COPENHAGEN, July 2: The gravestone of Denmark’s famed story teller Hans Christian Andersen was vandalised along with other tombs at a cemetery in Copenhagen.

The tomb of the author, who penned stories including “The Little Mermaid”, was covered in messages referring to a residence for young people razed in March last year, said police spokesman Flemming Steen Munch.

The city of Copenhagen recently cleaned graffiti off the wall surrounding the cemetery and, according to Munch, the vandalism that took place overnight was in response to this.

“If you take our wall, we’ll take your tombs,” vandals wrote on grave stones.The forced evacuation and demolition of the Ungdomshuset home -- which for 25 years had been a refuge for youths from marginal backgrounds — sparked violent protests at the time.

It was seen as being one of the bastions of “underground” culture in Europe and its residents were moved to a new home.

The cemetery in Copenhagen is also the resting place of one of the greatest physicists of the 20th century, Niels Bohr, whose tomb was vandalised in the incident. Bohr (1885-1962) won the Nobel prize for physics in 1922 for his work on the structure of atoms.

Andersen’s tombstone is made of porous sandstone, making it especially difficult to remove all traces of the graffiti, the Danish Ritzau agency reported.

The author, who died in 1875, has reached generations of children around the world with his stories including “The Little Match Girl”, “The Ugly Duckling” and “The Princess and the Pea”.—AFP