Something enormous is moving into Point Defiance. Beginning October 15, four giant wooden trolls will take up residence among the gardens, trails and animal habitats at Point Defiance Zoo & Aquarium, peeking out from behind the landscaping and quietly studying the humans who wander past. They are the work of Thomas Dambo, the Danish artist who has spent his career turning other people's trash into the kind of folkloric giants that make children stop dead in their tracks.
The exhibition is called Trolls: A Field Study, and it is a two-park affair. Point Defiance gets four of the twelve trolls; the other eight are tucked into the forests and natural habitat areas at Northwest Trek Wildlife Park in Eatonville. Together the two Parks Tacoma attractions are the first locations in the Pacific Northwest to host this particular traveling exhibition, which previously appeared at the North Carolina Arboretum and is currently on view at the South Coast Botanic Garden in Palos Verdes, California. The trolls will be in Tacoma through January 24, 2027, and they are included with daytime admission or membership at each park.
Each sculpture stands somewhere between seven and nine feet tall, which makes them hard to overlook even when they are deliberately half-hidden in the landscape. They are built from reclaimed materials -- fallen branches, scrap wood, discarded pallets, twigs -- and no two are alike. Each has a name, a personality and a particular theory about why humans behave the way they do.
Boge, the welcoming hands, throws his arms wide toward visitors and studies how people work together to solve problems. Larke, the mask troll, watches birds, weather and the turning of the seasons; her unusual hat is a nod to the human urge to express individuality, while her story is a reminder that nature keeps its own schedule and will not be hurried. Poppi, the curious collector, gathers up the objects humans throw away and puzzles over why we manufacture so many things designed to be used exactly once. Birch rounds out the Tacoma four. A fifth troll, Boge, also greets guests just outside the front gate on the zoo's early-morning Wild Zoo Tours, which let small groups find Larke, Poppi and Birch before the gates open to the public.
The premise behind the whole exhibition is a bit of a joke that doubles as a lesson. According to Dambo's own telling, a little troll named Taks wandered into the human world on the night he was born and came back baffled by what he found: strange machines, noisy boxes, people rushing around without ever stopping to talk to the trees. He reported his findings to his eleven siblings, and Trolls: A Field Study was born. The trolls, in other words, are not here to entertain us. They are here to observe us, and the exhibition invites visitors to slow down, look around and wonder what the trolls are concluding.
That sensibility is pure Dambo. He came to large-scale sculpture by way of graffiti and music, and both show up in the work: many of his trolls are named after old friends from Odense, inheriting the nicknames they had when he was a young graffiti artist and musician, and some are named for the volunteers who helped build them. He often writes poems for his trolls, a habit he traces to his years as a songwriter. The people he has met over a lifetime keep living on through the sculptures.
Dambo's creations number around 200 worldwide, and they have generated a following that borders on pilgrimage. Families plan road trips around them. In the Pacific Northwest, five of his earlier trolls have been scattered across the region since 2023 as part of a separate exhibition, Northwest Trolls: Way of the Bird King -- Bruun Idun in West Seattle's Lincoln Park, who sings to the orcas of the Salish Sea; Pia the Peacekeeper on Bainbridge Island; Jakob Two Trees in the Issaquah forest; and Ole Bolle in Portland, Dambo's first troll in the region, who appears to be lifting the roof off a little red cabin to see what is inside. With the arrival of the twelve new trolls in Pierce County, the number of Dambo giants lurking around Puget Sound climbs to seventeen.
When Dambo was asked why his work resonates the way it does, he did not reach for anything grand. "There're a lot of artists that make cool sculptures," he told KOMO News. "So, why is it that they like mine? I think it's just because it's basic human needs: go outside and enjoy nature. We're all trapped inside this digital box, right?"
Nikki Dzialowy, Northwest Trek's facilities manager, put the appeal in more local terms while standing at the spot where one of the Eatonville trolls will greet guests. "They're just walking right out of the forest," she said. "They live here. They thrive here. And now, they're showing themselves just a little bit to study us."
For the zoo, the exhibition fits an institutional mission that has always leaned on getting people outdoors. "We're always looking for new ways to connect people with nature, wildlife and the outdoors," Matt Mauer, president of the Parks Tacoma Board of Commissioners, said in a release. Tom Zaller, president and CEO of Imagine, the art-installation company producing the exhibition with Dambo, described it as "a one-of-a-kind exhibition that offers guests an enchanting outdoor experience" and said it continues the company's mission of creating moments that "entertain, educate, and inspire."
There are a few practical things worth knowing before you go. The dates October 15 through January 24 represent the full run of the exhibition, not daily opening hours, so it is worth checking the zoo's operating calendar before making the trip. A downloadable map on the zoo's website shows where each of the four Tacoma trolls is stationed. On select Dog Days, visitors can bring a canine companion along on the troll hunt. And during Zoolights, three of the four -- Boge, Poppi and Birch -- can be found among the holiday lights in the evening, though seeing all four requires a daytime visit.
Admission to the trolls is included with general daytime admission or membership, with no separate ticket and no cap on how many people can come through. For a family looking for an excuse to spend a fall or winter afternoon outdoors in Tacoma, that is about as low a barrier as it gets. The trolls, for their part, will be watching.