Hans Christian Andersen didn’t write a fairy tale called ‘The Ugly, Pornographic Duckling’, yet his stories often feature alienation, exile and the struggle for acceptance. ‘Ugly and pornographic’, meanwhile, is how Politiken newspaper’s art critic, Mathias Kryger, has described the ‘Big Mermaid’: a 14-ton, 13-foot tall, notably buxom statue which between 2006 and 2018 stood on Copenhagen’s Langelinie promenade – only a few hundred feet away Edvard Eriksen’s iconic 1913 ‘Little Mermaid’ original (itself based on an Andersen fairy tale).

Andersen, who was teased for being tall and ugly as a child, might well pity poor ‘Big Mermaid

The ‘Big Mermaid’ has now been exiled twice – in 2018 she was moved ten miles south to Copenhagen’s Dragør Fort, after locals at Langelinie denounced her as

See Full Page