A friend sent me the following message on December 20 last year and it was an amazing early Christmas present:
I don’t know if you’ve seen and thought you might like to know Thomas Dambo is doing a studio tour on March 15th near Copenhagen. I’ve just booked a ticket to go.
We’ve been obsessed with Thomas Dambo’s trolls since first discovering them in the first year of our 7 year, 50 state road trip at Morton Arboretum, just outside of Chicago. Since then, we’ve found them in Kentucky, Belgium, Denmark, Colorado, Maine, New Jersey, the Pacific Northwest, Singapore, Minnesota and more (you can find all our posts about them here).
Finding the trolls around the world has been fun, but getting a chance to go behind the scenes to visit Thomas Dambo’s studio just outside of Copenhagen and meet the man himself? It had to be done!
We didn’t waste any time booking our tour tickets. I just checked the timestamps; my friend messaged me at 3:34pm that day and we’d booked our tickets by 3:51pm. There was just one minor snag though – we were in the US and the tour was in Denmark.
In theory, it wasn’t quite as bad as that though. Shae and I were due to be moving from the US to the UK at some point in March, so we figured we could ensure we’d moved there before March 15, then it would just be a short hop from Heathrow up to Copenhagen. Things didn’t quite work out as planned though as it took longer to get our dog’s paperwork processed than anticipated, so we didn’t end up moving to the UK until early April.
We weren’t going to miss the tour though. Thankfully we had a good stash of SAS (Scandinavian Airlines) miles, so we were able to book business class tickets for the two of us from Newark to Copenhagen (see more about that here).
We arrived in Copenhagen a couple of days early, so we spent a little time exploring before it was time to head to his studio – Rancho Dambo.
Thomas Dambo’s studio is in Gadstrup, about 30-40 minutes west of downtown Copenhagen. We picked up a rental car that morning, then stopped by our friend’s hotel to pick her up (the friend who’d given us a heads up about the tour).
I think there ended up being something like 30-40 people on our tour. We were on a tour conducted in English; Dambo ran a couple of additional tours that day in his native Danish.
Among the dozens of other people were a couple we’d met at Copenhagen airport when we arrived. At immigration, Shae was asked why we were visiting and she mentioned it was for the Thomas Dambo studio tour. A few minutes later, we stopped at an ATM to pull out some Danish krone and an American couple stopped to talk to us. It turns out they’d heard Shae’s answer and they were in the country to go on the studio tour themselves, having flown in on the same flight we’d just taken.
After a quick welcome outside…
…he showed us into his studio/workshop.
As you can see, there were lots of partially constructed troll heads adorning the walls and on the floor, plus there were a dozen fully-constructed trolls standing, sitting, laying down, doing handstands and more.
Dambo shared that the 12 trolls were part of his next collection – Trolls: A Field Study. This will be a traveling exhibit and – most excitingly – they’ll be in the UK first where we now live, so we can’t wait to see them in the wild!
The concept of the collection is that these dozen trolls have been studying humans and learning what makes them tick (for both good and bad). Each troll has hair made from a different type of tree, plus there’s a lot about the trolls that makes each one unique.
Let’s meet the trolls:
Birch
Birch has hair – you guessed it – made of birch.
Boge
Boge’s hair is made of beech and he’s ready to grab hold of you.
Bignut
Bignut’s hair is made of horse chestnut and he’s ready to catch you in his trap at the end of the rope.
Anja
Anja’s hair is made of chestnut and she’ll be ready to catch you in her pails if you find her out in the wild.
Valle
Valle’s hair is made of walnut; you hopefully won’t be in much danger provided you don’t wake them up from their sleep.
Hasse
Hasse’s hair is made of corkscrew hazel which might explain why they’re trying to contort their body.
Wilde
Wilde’s hair is made of corkscrew willow. When you find them, you’ll find that they’re busy drawing something…
…and that something will be you taking a photo!
Larke
Larke was Shae’s favorite of all the 12 trolls. Their hair is made of larch, but it’s hard to tell because they’re too busy exploring a dumpster to try to learn why humans like putting stuff in it so much.
Poppy
Poppy’s hair is made of white poplar. She quickly learned that humans like their phones, so she’s trying to entice people to come closer with her collection so that she can then trap them in her net.
Lilnut
You saw Bignut earlier with a rope trap. Lilnut with hazelnut hair is a little less subtle with their trap.
Having said that, Shae was a little careless and got caught.
Kirse
Although I really liked Larke too, I think Kirse was my favorite as they were so playful. Kirse’s hair is made of cherry.
Taks
Last but not least, there’s Taks who’s on the lookout for the next human to catch in their net. Taks has hair made from a yew tree.
Thomas Dambo shared lots of details about how he and his team create the trolls, how they’re designed in the first place, what provides inspiration, etc. When creating troll collections such as these twelve for Trolls: A Field Study, he likes there to be variety in their poses. That’s why there’s one laying down asleep, one standing on their hands, another bent over looking back at you through their legs, some standing, some sitting, some crouching, etc.
All of Thomas Dambo’s trolls are constructed using recycled wood. That’s a chief theme of his work and collections as he wants to encourage people to be less materialistic and take better care of the environment. Each troll he and his team builds uses 100-200 wood pallets that would otherwise be going to waste after shipments worldwide.
They’re also in the process of updating their studio/workshop compound so that it’ll be CO2 neutral based on solar panels that are being installed and forests that are being planted.
We also got to see inside his office upstairs. To get to it, you have to walk across a rope bridge which he gave a part of the tour from.
His office was as warm and cozy as you’d expect it to be.
At the end of the tour, they had several of his books for sale.
Our friend kindly bought us one and we bought a couple of others, then we were able to get them signed and have a photo taken with him – woohoo!
The studio tour lasted a couple of hours and we had a superb time. At the time of writing this, I don’t think they have any future tours specifically planned yet, but it sounded like they’ll hopefully be running more of them in the future. If you love Thomas Dambo’s trolls and you can make your way to Copenhagen, you should absolutely try to attend one!
[…] was an amazing experience that I wrote more about here. Getting to meet him in person was awesome, as was getting to see his next collection of trolls. […]