Day by Day in Denmark

The Little Mermaid ( Den Lille Havfrue)  is perhaps the most iconic symbol of Copenhagen, in spite of the fact that she is surprisingly small (4 feet tall) and unassuming. She was sculpted by Edvard Eriksen in 1913, commissioned by Carl Jacobsen, Danish beer company magnate, after he fell in love after seeing a ballet based on the Little Mermaid story.  The actress who played her on stage refused to pose nude but was willing to have her face on the statue; her face was used together with the sculptor's wife's body. The statue was inspired by Hans Christian Andersen's  famous fairytale about a mermaid who gives up everything to be united with a young, handsome prince on land.  Of course, unlike the Disney version, the story has a sad ending.  Every morning and evening she swims to the surface from the bottom of the sea and, perched on her rock in the water, she stares longingly towards the shore hoping to catch a glimpse of her beloved prince.   She may be s...

We have just moved into our third and final apartment where we will spend the rest of our time in Denmark! With the living room windows facing east, we get a lot of precious sunlight in the morning. And the kitchen windows are facing west, so we can see sunsets.   I like to think of the lawn of the art museum across the street as our front yard, especially because they put out lots of lawn chairs where we can sit in the sunshine.  This art museum and the much larger one behind it, are in the middle of a lovely park with several lakes and winding paths. And a large playground. Several buildings down is a school [actually, as I recently learned, the school where the current King attended when he was young!] so it is common to see a gaggle of kids, holding hands and two by two, skipping down the sidewalk towards the playground or back to the school, with one teacher at the front and one at the rear. View of the Hirschsprung Collection from our previous ground floor apartment...