gifted it to the City of Copenhagen on the condition that it never be moved from its spot - a promise that's been tested more than once, as you'll see further down. Over the following decades, she became the symbol of Copenhagen in a way nobody quite planned, appearing on postcards, tourism posters, and eventually just about anywhere the city, and the country, needed a visual shorthand for itself. Today she's as much an international icon for Denmark as she is a local landmark. Beyond the drama, she also ties together several threads of Copenhagen's identity all at once: its history as a working harbour city, its literary heritage through Hans Christian Andersen, and the wider storytelling culture he's still known for.
These days she pulls in more than a million visitors a year on her own, and closer to five million when you count everyone who walks the wider Langelinie area during their stay. That's a lot of foot traffic for a statue smaller than most adults, and it makes her one of Copenhagen's most photographed monuments, full stop.
The Little Mermaid Copenhagen Story
The story of the Little Mermaid that inspired the statue comes from Hans Christian Andersen's 1837 fairy tale of the same name, written more than 70 years before the sculpture existed. Andersen was born in Odense on the island of Funen and lived most of his adult life in Copenhagen. Odense now has its own dedicated museum, H.C. Andersen's House, which opened an expanded new building in 2021 for anyone who wants the full backstory before or after seeing the statue.
Andersen's tale follows a young mermaid from an underwater kingdom who falls for a human prince and trades her voice to a sea witch for a pair of legs, and a shot at a human soul. She's half girl, half fish, and desperate to become fully human, a detail most adaptations soften or drop altogether. It doesn't end the way the animated film does. In Andersen's original, the prince marries someone else, and the mermaid is offered a knife to kill him and return to the sea. She can't do it. Instead she throws herself into the water and dissolves into sea foam, though Andersen gives her one small mercy at the end: a chance to earn an immortal soul through three hundred years of good deeds.
That's really what the statue represents, more than romance. She's a figure of self-sacrifice and transformation, someone who gives up everything - her voice, her family, her tail, eventually her life - for something she's not sure she'll ever get. It's a fairly bleak story to build a tourism icon around. But the Danes leaned into it anyway, and it's arguably why the statue still resonates: she looks genuinely sad, not decorative, and that's a hard thing to fake in bronze. In a real sense she represents Andersen himself, and the wider Danish storytelling culture he's known for around the world.
Quick Facts: The Original Little Mermaid Statue
| Detail | Information |
|---|---|
| Sculptor | Edvard Eriksen |
| Commissioned by | Carl Jacobsen (Carlsberg heir) |
| Unveiled | 23 August 1913 |
| Material | Cast bronze on a granite boulder |
| Height | 1.25 metres (about 4 feet 1 inch) |
| Weight | Approximately 175 kg (385 lbs) |
| Based on | "The Little Mermaid" by Hans Christian Andersen (1837) |
| Location | Langelinie promenade, København Ø |
| Face modelled by | Ellen Price, Royal Danish Ballet |
| Body modelled by | Eline Eriksen, the sculptor's wife |
| Annual visitors | Over 1 million to the statue directly; around 5 million to the wider Langelinie area |
| Admission | Free, accessible at any hour |
A Rough Century: Vandalism and Repairs
For a statue that's meant to symbolise longing and quiet sacrifice, the Little Mermaid has had a genuinely violent run of it. She's been decapitated, doused in paint, blown partly off her rock, and covered in political slogans more times than most Copenhageners can list off the top of their heads. It's a strange side of Copenhagen mermaid history that rarely makes the postcards, but it's shaped her fame almost as much as anything Eriksen intended.
The worst incident happened on the night of 25 April 1964, when someone sawed her head clean off. Nobody was caught at the time, and the case sat unsolved for over three decades until an artist named Jørgen Nash claimed responsibility as a piece of anti-establishment performance art. Bronze casters at a workshop on Rådmandsgade in Copenhagen worked from the original plaster mould to cast a replacement head, and it took roughly six to seven weeks before she was back on her rock.
And that wasn't the end of it. She lost an arm to an explosive in 2003, and protesters have painted her more than once as a form of political statement: green paint around International Women's Day in 2006, red paint in 2017 over Faroe Islands whaling, and "Free Hong Kong" scrawled across her rock in January 2020, back when Hong Kong's pro-democracy protests were making headlines everywhere. Each incident makes her a target all over again. Every time, though, the city's restored her rather than replaced her, which is probably why she still looks a bit worn in close-up photos - a century of damage and repair leaves marks, even on bronze.
| Year | What Happened |
|---|---|
| 1964 | Head sawed off overnight; replaced within about six weeks |
| 1984 | Painted by protesters as a political statement |
| 1998 | Head removed a second time, later recovered and reattached |
| 2003 | Knocked off her rock with an explosive; arm damaged |
| 2006 | Doused in green paint around International Women's Day |
| 2020 | Rock spray-painted with "Free Hong Kong" in solidarity with Hong Kong protesters |
The "Big Mermaid": Copenhagen's Other, Stranger Statue
Here's a bit of Copenhagen trivia that barely makes it into most guidebooks: there's a second mermaid statue on Langelinie, and she's a completely different animal. Locals sometimes call the original the "little" one and this one the "big mermaid" of Copenhagen, simply because she's part of a much larger sculpture group and physically dominates her setting in a way the original never tries to.
She's called The Genetically Modified Little Mermaid, made by Danish artist Bjørn Nørgaard in 2006 and installed as part of a wider sculpture group titled The Genetically Modified Paradise. You'll find her sitting in a water basin near Dahlerups Pakhus, about 600 to 750 metres north of the original, close to where the cruise ships dock. She's bronze too, and she sits in almost the same pose as her famous sister - but that's where the resemblance ends. She has two tails instead of one, elongated skeletal legs, and a face that's been deliberately left unrecognisable. The wider installation includes a nine-metre triumphal arch and distorted bronze figures representing Adam, Eve, Christ, and Mary Magdalene, all circling a granite fountain.
Nørgaard built the piece as commentary on genetic modification and vanity, and unlike the original, this one has never been vandalised. He's joked that it's because she's already "fighting against the order of nature," so there's not much left to protest.
It's worth the extra ten-minute walk if you're already at Langelinie, if only because you'll likely have her entirely to yourself. Most tour groups never make it this far up the promenade, so it's just you, the harbour wind, and a distorted bronze mermaid nobody warned you about.
More Mermaids (and a Merman) in Danish Culture
The 1913 statue and her genetically modified neighbour aren't the only mermaids in Danish culture, either. Sculptor Anne Marie Carl-Nielsen made her own bronze Havfrue back in 1921, now on display at the National Gallery of Denmark, with a second cast standing outside the Royal Danish Library by the harbour. Head south along the coast to Helsingør, home of Kronborg Castle, and you'll find a merman sculpture from 2012, a rare male counterpart worth knowing about as well if you're chasing every mermaid-adjacent sight in Denmark.
And if the underwater theme has the kids asking questions, Den Blå Planet, Northern Europe's largest aquarium, sits a short train ride from the centre near Copenhagen Airport and makes a solid half-day trip built around actual fish rather than bronze ones.
When the Mermaid Left Copenhagen
Jacobsen's original condition was that the statue should never leave its spot, and for nearly a century, it didn't. That changed in 2010, when Copenhagen's city council agreed to send her to Shanghai for the World Expo, where she sat in the Danish pavilion from May through November as the centrepiece of Denmark's exhibit. A replica stood in her place at Langelinie for the duration, and by most accounts the arrangement worked out fine. She came home, the harbour spot was still hers, and the whole episode became one more chapter in the statue's unusually eventful biography.
Getting There from Central Copenhagen
The easiest way to reach the Little Mermaid statue in Copenhagen is via Østerport Station, which sits about a 10 to 15 minute walk from Langelinie. Whether you're coming from the airport, the main train station, or anywhere in between, getting to Østerport rarely takes more than one change of line, since it connects to both the Copenhagen Metro and the S-train network.
A few practical options:
- On foot from Nyhavn - roughly 20 to 25 minutes along the harbourfront, passing Amalienborg and Kastellet on the way
- By S-train or Metro - get off at Østerport, then walk north along Folke Bernadottes Allé toward the water
- By harbour bus - Copenhagen's public water buses stop within walking distance of Langelinie and are covered by the same transport tickets as the Metro and buses
- By canal or harbour cruise - several boat routes pass close enough to Langelinie that you can view the statue from the water without disembarking at all, which is actually one of the better ways to photograph her without the crowd in frame
If you've got a Copenhagen Card, it includes public transport across the city, so getting to and from Langelinie won't cost anything extra on top of what you've already paid.
What's Around Her: Langelinie and Nearby Landmarks
The mermaid rarely travels alone on an itinerary, and that's a good thing, because the walk around her is genuinely one of the nicer half-day experiences the city has to offer.
Kastellet, just south of the statue, is one of the best-preserved star-shaped fortresses in Europe, built in the 1600s and still laid out as a five-pointed star from above. It's still an active military area in parts, but the grounds double as a public park, Churchillparken, and the ramparts, moat, and windmill are open to the public and free to explore. Give yourself at least half an hour here.
Right next to Kastellet sits the Gefion Fountain, Copenhagen's largest monumental fountain, depicting the goddess Gefion driving four oxen (said to be her sons transformed) as she carves the island of Zealand out of Sweden. It's dramatic, it's free, and it photographs beautifully at golden hour.
A little further inland, Amalienborg Palace is the winter home of the Danish royal family and consists of four matching rococo buildings arranged around an octagonal square. If you time it right, you can catch the changing of the guard around noon.
Nearby, Frederik's Church, better known as the Marble Church because of its enormous copper-green dome, is one of the more striking pieces of architecture in the city and sits just a short walk from the palace.
For art lovers, the National Gallery of Denmark (SMK) is roughly 20 minutes on foot and holds the country's largest collection of Danish and international art, including work connected to the same 19th-century Golden Age that produced Andersen's stories.
Best Time to Visit (and How to Skip the Crowds)
Because she's outdoors, free, and open at any hour, there's no bad season to see the Little Mermaid statue in Copenhagen. That said, timing matters more than most people expect.
Early morning, for example before 8am, is genuinely the best window. Cruise ship passengers as well as tour buses tend to arrive from mid-morning onward, and by lunchtime the small viewing area in front of her rock can get properly crowded. Late evening in summer, when the light stretches on until nearly 10pm, is the other good option, especially if you're after photos without a wall of phones in the frame.
Winter visits are quieter and, honestly, a bit more atmospheric - there's something fitting about seeing a statue built around loneliness and longing while the harbour's grey and half-empty. Just dress for the wind coming off the water.
FAQ: The Copenhagen Mermaid Story
Where is the mermaid statue in Copenhagen?
She sits on the Langelinie promenade, on a granite boulder at the water's edge in the København Ø district, about a 20-minute walk north of Nyhavn.
Is the original Little Mermaid statue still in Copenhagen?
Yes. Aside from a temporary loan to the 2010 Shanghai World Expo, the original bronze statue has stood at Langelinie continuously since 1913, per the condition Carl Jacobsen set when he gifted it to the city.
Why is the Little Mermaid in Copenhagen famous?
Partly because of who made her (Edvard Eriksen, for Carlsberg heir Carl Jacobsen), partly because of the Hans Christian Andersen story behind her, and partly because a century of vandalism, media coverage, and postcards turned a fairly modest statue into Denmark's unofficial mascot.
What's the difference between the "little" and "big" mermaid in Copenhagen?
The original 1913 statue by Edvard Eriksen is what most people mean by "the Little Mermaid." The so-called big mermaid is a separate, later work: The Genetically Modified Little Mermaid by Bjørn Nørgaard, installed in 2006 a short walk further along Langelinie, distorted in appearance and part of a larger sculpture group.
Is there an entry fee?
No. The statue sits in a public outdoor space and can be viewed at any time, free of charge.
How long should we plan for a visit?
Seeing the statue itself takes just a couple of minutes, but most visitors spend an hour or two exploring the wider Langelinie area, including Kastellet and the Gefion Fountain.
Can you see the Little Mermaid from a boat?
Yes. Several harbour and canal cruise routes pass close enough to Langelinie for a clear view from the water, which also happens to be one of the calmer ways to see her if you'd rather skip the crowd on land.
What's the best way to get there without a car?
Østerport Station is the most convenient stop, served by both the Metro and the S-train, followed by a short walk north along the harbour. A Copenhagen Card covers the public transport if you've already got one for the rest of your trip.