A few weeks back I brought up a troll named Rita.
Rita spends her time filling the holes of past mines. She lives in the hills around Cripple Creek, Colorado, and comes to life once the sun drops far enough down behind the shaved heads of the strip mines. She then turns immobile when the life-giver rises from behind Big Bull Mountain, shining with her full, bright glory that’s unique to the Colorado climate.
It’s Rita’s life effort to ensure that humans don’t go traipsing about and falling down old mine shafts. A noble troll she is.
I first discovered Rita last year while visiting my fam, seeing all the touristic sights we could see near their house. From all of Grandma’s descriptions, my then four-year-old thought we were going to visit a real-life troll. We convinced him that, of course, Rita is a real-life troll, but when the sun comes up, she goes to sleep. This was at a time before his favorite question and response to anything was “Why?” So, we were covered.
This year, when I wrote my highly specific blog about things to do in Colorado in winter with a kid, I mentioned Rita. And then I decided to do some digging. How did Rita get there? And why was she there? Perhaps this sudden curiosity was brought on by my son’s now endless questioning of everything. Perhaps it was my own latent curiosity that was finally triggered while driving again this year to the ice castles and back.
Who knows.
But I can tell you a bit about Rita, the man behind it, and how there’s a whole forest of lovely Rita’s fellows in the remains of an old clay quarry in Flanders, Belgium.
Victor, Colorado
Rita herself was commissioned by the Gold Camp District Impact Group, a group of businesses and families that aim to bring the Victor, Cripple Creek, and Florissant, Colorado areas some level of sustainable development. The only life there really was brought about by the gold mines, and with technology, mining employs and delivers money to a very small amount of people considering what once was. The nearby tourist center explains how lively the times were in Victor and Cripple Creek both.
There are also casinos in Cripple Creek, of course. But let’s be honest, most of those sit empty, with just a lone grandmother wearing a faded cowboy hat treating the slot arm like a grandson’s whom she outlived. Sometimes a rush hits and Air Force Academy kids stream out of a bus and party it up, but most of the time… well, it’s not Vegas.
These days, a drive through Victor itself is just an exploration in ruined houses and dreams; old, broken-down places with beautiful views. An ancient 1967 Dodge pickup truck sits idling and puffing a cigar-like exhaust pipe on one side of the street outside a closed ice cream parlor with dust on the counters that’s older than me. And around the corner from that, two curiosities: a miniature golf course and a bakery/coffee shop run by a family of German immigrants.
But there are some struggling signs of life, like the German family and Rita (donate to feed the troll here). The small businesses and little artistic projects like the troll and the ice castle are things that can bring a bit more sustainable development to such a community by bringing in a steady stream of tourists to spend their dollars in the neighborhood. At least, that’s what’s hoped.
And that’s where Thomas Dambo comes in.
The artist
Dambo is an artist, a poet, and a dreamer.
I’ve never met the guy, never talked to him, but in some way, he’s kind of an inspiration to me. Looking at Rita, it’s clear that the troll was created by no singular effort. It took his whole team of 20 employees (and even more volunteers) to put her together, and it takes a whole community to keep up her hot, trollish looks going.
Dambo is a Danish “recycling artist”. That is, he’s a guy who’s loved “playing with trash” ever since he was a kid. Now he plays with trash to build giant trolls literally all across the world. Check him out in his most excellent TEDx Talk here:
He’s been at building all these trolls for the last 11 years. Each troll is built from about 5 tons of scrap wood to build. Which comes to one of his points: with the trash that just the US puts out, he’d be able to build over 2 million trolls a year. That is, not that we could use more trolls (which, why not?), but that we could perhaps do a bit more with our trash than we are.
The Trolls of Belgium
In Belgium, the local trolls all live in Troll Forest, or Trollenbos, as the Flemish call it. Really, Flanders is the perfect place for the trolls because Dutch is like the perfect language for a fairytale people. It is why, I suppose, the Smurfs were born here (a future blog), though I guess they were speaking French at first.
Dutch to me sounds like a drunk Scotsmen trying to speak German with an English accent, or perhaps a drunk German trying to speak English with a Scottish accent. It is an incredibly goofy-sounding language, but they’re also an incredibly enterprising people, so chapeau bas to them for managing such business excellence while talking like an Oompa Loompa.
But I digress.
Trollenbos is located at De Schorre near Mechelen, which for anyone who knows electronic music, might know the park by another name: Tomorrowland. Tomorrowland is the premiere musical festival that thrives on collective shroom/LSD imaginingatings, bringing people together in either a Steampunk world or a Smurf-like world, or both, with massive, complex stages that carry on the theme.
The festival runners decided to do something that gave a little back to the community, so wanted to create some permanent art that could be enjoyed year-round, detached from the festival. And so, they called up Dambo and Trollenbos was born.
De Schorre
De Schorre is one of many of Belgium’s “park domeins”, places that were either once manor lands or mines/quarries that have been converted to public parks. They’re, in general, amazing places to sit and have a picnic with the kiddos and let them play on the playground.
De Schorre itself, besides being famous for the Tomorrowland festival in the summer, also has a huge deal of activities. You can rent boats, play football, go “mountainbiking”, grind at the skatepark, run down a steep hill with a parachute, get your feet muddied up in various barefoot walks, have a beer, play minigolf, and finally, go troll hunting.
The Forest of Trolls
There are seven trolls spread throughout Trollenbos, and they are easiest to find using the interactive Trollmap (which shows you the locations of all the trolls throughout the world), or Googlemaps. You should check out the Trollmap though. You might find out that you live near a troll.
De Schorre, and by extension, Trollenbos, as I mentioned, was built on the grounds of an old clay quarry, which continues the theme of building at excavation sites, a direct connection between Dambo’s message of the use (and reuse) of Mother Nature’s resources.
Trollenbos is a thick, forested swamp with wood pathways that carry you over the still waters. We went this past weekend during a rare, sunny January weekend. Cold, muddy, and wet, but still fun to find all the friendly giants.
One troll is a bit inaccessible during the wet season (that is to say, 45 weeks of the year), as you have to go a bit down an off-path way, but the rest are easy enough to find. The walk is a bit free-flowing with many branches and splits, so you could end up accidentally repeating yourself quite a bit in order to find every troll. But that’s half the fun!
Be prepared to be muddy. Belgium is wet and Trollenbos is a swamp!
The walk ends, or starts, or reaches a climax, with the great Trollentoren, a tower on top of a hill next to a giant, masked troll. The tower itself looks like an ogre outpost from World of Warcraft, with various “savage” types of decorations, like skulls, magic stones, and whatnot.
The Life of Trolls (and the Questions of Children)
There comes a time in every parent’s life where they either have to know everything, get angry about not knowing everything, or just go with the flow.
As long as I’m not tired, I enjoy the “going with the flow” tactic of dealing with my kid.
When he asks “Why?” repeatedly, I often know the answer for two or three layers. But at the fourth layer, I begin to struggle. I know that if I reach for my phone, I will no longer seem omniscient, so I start reaching into my imagination and making stuff up.
We had to leave the park because when the sun sets and the stars come out, the trolls come to life. Naturally, the trolls don’t want to hurt people, but they are a bit fearful and shy of people. So, wouldn’t it be better to leave the park by night so that the trolls can live their lives in peace? Come on, kiddo, let’s hurry along.
Why do the trolls sleep all day? Because the magic that makes a troll is powered by starlight. And of course, the trolls need screws in their wood to keep their skin together. But the screws aren’t screwed on by people; they’re naturally occurring, since the trolls’ diet is rich in magnesium, iron, and other minerals that can be found in potatoes, fish, frogs, and other meals, which the trolls eat completely at the behest of their parents.
Yes, the trolls always finish their dinners as their parents ask. That’s why they’re healthy!
A Poem
And before I leave you today, I’d like to leave you with a poem. It’s by Thomas Dambo, and he wrote it in dedication to the trolls at Trollenbos.
"They were seven good friends both together and alone
by the river in the valley in the forest they had home
they had seen the sun set and rise a million times
the seven trolls stood as tall as the pines
Una and Joures were friends for life and like to lay in the grass
watching the skies crawl by telling stories about the past
Mikil was strong as a dragon and always on his way
Kamiel was wearing a mask a new for every day
Arvid liked to carve his dreams into ancient trees
Hannes to put pearls on a string for everyone to see
and little Nora had only seen the sun rise around a million times
she was still a growing troll with her tail and young mind
They could see past the forest to where the future emerged
they had seen civilizations crumble and new rise from the dirt
they had seen the mountains grow turn to ice melt and burn
seen the fish turn to birds and seen the continents turn
And now they saw these little people with actions so great
It could break what forever and ever had made
And the trolls got afraid life should never be borrowed
It was meant to be shared with the day of tomorrow
So the seven trolls gathered up on a mountain top
To find a new way the old way of now had to stop
and Kamiel spoke up – we must help them get better
the little people mean good but they are too young to be clever
Let’s build them a tower as tall as a troll
and show them all beings are one in the soul
It took them all winter by summer it was done
they then invited all the little people to come
And the little people walked to the top where they opened their eyes
and saw past the forests the mountains and skies
they saw to the future with tears in their eyes
what they saw no one knows but the eyes never lie"
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