There’s a troll takeover happening across North Carolina. In the last month, a troupe of giant wooden trolls, created by Danish Artist Thomas Dambo, has been installed in Asheville, High Point, Charlotte and Raleigh.
In Asheville, 12 trolls are stationed at the North Carolina Arboretum. The traveling exhibit, “Trolls: A Field Study,” opens on Saturday, Nov. 15, and runs through Tuesday, Feb. 17. In the other cities, the trolls are permanent additions to the landscape.
The upcycled wooden sculptures arrived earlier this week in Asheville, packed inside giant trucks. They’re made of fallen branches, wooden pallets, and twigs, and the largest is nine feet tall. The trolls are installed to appear, as much as possible, like part of the natural world.
Some of them are positioned in the gardens, while others are a bit trickier to find, tucked away in the Arboretum’s sprawling woods. The installation required a fleet of forklifts and all-terrain vehicles, said Mac Franklin, the Arboretum’s Director of Horticulture.
“The overarching theme is that the trolls are supposed to look as though they are just wandering through a space,” he said. “So it can't be too contrived.”
The trolls in Asheville are considered “baby trolls” in comparison to the others who have taken up residence in North Carolina. In Raleigh’s Dix Park, some of the trolls stretch 10 feet high, including one named “Mother Strong Tail” that boasts a 645-foot-long tail made from repurposed bourbon barrels. Each has a unique shape, size and personality.
Dambo, the man behind the trolls, said the “field study” exhibit in Asheville is all about encouraging human beings to see themselves from a new perspective. And by that, he means from a troll’s perspective.
“I hope that people will find it fun,” he said. “Fun to see yourself through a lens of something else. We need to see ourselves through others to really understand who we are, right?”
One of the trolls has a giant wooden net, meant for capturing humans, while another sits hunched over with a big pencil and notepad. A third has a dumpster over its head with a confused look on its face.
Dambo is on a mission to create 1,000 trolls. So far, he’s made around 150 – and has gained quite the following along the way.
He wants to prove that people can make art out of anything. He started making trolls a decade ago, back when he was a hip-hop artist, looking for a new environmental-themed project.
“And at that time, I was rapping about being a dumpster diver,” he said. “And then I thought that I should make, like, a really big sculpture.”
He tried making sculptures of animals, but found his niche with the trolls because they gave him more creative freedom.
“You can't just make a spider with five legs, but you can make a troll with a 645-foot-long tail, and it just seems like it's supposed to be like that,” he said.
Dambo says he’s surprised by how popular the troll sculptures have become.
“I do my best and I think they look really awesome, and me and my team have gotten better and better at building them through the years,” he reflected. “But it is also overwhelming to see that it has just become like a whole phenomenon now.”
Millions of people have made the pilgrimage to see Dambo’s trolls. In Asheville, the buzz over the trolls has been growing ever since the exhibit was announced earlier this year.
Drake Fowler, the Arboretum’s executive director, says people all over the world, including from Tahiti and Zimbabwe, have already purchased tickets.
“There's Facebook groups around these trolls, and there's a couple of people that are like 'I'm going to be there on the 15th and I want to be the first people to see,’” he said.
For everyone who chooses to go troll hunting in North Carolina, Dambo sends his best wishes.
“I hope they'll have a good, entertaining, magical, whimsical experience. Maybe come out and see some parts of North Carolina that they haven't seen before, see a little bird or a little plant they haven't noticed before.”
