I swear I'm this 🤏🏼 close to losing it if I hear or read that The Little Mermaid is set in Denmark one more time.
Well, I don’t want to be a party pooper @mattanimaniac, but that’s wrong🥲
Many people believe that both the 1989 movie and the original story of The Little Mermaid are set in Denmark just because the original story was written by Andersen, a Danish author, but only the author was Danish, but not the setting of the original story or the setting of the 1989 movie, as well as there are many people who believe that the movie is set in the Caribbean just because Sebastian has a Jamaican accent and because Denmark had colonies in the Caribbean, but that’s wrong.
In fact, the animators of the 1989 movie initially wanted to set it in Denmark (because they believed the original story was also set there, but this is also wrong and I’ll explain later). Indeed, in the scene at the beginning of the movie with Eric’s ship, the sea is very dark and the sky is gray, not only because it’s early morning, but also because that scene was shot when the animators’ initial idea was still to set the film in Denmark. However, they later showed the film’s script and initial ideas to Howard Ashman, asking for his advice, and he decided to change Sebastian’s character: at the beginning, he was supposed to be a crab called Clarence, a butler with a British accent (well, the classic stereotype of the English butler, like Grimsby), but Ashman decided to change him, transforming him into the court composer with the Jamaican accent that we all know and, consequently, giving the music some Caribbean vibes:
"Howard pitched us the idea of a— one of the very first things when we talked to him, he said, 'Are you thinking this movie is going to be strictly set in Denmark? Because I have this idea that I want the music, because of the seaside motif of you know, mermaids and water, that this way of contemporizing the music by having it have calypso and reggae elements in it! We very quickly said we're totally open to that idea. We think of this as a fairy tale world that's not set in Denmark in the 1700s."
—John Musker
However, despite Ashman’s Jamaican inspiration for Sebastian, the artists’ ideas for the actual setting of Eric’s kingdom and the overall vibe of Atlantica were completely different. After departing from the initial setting based on Denmark (thanks to Ashman), they decided to move the setting to the Mediterranean (I’m speaking of the overall vibes of Atlantica here), drawing inspiration in particular from Italy for Eric’s kingdom, because they wanted a warmer setting than Denmark. This is stated in many interviews with the movie’s official animators and screenwriters, and in many official Disney books:
"The Disney artists moved the story from the frigid Baltic of Andersen's native Denmark to a warmer, sunnier that suggested the Mediterranean, probably off the coast of southern Italy. Elements in the costumes and building suggest an equally vague time in the late seventeenth or eighteenth century. Musker says, 'Rowland Wilson—he's a great draftsman—designed the Prince's palace. He did a drawing that we loved that combined these Mediterranean elements, making it a palace unlike any other Disney fairy tale palace, with the whitewashed stucco. He was really going for a warm southern Mediterranean feel that he thought would be attractive to a mermaid who'd been stuck all her life in the ocean."
—“The Disney Princess: A Celebration of Art and Creativity and John Musker's words from the DVD commentary of the 1989 film”
"We tried to do something kinda Mediterranean and a little bit of an Italian flip put into it also"
—Disney concept artist Michael Peraza
“The Disney artists moved the story to a warmer, sunnier sea [than Denmark] that suggested the Mediterranean, probably off the coasts of Southern Italy”.
—“The Disney Princess”, an official Disney book wrote by historian Charles Solomon
Moreover, in a video of the official YouTube channel “Disney Kids” (an official Disney channel), some kids declare that the movie takes place somewhere in Italy and even if it’s a “kids” channel and there are kids talking in this video, It’s still official because Disney controls what those children were supposed to say. I mean, these aren’t children making random statements; behind those statements there are still adults who taught each child what to say, adults who work for Disney, since this is an official Disney channel.
For anyone saying Croatia: in particular, the animators were inspired by a real castle in Switzerland for Eric’s castle (as stated in that picture from an official Disney book) and, yes, they were inspired by a real village in Croatia for the village near Eric’s castle, but for the overall setting of Eric’s kingdom, the inspiration is mostly Italy (as stated in so many articles). Moreover, that village in Croatia inspired only the village near Eric’s castle, but NOT Eric’s entire kingdom. It’s like saying Eric’s kingdom is in Switzerland JUST because the castle is inspired by a real castle in Switzerland. I mean, the castle was inspired by a real castle in Switzerland, the village near the castle was inspired by a real village in Croatia, but the overall atmosphere of the entire kingdom is inspired mainly by Italy.
So, anyway, only in the live action movie they clearly decided to set the story in the Caribbean, also because the respective settings and aesthetics of these two movies are completely different.
Well, I said before that the animators of the original 1989 movie—like many other people—basically BELIEVED that the original story was set in Denmark, only because the author, Andersen, was Danish, and because of the mermaid statue in Copenhagen. But actually, regarding the plot of the story, written in 1837, it is known that Andersen was obviously inspired by an unrequited love for a friend of his (named Edvard Collins) who, moreover, was also about to get married, while, speaking of the setting, it is never specified within the story, but can be deduced both from various details in the story itself—specifically concerning the prince’s kingdom (so the fact that the mermaid encounters icebergs during one of her sea explorations is not valid evidence, because we don’t know where she exactly was at that time. She could also have been very far from the prince’s kingdom, which instead has a completely different atmosphere, a Mediterranean and Italian feel in particular, as I will explain later)—and ALSO from Andersen’s life ITSELF. In fact, the author was inspired by some trips he took to Italy in 1833 (Andersen loved to travel), also recounted in his book called “L’improvisatore”: for example, there’s a small town in Liguria (a region in Italy) called Sestri Levante, which Andersen visited at the time, and where celebrations in honor of the Danish author are still held today. Furthermore, in the letter in which Andersen declared his love to his friend, he literally mentioned Calabria (another region in Italy). Indeed, moreover, in the original story, as I wrote before, the setting has an overall Mediterranean feel (the prince is described as having a slightly olive complexion and black hair and eyes, the castle is made of marble and decorated with statues inspired by classical antiquity, there are orange trees in the kingdom and the sea is a bright blue with coral, whereas in Denmark it would have been much darker), and there are slightly Arabian details (such as the prince owning girls as slaves). There is also a video about this on YouTube, called “What you didn’t know about The Little Mermaid”, made by Riise, a DANISH YouTuber who analyzed many details in Andersen’s life and many descriptions of the Prince’s kingdom straight from some pages of the original story. Riise himself also said that the famous statue of the mermaid in Copenhagen was made in 1913, only almost a century after Andersen wrote the story in 1837, and only as a tribute exclusively to the author’s nationality.
