Troll Hunting: Part Two by Kelly Jarvis
- Kelly Jarvis
- 48 minutes ago
- 4 min read
One of my assignments for The Fairy Tale Magazine’s upcoming Troll Issue was a summer road trip to visit Thomas Dambo’s seven New England Trolls. Armed with a talking map (on my phone), a stylish pair of seven-league sneakers, and plenty of snacks, my husband and I journeyed from our home state of Connecticut to Ninigret Park in Rhode Island and then up to Botanical Gardens in Maine to do a little troll hunting. It was an epic adventure, and as soon as we returned, I set our travels down in ink and sent my manuscript to Editor-in-Chief Kristen Baum DeBeasi for some enchanted formatting. It wasn’t until the design of the article was well underway that I learned some top-secret news: Thomas Dambo was building three more trolls in Rhode Island and they were all scheduled to debut on August 24th! So, like any fairy tale protagonists with tasks to complete, my husband and I resumed our journey, returning to the Ocean State to bring the story of the three new trolls to our Fairy Tale Magazine family in Troll Hunting: Part Two (appearing before the original Troll Hunting article which will publish in our Troll Issue on November 1st).
We started with Mrs. Skipper at Kettle Point Pier in East Providence. She is the only New England troll located in a city landscape, perched on an outcropping of boulders overlooking the Providence River. We walked through a construction site to reach her, wondering aloud if we were in the right place. “Just keep walking,” the foreman told us. “You can’t miss her.” He was right. We reached the river and looked to the left, and there she was, resting on the rocks, a recycled lifeboat hoisted over her head. Dambo initially wanted Mrs. Skipper to hold an excavator or hurl a car into the water, but he settled on a lifeboat when he found one for sale on Facebook Marketplace. Mrs. Skipper can be seen from the public fishing pier, but guests who want to get close to her have to scale a series of slippery rocks or approach by kayak. Crafted of reclaimed bourbon barrels and “various odds and ends,” Mrs. Skipper is a guardian of the water, her whimsical personality entertaining boaters who travel past her shores.
We traded East Providence’s urban landscape for the deep woods of Ryan Park in Kingston, Rhode Island, where we followed a series of overgrown paths marked with yellow arrows to locate Iver Mudslider, a daring young troll seated atop a steep hill. Iver is also made from the wooden staves of barrels, but his hair is crafted of sticks collected in Ryan Park. His wide smile sits in a face made of recycled shelving, and he hoists one arm high into the air as if cheering on the mountain bikers who fly down the paths on both sides of his hill. Like Mrs. Skipper, Iver wears a necklace of birdhouses, providing safe shelter to his winged friends. He seems youthful and exuberant as he invites brave adventures to climb his steep hill and join him among the trees.
Next we traveled to the Exeter/Richmond town line where we found my favorite of the three new trolls hidden deep in the Acadia Management Area. Young Boulder was the most difficult troll to locate, but he was worth it. We wended our way through the forest before finding this gentle giant overlooking a peaceful pond. Young Boulder sits cross-legged on a rock, holding a long post with a birdhouse on the end across his lap. He has a beard of wooden slats, and wears earrings made of local sea glass. While Mrs. Skipper and Iver Mudslider encourage light-hearted mischief with their animated poses and facial expressions, Young Boulder exudes a steadfast calm. He is so at peace with the natural world that we even found a tuft of moss growing between his wooden toes.
Our Troll Hunting: Part Two journey ended with another visit to see our old troll friends Erik Rock and Greta Granite in Ninigret Park, and we even picked up a troll souvenir at a Norwegian shop in Connecticut’s Olde Mystic Village on our way home. With more than one hundred and fifty giant trolls in countries around the world and more trolls planned for release (including two more scheduled to complete Rhode Island’s Thunderstone Exhibit), Thomas Dambo teaches us that the best road trips never truly come to end. His trolls, which showcase the importance of recycling materials and taking care of the earth, have been visited by over four million people worldwide. “How cool is it,” Dambo said at the unveiling of the new Rhode Island trolls, “that we can bring so many people out just to look at trash.”
To learn more about Thomas Dambo’s New England Trolls and to be dazzled by troll-themed poetry and prose, be on the lookout for The Fairy Tale Magazine’s upcoming Troll Issue scheduled for release on November 1st, and, while you wait, lace up a pair of seven-league sneakers and plan a troll hunting adventure of your own, because when it comes to hunting Thomas Dambo’s trolls, the ongoing journey through nature, magic, and whimsy is its own happily-ever-after.
Works Cited
Jarvis, Kelly. Troll Pictures. August 2025.
McNamara, Elizabeth. “Meet Our New NK Neighbor: ‘Iver Mudslider.’” EGNews, 26 August 2025.
Kelly Jarvis is the Contributing Writer for The Fairy Tale Magazine. Her work has also been featured in A Moon of One’s Own, Baseball Bard, Blue Heron Review, Corvid Queen, Eternal Haunted Summer, Forget Me Not Press, Mermaids Monthly, The Chamber Magazine, The Magic of Us, and the World Weaver Press Anthology Mothers of Enchantment: New Tales of Fairy Godmothers. Her debut novella, Selkie Moon, was released in 2025. You can connect with her on Facebook (Kelly Jarvis, Author) or Instagram (@kellyjarviswriter) or find her at https://kellyjarviswriter.com/