The ‘Little Mermaid’ of Copenhagen barely measures one meter, but in the hearts of residents it competes with the greatest monuments of the city such as the St. Nicholas Church or the Opera. For this reason, this Thursday, astonishment invaded the dawn of the capital when it was discovered that the heroine of the andersen’s tale woke up painted with the white, blue and red of the Russian flag.
The police have immediately opened an investigation to clarify how it could have happened. For now, it is unknown who may be behind the incidentwhich has been registered as a “hooliganism case,” a Danish police spokesman said.
Is sign of support for the Kremlin in one of the most touristic and international monuments in the country has not sat well with a government that was the first to support Sweden’s NATO entryback in July of last year, and who has always been a strong critic of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
[Un grupo terrorista ucraniano asalta Briansk (Rusia), mata a un hombre y toma varios rehenes]
The bronze statue, the work of Edvard Eriksen 110 years agorepresents the little mermaid from the homonymous tale of 1837 by the Danish author Hans Christian Andersen, later immortalized by the films of Disney in various versions.
It is perched on a rock next to the Langelinie promenade. The white, blue and red stripes of the Russian flag were painted on the front of the stone, under the mermaid’s tail, as can be seen in the many photographs that the perplexed tourists have taken this morning, before the authorities erased the flag from the stone.
It is not the first time that said statue has been the victim of acts of vandalism. In 1964 and in 1998 the attackers slit her throat and stole her head., although on both occasions it was subsequently returned. In 1984, the thieves settled for ripping off one of his arms.
However, the worst of the attacks took place when in 2003 a detonation made her fly through the air. The most recent vandal act, in 2020, was a graffiti that called her a “racist fish”. It should be remembered that the protagonist of the story has been the subject of debate in recent times after Disney’s announcement that they would make a new film with a black ‘Little Mermaid’.
