The Little Mermaid on Copenhagen's Langelinie promenade is barely over four feet tall and weighs around 385 pounds, yet this quiet bronze has been decapitated twice, lost an arm, been blown off her rock with explosives, and served as a billboard for causes from Faroe Islands whaling to Hong Kong to the war in Ukraine. This episode traces her origins in 1909, when Carlsberg heir Carl Jacobsen saw a ballet of Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale and commissioned sculptor Edvard Eriksen, and debunks the myth that ballerina Ellen Price's face sits on the body of the sculptor's wife.

We then follow the violence: the 1964 decapitation by Situationist artists whose stolen head was never recovered, the 1998 head that turned up at a television station, and the 2003 bombing. Meanwhile, the Eriksen heirs police the statue's copyright, valid until Janu ...