This summer a giant troll greets visitors at the entrance to the Wild Center in Tupper Lake. It’s part of an installation across the natural history museum’s grounds. It's one of the trolls scattered across the Wild Center’s campus.
There are six silent, gentle giants each with their own name and natural focus, strewed across the 115 acres of the Wild Center.
I meet the museum’s Marketing and Communications Manager Jen Tremblay Moore at the entrance. She stands beside Speaker Troll Ronja Redeye.
“They are definitely three of me, height-wise anyway!”
“So that would be about 15 feet,” notes Bradley.
“About that, yes,” Moore agrees.
“So what did it take to put in a troll like this?” asks Bradley.
“So, they came on big trucks and they were assembled rather quickly.” Moore adds, “But we like to say that they appeared magically.”
Moore adds that the trolls, made of garbage and recycled materials like pallet wood, mesh with the Wild Center’s philosophy.
“The trolls are on a mission to help humans be better stewards of the environment, which aligns perfectly with the Wild Center’s mission to connect humans with nature. And so the trolls, each one of them has a different, specific agenda so-to-speak, but overall, they want to save the humans. So they want to remind us to be a little more conscious of what we throw away, how we consume and how we’re treating our earth.”
Music surrounds you and creates a sense of anticipation as you walk the Forest Music trail to Birdhouse Troll Ibbi Pip.
“And there she is!” exclaims Bradley.
“There she is with all of her birdhouses,” notes Moore. “She hung all of these birdhouses up and she is hoping to help humans protect the birds which will hopefully then inspire them to protect more than just the birds: other animals and our planet.”
Next along the pathways is Botanical Troll Basse Buller, and children are playing around and on him. Muhannad Qusem from Willow Park, New Jersey is watching his 5 ½ year old daughter Elise.
"It’s beautiful. I mean, the kids love him, especially my daughter. Elise,” Qusem calls to her.
“I like it because it’s cute,” Elise says.
“Is it what you thought a troll would look like?” asks Bradley.
“Yeah,” Elise says.
“Are you excited to see them?” Bradley asks.
“Yes,” Elise says emphatically, “Because I like trolls.”
Travis Zedick is a chaperone for Cumberland Head Elementary School visiting for the day on a field trip. He is with Camille Heilmann, Scarlett Coe and his daughter Sloan Zedick.
“We heard a lot of good things about it and we just figured we’d, you know, go on the field trip and check it all out and see what it’s about and show the girls.”
“They’re cool. They have a lot of detail to them,” Sloan says.
“I take it you didn’t expect that?” asks Bradley.
“No,” replies Sloan.
“What can’t you pull off?” Zedick asks.
“The toenails,” answers Camille.
“Oh yeah!” Scarlett adds. “You can’t pull off the toenails!”
“We made a joke earlier,” Zedick explains. “We said don’t pull off the toenails!”
Jeremy Flax was chaperoning young students Elliot Sharlow and Declan Flax.
“We’ve seen the trolls. We came for a field trip, but we did check out some trolls.”
“They’re cool,” Elliot says.
“They have a lot more detail than I expected,” Flax says. “They’re so ugly they’re cute.”
“Yeah, I don’t know.” Elliot sort-of agrees.
While many of the kids were overwhelmed by the giant trolls, they fascinate adults. Jacqueline Whiteley came to the Wild Center with Julia Allo after seeing an ad for the exhibition.
“I love the outdoors. I love the fact that he’s using all recyclable products to build these things.”
“It was really amazing,” chips in Allo.
“Our favorite was the...” starts Whiteley.
“... the birdhouse,” says Allo.
“Enchanted Forest,” continues Whiteley. “They have this calming music playing and there are birdhouses all through and then you come to him at the end and he’s got like a sack of birdhouses and it looks like he is placing the birdhouses in the tree.’
Although sculptor Thomas Dambo is not currently on site, the Wild Center interviewed the Danish artist when he was on site planning the installation for Trolls: Save the Humans.
“For me a troll is the unspoken voice of the animals and the plants and they stand as a protector of the natural world. I want people to understand that this sculpture is made of trash so that people will understand that trash is not dirty, disgusting and dangerous, but that trash is something super valuable if we just look at it as a resource. Because if we look at it as something discarded it will fill up our oceans and our air and our ground we stand upon. But if we look at it as a resource, we can use it to build the future.”
Trolls: Save the Humans is part of the Wild Center’s 20 anniversary celebration and will be at the museum through October 31.
