On January 6, 1998, Edvard Eriksen's bronze statue The Little Mermaid in Copenhagen was decapitated for the second time in its history. The sculpture, unveiled in 1913 and based on Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale, had already become an international civic icon and a recurring target for politically charged vandalism. Wikipedia's sourced account records that the 1998 culprits were never found; the head was returned anonymously to a nearby television station and reattached on February 4. The incident echoed the more famous 1964 decapitation associated with Situationist-linked artists, but the later attack confirmed how vulnerable public monuments can become once they function simultaneously as artworks, tourist symbols, and political surfaces.
The attack reinforced the statue's paradoxical status as both cherished public art and a persistent site of symbolic vandalism.