Thomas Dambo

Did You Know?

• Dambo's mother was a theater costume seamstress and his father was a blacksmith.
• He built treehouses, dug caves, and put up zip lines in the woods as a child.
• Dambo had a decade-long musical career in Denmark as a musician and songwriter.

Trail of a Thousand Trolls

Thomas Dambo started the "Trail of a Thousand Trolls" project in the early 2010s, with the ambition of constructing a thousand troll sculptures out of recycled materials. His first creation, "Hector the Protector," went up in Culebra, Puerto Rico, in 2014. That piece was lost to Hurricane Maria in 2017, and Dambo built a replacement Hector in 2019. As of July 2025, Dambo and his crew had finished 170 trolls. They often bring in local volunteers to help set them up. These sculptures can be found across 20 countries. Some of the spots include three trolls and a hidden fourth in Clinton, Iowa; five at Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens; five at Dix Park in Raleigh, North Carolina; "Rita the Rock Planter" in Victor, Colorado; six as part of Northwest Trolls: Way of the Bird King; one in Hainesport Township, New Jersey; three at Bernheim Forest in Clermont, Kentucky; twelve at the North Carolina Arboretum in Asheville, North Carolina, as part of "Trolls: A Field Study"; "Lulu the Troll" at the California Nature Art Museum in Solvang; "Isak Heartstone" in Breckenridge, Colorado; "Mama Rosa" in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin; six at the Wild Center in Tupper Lake, New York, as part of the “TROLLS: Save the Humans” touring exhibition, which was previously at Filoli in Redwood City, California; "Greta Granite" and "Erik Rock" at Ninigret Park in Charlestown, Rhode Island; six trolls and three portals in the Detroit Lakes, Minnesota area, with one portal in downtown Fargo, North Dakota; "Rose Wonders," which appeared at Burning Man in Black Rock City in 2025 and now lives at Filoli Gardens, California; six as the Giants of Mandurah, with five in Mandurah, Western Australia and one in Subiaco; "Ulla," a giant female troll, at Parque de la Familia in Santiago, Chile; "The Giant of the Sperrins" in Gortin Glen Forest Park, Tyrone, Northern Ireland; a troll in Børkop, Denmark; "Mamma Wok" in Seoul, South Korea; a magical troll forest in De Schorre, Boom; and "Hugging Olga" in Kása Forest, Hódmezővásárhely, Hungary. An online "Troll Map" gives the exact locations of all the sculptures.