Long Waves of Ocean Hair

About this drawing

A little mermaid portrait may look cheerful, but the original 1837 tale by Danish writer Hans Christian Andersen is far from a musical comedy. It is one of the most bittersweet stories in the fairy-tale canon.

Andersen's heroine has no name. She is the youngest daughter of the sea king, and at fifteen she finally gets to swim to the surface. There she sees a handsome prince and rescues him from a shipwreck. To join the human world, she makes a brutal deal with a sea witch, who cuts out her tongue and gives her legs. Every step feels like walking on knives.

It gets harder. The prince is fond of her but marries someone else. Her sisters offer her a way out, which requires harming him, and she refuses. There is no wedding at the end. Instead, she dissolves into sea foam, then rises as a spirit of the air with the hope of earning an immortal soul through good deeds.

That ending stayed with readers. In 1913, Copenhagen unveiled a small bronze statue of the character on a rock at the harbor, and it has become a Danish icon. Plenty of American tourists line up for a photo and are shocked by how tiny it is. Solvang, the Danish-style town in California, even has a replica.

• mermaids
• fairy tales
• ocean
• denmark