Artist Hopes Trolls Will Change The World

Sculptor Thomas Dambo is trolling the environment.

“I wanted to create a fairy tale all around the world with different stories that would all be centered around recycling,” Dambo told weather.com in a recent interview.

“So all my sculptures, they have different names and different personality, and they all look completely different and have different expressions.”

And they’re giant trolls, made of trashed wood and hidden in forests around the world.

“The wonderful thing about trash is that you can find it anywhere,” Dambo said.

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Dambo, who lives in Denmark, pulled from his Danish and Scandinavian roots for inspiration. Trolls date back to Nordic folklore and are characters in fairy tales in Dambo’s region of the world.

“So my story about recycling and trash … It makes good sense that you have the troll protecting the forest, and the troll is made out of the wood that is thrown out because humans don't know how to recycle it,” Dambo, 45, said.

An Environmental Protection Agency report from 2018 showed that 292 million tons of trash were generated in the U.S. alone that year. In weight, that’s 800 times heavier than the Empire State Building.

Of that, about one third was recycled or composted.

“We all want new and we want the newest and the best and the coolest, but it just creates so much trash and we need to learn how to turn this trash into something beautiful,” Dambo said.

Dambo also creates birdhouses, colorful sculptures of animals and other works of art, all from reclaimed or recycled materials.

“My goal as an artist is just to show that there is value in all types of trash,” Dambo said. “The trash is already destroyed, so you can only make it better.”

He’s written a book, too, called “Trash, Tolls and Treasure Hunts.”

Dambo’s official “Trollmap” shows his sculptures dot 20 countries on five continents.

There are also Facebook groups dedicated to finding and photographing the trolls in the woods. In the U.S. you can find them in several states including Washington, Michigan and Minnesota.

“I'm on a mission right now to build one in each state all around the United States,” Dambo said.

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Each troll takes about 1,000 hours to build, and locals often help. Dambo also sometimes collects trash from local businesses to use as supplies.

He hopes his message helps end the cycle of cutting down wood, building something with it, throwing it out and then cutting down more wood to build again.

“I say that the trolls, they live for a thousand years,” Dambo said. “So because of this they can see the big picture and they're trying to help the humans see the big picture, and see the big impact a little human can have in the long term.”

(Thomas Dambo was interviewed by weather.com editor/producers Dan Wright and Andrea Rainone.)

Weather.com reporter Jan Childs covers breaking news and features related to weather, space, climate change, the environment and everything in between.