I visited Austin earlier this year. A week before I went there, I talked with my sister and she mentioned a wooden troll sculpture she had visited. That was built by a Danish artist (Thomas Dambo) and my sister told my that there are troll sculptures by him all over the world. I had a look at his troll map and it turned out that a new one had been built in Austin a couple of weeks earlier. So I went and visited Malin's Fountain.
In December, I found myself in Antwerp with some spare time. I looked at the troll map and noticed that there's an infestation of trolls (not one troll, but seven of them) a couple of train stops away, near the town of Boom.
So, I took a regional train, went to Boom and walked over to De Schorre.
De Schorre is a recreational park not far from the city center. It's often better known than Boom itself, as a large music festival called "Tomorrowland" currently happens there every year. And that is more often linked to the park than to the town.
I am not sure whether this is intentional, but as in Austin, there's no too direct sign where the trolls are.
It seems the idea is not to 'oversell' them. It is much nicer to go through the woods and think "Oh, look, there's another one. Neat." than to follow a fixed path and go "Four down, another three to go...".
Once you get close to the area they are in, there's a "Trollen Bos" and a "Trollentoren" sign, but that's it. ("Trollen Bos" doesn't mean that you are close to the boss of the trolls, but that this is a "Trolls Forest". And "Trollentoren" is not the gate to the trolls, but translates as "Trolls Tower")
The biggest troll, Kamiel, is on the top of a hill, right next to an observation tower.
The tower is also part of the 'ensemble', which is officially called "The 7 Trolls and the Magical Tower".
For most people, that's probably the third troll to see.
I knew that the troll tower was up the hill, so I went straight towards it, following small trails and tracks. They didn't seem to be made for walking, but for BMX bicycle riding.
My approach was direct, but probably not the preferred or preferable one.
If you value your footwear, you are much more likely to approach Kamiel along the 'proper' path from north-west.
And at the side of that path, you can see Una and Joures looking at the sky.
From there, you need to venture deeper into the woods.
Arvid is pretty much blocking the path on an elevated walkway across a muddy area.
It's difficult to see from the side of the path (and a large puddle of water discouraged me to step off the path and have a look from the other side), but Arvid is using a stone knife to whittle a piece of wood into shape.
Not far from Arvid, Mikil is standing next to a small pond, fetching water with a bucket.
Mikil is difficult to approach. There's no clear path. Only a small, muddy track. Especially outside the summer months.
Hannes seems to be a careless troll.
While he is busy threading some rocks on a piece of string to create a necklace, it seems like he sat down on some (human) house, breaking its corner.
I don't know the story behind this. But the building looks much older than the trolls (which were built in 2019). I assume there was a derelict building with a caved-in roof already at the location and the troll (and some wooden panelling and a bit of interior) were then added to provide a story.
And, finally, there's Little Nora, who might be pulling a little wooden sled with rocks on it.
Or firewood.
Or not pulling anything.
It's difficult to tell.
In pictures from a few years ago, there is clearly a wooden sled with rocks in front of Little Nora. And there's a rope in her hands to pull it.
When I was there, the rocks were gone and all that's on the sled (which has mostly rotten away) are a bunch of twigs. And while she still holds on to the rope, it is broken and the other end lies somewhere in the dirt.
There's a fair amount of decay already.
In general, all the trolls in Belgium look more 'settled into their environment' than the one in Austin did. But the Texas Troll had only been built weeks earlier, while these have been standing in Belgium for five years now.
So they have taken in some local 'patina', with mosses and water damage making them look more like the trees around them.
At some point (especially with Arvid, which looks most on the verge of falling apart) I had wondered whether there should some repair work be going on. But then, would you replace a missing plank with a fresh new one (highlighting the patching)? Or should you use an artificially darkened plank to fit in with what's there? Or, possibly, only use regular planks during the initial construction and then 'fix' missing pieces with irregular pieces from nearby trees, increasing the 'becoming one with the environment' appearance.
In the end, it's none of the above.
Something I didn't know when I visited was that the trolls are intended to be there only for a while.
They are supposed to decay.
Their predicted lifespan is about seven years on average.
They are left to rot and decay and whatever else goes on in their environment. And once they become to unstable and dangerous (as wooden constructs, not as trolls), they are dismantled. They are not supposed to be repaired.
Given that these seven trolls have already been in place for five years, they might not be around for that much longer.
Which I like, as that keeps them from becoming local leftovers, being patched up over and over again, with decreasing enthusiasm. But something to enjoy while it lasts. And then it's gone for good.
However, knowing this, it feels a bit at odds with the whole set-up at Boom.
There's a story about the trolls (it's caved into a book on site - that's no longer readable, but the text is available on the troll map). That story notes that the trolls are thousands of years old (the youngest is stated to be barely more than a million days old, which makes Little Nora at least 2700 years old) and they have seen the world change over the millennia. And that they can see developments that humans, with their short lives, don't understand. (And the trolls also have a better overall view of the environment around them, as they are taller than humans. Which is the justification for the tower - to give humans a perspective from a higher point of view.)
And while it's a neat story, the "trolls have so much longer lifespans then humans" part is a bit in conflict with real life, where humans have much longer lifespans than the trolls around Boom.
But then, it's a story.
It doesn't have to be real.
As long as it feels right.
(If I want to be critical about it, I am more irritated by the idea that the high viewpoint gives you a better understanding of things. I'd rather go with an essay I read a long time ago (so long that even the Internet has forgotten about it...) written by a producer (mostly of advertisements) being taken up in a helicopter by some property developer. And then the developer pointed out the different areas of the future community. The shop will be over here, there's going to be two rows of houses, next to the little baseball triangle where dads play with their little ones, there's the cafe at the plaza, over there's a little park where seniors will sit on a bench and feed the ducks, while kids ride their roller-skates (the essay was written a long time ago...) And the author wrote that it seemed to make a lot of sense from the high and remote viewpoint of a helicopter, where everything looks ordered and can be compartmentalized. You don't see the supermarket trolleys in the pond, the homeless on the benches, the little cafe now being part of a coffee chain, the small stores along the high street either boarded up or selling vapes... From high above, it all looks fine. I buy more into the metaphor that a high enough view point gives you an unrealistic view of what's going on than it does help you to see the big picture. But then again, what do I know about the way of the wooden troll?)
In any case, here are the trolls again, with a 360° view for each of them.
| Arvid |  |
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| Hannes |  |
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| Kamiel |  |
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| Little Nora |  |
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| Mikil |  |
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| Una and Joures |  |
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