Thomas Dambo first came to my attention when he installed six trolls at the Coastal Maine Botanical Garden. Once I knew we were going to Denmark, I started marking the nearby trolls to see what we’d be able to find.
There are three trolls currently in Copenhagen.
The first troll turned out to be in walking distance of our hotel. This is Sanka Suttetrold. His story is that he loves children’s pacifiers so much, he just can’t help himself from eating them, even though he knows it makes the kids cry.
He’s set up in a great kids’ park that’s in the middle of a bunch of housing developments in the south of Copenhagen. There’s a skate park, playgrounds, some put-put. It’s a really cool space.
Green George is right on the main drag of Freetown Christiana, and is made up of trash from that community. He’s very easy to find from several different entry points.
The third Copenhagen troll (Kaptajn Nalle) is located out near the cruise ship terminal. He’s a walk out from the last nearby metro stop, and we just had no reason to be out in that area. So he remained off our list.
For the other trolls, we rented a car on one of the sunny days. These trolls are all outside of Copenhagen proper, and while you could theoretically bike to them, that would be a very long day. (And I have not been on a bike in at least thirty years, so that was just never going to happen.) There are tours that go to the Six Forgotten Giants, but we were off season for those. And we did get two extra trolls out of doing the drive ourselves.
Bjarke Cirkelsten is located near a golf park in Dragor. He’s on a well used path – we ran into dog walkers, and a local daycare worker ferrying several of her small charges by a very fancy multi-child bike transport. We slowed our walk over while they were climbing all over Bjarke. They were clearly having a blast.
His story is that he has some memory problems, so he uses a stone system to manage his memories. He’s surrounded by a large stone circle that spills out into a nearby field.
This is Lange Liv. She was definitely the biggest trip to get to. We had to park in an industrial park and take a combined pedestrian/bike lane on a highway bridge over to an island to find her. I will note: we were trained very early on in our trip to avoid the bike lanes in Copenhagen proper. They’re clearly marked (although code very close to regular sidewalk to my American eyes, which can be a problem), so it was weird being in these more shared spaces outside of the city. I didn’t like being a pedestrian on that bridge – the bikers were very polite, but I felt like an interloper.
You have to know she’s there to find her – she is not visible from the main path. Lots of people in online posts mentioned biking by her many times before realizing she was there to find. I will say, she has a gorgeous view.
The Six Forgotten Giants – the rest of the trolls from this day are a specific set that was created as a treasure hunt to get families off the beaten path and into the “wilds” around Copenhagen. Theoretically, Sleeping Louis is the first one of this series in order, but we picked our order based on coming out of the airport, so it made sense to start with Trine and loop back around.
Hilltop Trine is set in the Quark Naturcenter. If you follow the Google map directions, it brings you to a parking area at the end of a residential street. Either will work.
There were a lot of little kids wandering around. There were sheep on view, and some really personable goats near the entrance.
Sitting in the palms of her hands is meant to give you a good view of the countryside.
Oscar under the Bridge had one of the longer walks – you can either park near the Arken Museum or at the beach lot on the other side of the barrier island he’s on. Oscar’s pretty much equidistant from both. It’s a lovely walk – the back side runs along marsh, and there’s a lovely beach looking out to sea on the other side.
Oscar is a little scary looking once you get close. You’re probably first going to notice his hand on the bridge, and then look down. He doesn’t look happy. He’s supposedly helping support the bridge, but the look on his face makes me wonder.
As we were climbing down for a closer look, we could hear something chittering at us from his hairline. We figured it was birds of some sort, but it turned out to be mink nesting in his head. They both ran off after giving us a piece of their mind. I suspect he gets enough visitors that they can’t be long term tenants.
This is Little Tille, and unlike a lot of the trolls, she has a tail.
The lake she’s on has a people powered ferry that you can take to cut off the time it takes to walk to the the other side. The next troll is on the other side of the lake, so you can theoretically do both at the same time. Tille’s side has an easy to find parking lot.
We did end up driving to Thomas on the Mountain. If you aim for Kongsholmparken, it’ll get you to a parking lot. You go through a really interesting housing development to get there – it’s made up what looks like container housing. All the windows face inwards, so while I’m sure they’re nice inside, they sure look weird outside. The road to get to the parking area is pretty out of shape, which was the only time we encountered that on our drive. The actual parking area is well used, so I wonder if they’re trying to scare off casual users.
If you follow the path on Google maps, you will have to go up a fairly steep hill. You can cut around to see Thomas from the bottom. A lot of posts about visiting the giants mentioned wearing sturdy footwear. I’ll echo that – it was particularly important here – that field was wet.
Teddy Friendly is in another park, but you have to drive through what appears to be an industrial area to get to it. There is ample parking once you get there, but it is a bit odd when you’re first driving through. This was another place were we ran into a ton of dog walkers.
Teddy’s there to help you get across that smaller stream, but as you can see, that stream is a little more swollen than Teddy’s used to.
Last but not least is Sleeping Louis. We were rapidly approaching dusk by the time we got to him. Fortunately, he’s right off the parking lot of a local sports field, so there’s plenty of parking, and he’s a quick walk in from the lot.
He was built in a spot that Dambo had noticed some homeless people camping in, so his mouth is an opening to a spot that can be slept in. With the popularity of the giants, I do wonder if he’s being used like that now. He has some recent repairs – the sign at his feet is asking people not to climb on him while those are in progress.
Our rental car – I was very amused when we picked this up. I had noted this exact model and color when we were Scotland, and admired it then. It cracked me up that we ended up with this exact color for our car for the day.