Prince Henrik inaugurates new mermaid sculpture

Prince Henrik, right, standing next to Bjørn Nørgaard
Today Prince Henrik inaugurated Bjørn Nørgaard's sculpture group called 'the Genetically Engineered Human' in Copenhagen Harbour. Like the famous statue of Hans Christian Andersen's character of The Little Mermaid, the new mermaid is made of bronze and is sitting on a stone plinth. But that is where Edvard Eriksen's Little Mermaid from 1913 and Bjørn Nørgaard's new gene modified version ends. A group of new scultures has been installed a short distance away from the original Little Mermaid at Langelinie.
The sculpture is part of Bjørn Nørgaards giant work of art »The Genetically Modified Paradise«. Bjørn Nørgaard said, "It has been very logical for me to take up the theme of geneic engineering as one of the issues of today. With the human body as a starting point, I have wished to create a tableau which discusses the limits of civilisation in a sculptural form." The artist explained that the mermaid is captured at the moment when her tail splits to became two legs, which hurt terribly. Nørgaard said in the old days we said it was thought of as magic, but today we call it gene manipulation. It is most appropriate for Prince Henrik to do this royal duty, since it has been recently discovered that he does bronze statuary himself as a hobby (see our report from Cayx). (Many thanks to Thor for translation from an article in Berlingske Tidende and commentary.)



for more photos, visit Madeleine Glindorf's website
The Little Mermaid Hans Christian Andersen's original story.
A story about the national symbol of Denmark The statue of The Little Mermaid
DR 1 TV Avisen (02:22) a short video clip about the installation of the statues.