Giant troll installation at Dix Park in Raleigh nears completion
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Thomas Dambo installed five recycled-wood trolls at Dix Park, built by volunteers.
- Project used 15 tons reclaimed wood, 75,000 screws and 7,000 volunteer hours.
- Conservancy expects visitor boost; similar troll projects drew 500,000–1,000,000.
Growing up in Denmark, Thomas Dambo regularly rented a cassette tape with a little troll girl who protected a forest. As an adult, Dambo worked at a warehouse where he always saw a huge pile of scrap wood in the back, waiting to be thrown away.
“I thought that it would be pretty cool and a nice symbolism if I would then take that wood, turn it into an army of trolls and put it in those forests with a message to protect those forests around the world,” Dambo said.
Twelve years of Dambo’s “Trail of a Thousand Trolls” project and over 170 troll sculptures later, the artist is bringing five trolls to Raleigh’s Dorothea Dix Park. Almost 500 volunteers helped build the trolls, according to Dix Park Conservancy chief of staff Nick Smith. Thursday was the last day volunteers worked on the sculptures before they would be ready for public viewing.
Dix Park executive director Kate Pearce couldn’t say how many visitors Dambo’s trolls could bring to the park but said other parks across the United States with trolls have seen an increase of anywhere from 500,000 to 1 million more visitors.
Smith declined to share how much the conservancy paid Dambo but said it was a “significant investment.” The conservancy’s Art Task Force selected Dambo’s trolls three to four years ago as part of the park’s push for more public art installations after experiencing them firsthand.
“The words that they brought were magical, and we knew that the whimsy of the trolls and the playful elements fit perfectly with what we were going for,” Smith said.
Between all the volunteers, Dambo estimated it took 7,000 hours of labor to build the trolls. With help from Habitat for Humanity and furniture manufacturer Raleigh Reclaimed, Dambo and his volunteers used:
- 15 tons of recycled bourbon barrels to make an over 600-foot long tail from the mother troll, Strongtail, to the baby troll, Dix.
- A one-mile long old fence
- Wood from two barns
- Old shingles and pallets
- 75,000 screws
Most of the materials were in-kind donations the conservancy did not have to pay for, Smith said. Habitat for Humanity provided volunteers to help train other volunteers with no building experience and troubleshoot unexpected issues.
Many other volunteers came from afar — from Texas to California. Dambo said so many signed up that the Dix Park Conservancy server crashed within two hours.
Dambo creates stories to connect his different sculptures around the world. The five trolls at the Dix, plus two others installed in High Point and Charlotte, are a family who all protect the “grandmother tree,” the oldest and most important tree in the forest, Dambo said.
“In order to protect her, they have enchanted her and turned her into a normal, little-looking tree so no humans will cut her down, because the trolls know humans always cut down the biggest trees,” Dambo said.
To find the grandmother tree, visitors must find the necklaces on each of the seven North Carolina sculptures and enter the symbols on Dambo’s online troll map. Dambo said he tries to imagine where he would feel safe if he was a troll, since, in the eyes of nature, humans are the invasive species of the world.
“That is the true message behind my art,” Dambo said. “It is that we can build big and beautiful, important things out of our waste, instead of having our waste pollute our planet and suffocate our world.”
This story was originally published October 23, 2025 at 3:09 PM.
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