The Bones Beneath the Sea: Ariel’s Sister’s Confession

When Hans Christian Andersen wrote The Little Mermaid, he based it on tales from Danish sailors about “the daughters of foam” — sea-creatures who could shed their tails once a year. But what few know is that Andersen corresponded with a fisherman’s widow named Liv Sørensen, who claimed to have found bones “carved like ivory shells” off the Jutland coast.

Her letters — later hidden by the church — described a girl who came to shore every midsummer. Her legs bled from the transformation, but she sang to the waves, begging them to take her back.

Liv’s husband disappeared the next year. His boat was found adrift, ropes tangled with hair — not seaweed, but golden-red strands.

Decades later, divers searching the same area found skeletal remains shaped like a human torso fused to a coral spine. The jaw was carved with strange runes meaning “the sea does not forgive.”

And among the coral? A comb, encrusted with pearls — and still warm to the touch.