The Ole Bolle Hus

Dear Liza,

I took the bus out to the Nordic House again this week, to get practice in Danish conversation and to see something that didn’t even exist until last month!

This is “Curious Troll and the Trollstua”, a wooden sculpture created by Thomas Dambo and a team of volunteers in the woods by the Nordic House in Southwest Portland. The site-specific installation is part of Dambo’s Northwest Troll: Trail of the Bird King, part of his Trail of a Thousand Trolls. Like all Dambo’s work, it is made of recycled pallets and repurposed lumber, as part of his philosophy of making beauty out of things once considered dirty and useless.

When you stand off from the piece, the troll seems almost child-like. But as you walk into the little house you get this ominous feeling of being watched by something very big. Not dangerous, especially, but BIG.

Of course, what has brought the Troll to the house is right there in the table, a pretty cake and basket full of pastries resting in a beautifully embroidered tablecloth.

A poem is posted on the wall, telling us what the Troll is thinking.

“There’s something in the air, that something makes my belly rumble,

Something smells so strong, it hits me almost makes me stumble

Could it be the little people cooking something smelly

In the big red cookie jar, so I can put them in my belly.”

So, it seems, the troll thinks the house is his cookie jar!

I love this mixture of whimsy and danger, adorability and slightly menacing. My conversation group compatriots Char and ElseMarie posed close by to give some scale. Char told me that the troll is 15 feet tall!

I hope this whimsical troll will be here for a long time. I can imagine that weather and rain will only make him more beautiful.

Love,

Grandma Judy