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Denmark’s Little Mermaid sculpture dons burka

Denmark’s national symbol, the Little Mermaid sculpture perched on a rock at a Copenhagen pier, was draped in a burka and a sash reading “Turkey in the EU?” overnight, Copenhagen media reported Thursday.

The coup, which came as European Union leaders gathered in Brussels to decide whether to launch membership talks with Turkey, was discovered Thursday morning by a Japanese tour guide who arrived with a bustling group. The tourists’ cameras clicked wildly as the tour guide removed the full-body black veil worn by Muslim women in some countries, footage broadcast by Localeyes television showed.

“The Japanese were surprised to see the Little Mermaid veiled, and clicked madly and applauded as she was unveiled and the statue appeared,” Wido Schlichting, who filmed the scene for Localeyes, told AFP. Schlichting was the first person on the scene, having been tipped off by an informant.

The Little Mermaid, one of Denmark’s biggest tourist attractions, is based on the character created by Hans Christian Andersen in an 1837 fairytale. The burka incident is just the latest of a slew of mishaps that have befallen her. In the past 40 years, the 90-year-old mermaid has been decapitated twice, most recently in January 1998 after a 1990 attempt failed. She has had a bra and knickers painted on her, have been entirely covered in paint on more than one occasion, and have had her right arm cut off.

In September 2003, attackers tossed the bronze artwork in the water, where police later recovered it. In the fairytale, the little mermaid saves the life of a shipwrecked prince and, in a quest to win his love, agrees to become human. But to do so she must give up her voice as well as her mermaids’ tail, and if the prince weds another, she will turn into foam on the sea and disappear forever. Sculptor Edward Eriksen was commissioned by Danish brewer Carl Jacobsen to create a statue of the Little Mermaid to sit on granite stone at Langelinie Pier, wistfully looking for her prince. The sculpture stands 165 centimetres tall and weighs 175 kilograms. The original statue, cast in bronze, was presented to the City of Copenhagen on August 23, 1913. afp

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