The Drowned Bride

In 1842, Danish newspapers reported the drowning of a nobleman’s daughter off the coast of Helsingør — her name was Arielle Wulffsen.

Her father had arranged her marriage to an aging merchant. But locals claimed she often swam to sea at night, singing.

Fishermen said they’d seen her hair “burning like copper beneath the waves.”

When her body washed ashore, her legs were torn apart — as if something had tried to pull her back into the water.

Hans Christian Andersen, who lived nearby, attended her funeral. He was known for reworking local tragedies into parables. But what he didn’t include in The Little Mermaid was the discovery a week later: the fishermen’s nets brought up a human heart, still beating faintly, covered in salt crystals.

Andersen wrote in his diary that day:

“The sea never gives without taking twice.”