COPENHAGEN Hundreds of Danes braved the cold on Saturday to welcome home the city's beloved Little Mermaid statue from her eight-month trip to Shanghai, where she represented Denmark at the World Expo.

Flag-waving adults and children cheered and trumpets played as the iconic sculpture was ceremoniously reinstalled on her spot in Copenhagen harbour, which she had left in March for the first time in her 97-year history.

“Even though we were proud to send you to discover the world, we missed you, Copenhagen missed you, Denmark missed you, tourists from around the world missed you,” Copenhagen mayor Frank Jensen said in speech in front of the statue, based on a character in a fairytale by Hans Christian Andersen.

The Little Mermaid is considered a national treasure in Denmark and the decision to send her to Shanghai for the six-month World Expo was the subject of heated debate in Denmark. Opinion polls in Copenhagen showed a majority of residents were opposed to the idea.

When the World Expo opened on May 1, the Little Mermaid was replaced by a video installation by Chinese artist Ai Weiwei.

It allowed visitors who continued to flock to the sculpture's spot in the harbour to look at the Mermaid in her temporary home, the Danish pavilion at Expo 2010, on a giant video screen.

“We couldn't have dreamt of a better ambassador for Copenhagen and for Denmark,” Jensen told AFP, adding that 5.5 million visitors visited the Danish pavilion in Shanghai to see Andersen's heroine.

Her presence made the Danish pavilion one of the Expo's most talked-about attractions in China, where schoolchildren read Andersen's stories.

The 175-kilogram (385-pound) statue by Edvard Eriksen was inspired by a character in Andersen's 1837 fairytale.

She was commissioned in 1909 by Carl Jacobsen, the son of the founder of the famous Carlsberg brewery, and has been a one of Denmark's main tourist attractions since 1913.