The Little Mermaid (Danish: Den lille havfrue) is a bronze statue by Edvard Eriksen, depicting a mermaid. The sculpture is displayed on a rock by the waterside at the Langelinie promenade in Copenhagen, Denmark.It has a height of 1.25 metres (4.1 ft) and weighs 175 kilograms (385 lb). Based on the fairy tale of the same name by Hans Christian Andersen, the small and unimposing statue is a Copenhagen icon and has been a major tourist attraction since 1913. In recent decades it has become a popular target for defacement by vandals and political activists. The statue was commissioned in 1909 by Carl Jacobsen, son of the founder of Carlsberg, who had been fascinated by a ballet about the fairytale in Copenhagen's Royal Theatre and asked the ballerina, Ellen Price, to model for the statue. The sculptor Edvard Eriksen created the bronze statue, which was unveiled on 23 August 1913.The statue's head was modelled after Price, but as the ballerina did not agree to model in the nude, the sculptor's wife, Eline Eriksen, was used for the body The Copenhagen City Council decided to move the statue to Shanghai at the Danish Pavilion for the duration of the Expo 2010 (May to October), the first time it had been moved from its perch since it was installed almost a century earlier This statue has been damaged and defaced many times since the mid-1960s for various reasons, but has each time been restored. In 2006, Copenhagen officials announced that the statue may be moved farther out in the harbour, so as to avoid further vandalism and to prevent tourists from climbing onto it On April 24, 1964, the statue's head was sawn off and stolen by politically oriented artists of the Situationist movement, amongst them Jørgen Nash. The head was never recovered and a new head was produced and placed on the statue. On July 22, 1984, the right arm was sawn off and returned two days later by two young men. In 1990, an attempt to sever the statue's head left a cut in the neck 18 centimeters (7 in) deep Aside from the statue on display, which is a replica of the original] thirteen undamaged copies of the statue are located around the world, listed by Mermaids of Earth, including Solvang, California; Kimballton, Iowa; Piatra Neamţ, Romania[ and a half-sized copy in Calgary, Canada.The grave of Danish-American entertainer Victor Borge includes a copy as well. A copy of the statue forms the Danish contribution to the International Peace Gardens in Salt Lake City. The half-size replica was stolen on 26 February 2010, but was recovered on 7 April, evidently abandoned in the park after the thief became nervous about being caught with it. The statue is under copyright until 70 years after the death of the creator, in 1959, therefore several copies of the statue have provoked legal actions. As of 2012, replicas of the statue can be purchased on the internet, authorized for use by the Eriksen family. A replica was installed in Greenville, Michigan in 1994 to celebrate the town's Danish heritage, costing $10,000. In 2009 the town was sued by the Artists Rights Society claiming the work violated Eriksen's copyright, and asking for a $3,800 licensing fee] At about 76 cm (30 in) in height, the replica in Greenville is half the size of the original, and has a different face and larger breasts as well as other distinguishing factors. The copyright claim was later reported (from wiki) TFV & comments ZOOM recommended