Copenhagen's Little Mermaid statue was decapitated overnight in a new attack on this celebrated work on the city's waterfront that is adored by Danes but inexplicably subject to regular abuse.
Police said the head of the small bronze figure from Hans Christian Andersen's famous fairytale was sawed off with a grinding tool, its second decapitation since 1964, by an unknown culprit - or culprits - who tipped off a Danish television reporter-photographer.
There were no claims and no clues, though police divers yesterday were scouring the harbour bottom in hopes that the head had been tossed away nearby.
The photographer, Michael Poulsen, said he was woken from a deep sleep by a phone call at 3.30 a.m. An anonymous caller told him to go to where the statue of the young mermaid who longed for legs sits perched on a rock and "something big will happen".
Thinking it a hoax, Poulsen fell back to sleep but was woken by a new call an hour later. The same insistent, voice said: "It is very important to go to the site now. There is something missing from the Little Mermaid."
The graceful bronze statue, which has come to symbolise Copenhagen at home and abroad, holds a lone vigil on the city's northside waterfront but draws more visitors than many of Copenhagen's tourist sites.
"We have no trace nor any idea of who the attacker or attackers might be," a police spokesman said. "No claims have yet been made."
It was Mr Carl Jacobsen, patron of the arts and owner of the celebrated Carlsberg brewery, who ordered the now 84-year-old statue after being smitten by the grace of the dancer Ellen Price in her performance of a ballet based on "The Little Mermaid".
The sculptor, Edward Eriksen, was commissioned to execute the work, finished in 1913, but used his own wife, Eline, as the model since she was "much more graceful than even the ballerina".
Danish authorities said it would cost some $10,000 (£7,150)to replace the statue's head.