‘The Devil is Loose’ in Middelfart, Denmark

In 2012, the devil was officially let loose in Middelfart, Denmark. Local sculptor Steffan Herrik unveiled his bronze Fanden er løs (‘The Devil is Loose’) at a seafront spot that the artist nonetheless calls “the town’s ugliest.” Herrik describes the work as a monument to the early 2000s and their spirit of chaos and uncertainty.

Less a conventional devil than an unsettling chimera, the gaunt figure stands just under 5 feet tall (1.5 meters) and has a beaked, cyclopean head, branching antlers, and a single wing. Beneath it sits a large egg from which two snakes emerge, one with a smaller snake slipping from its open mouth like a tongue.

The title echoes the distinctly Danish saying Fanden er løs i Laksegade (“The devil is loose in Salmon Street”), rooted in an 1826 Copenhagen incident widely blamed on the devil himself. Whether or not Herrik had that case in mind, the connection feels natural in a Danish context.

For those amused by the town’s name: Middelfart derives from the old Danish middel (“middle”) and fart (“crossing” or “passage”), referring to the narrowest point of the Little Belt strait. As for the sulfurous associations, they are purely coincidental, though perhaps not entirely unfitting, given sulfur’s long reputation as the smell of the demonic.