New Permanent Location:
NOTE: This piece was moved to the new location after complaints from the residents who lived near the first location. The face, hands and feet were saved from the original and the rest demolished. The piece has been restored to this new location with a stone and wooden path, a sitting area and much more parking.
"Isak Heartstone—the giant wooden troll in Breckenridge—is back
Back by popular demand, the giant wooden troll is being rebuilt in Breckenridge
Piece by piece, in the woods of Breckenridge Isak Heartstone is rising once again.
If you aren't aware, Isak Heartstone is a wooden troll. He became a tourist attraction in Breckenridge last year after he was installed near a trail, but he was later removed due to neighbor concerns about overcrowding and noise from the inconsiderate Instagrammers who came from far and wide to pose with Isak.
In February, after months of special committee meetings, it was determined that he would be moved to a new location and rebuilt.
The backstory
Danish artist Thomas Dambo built a 15-foot wooden troll out of pieces of trashed pallets in Breckenridge in August 2018.
It became an overnight sensation as people came from all over the area to see the troll that Dambo named Isak Heartstone.
But its popularity brought overcrowding and noise to the neighborhood. They had to disassemble Isak in November.
The return of Isak Heartstone
In May 2019, the City of Breckenridge found a new location for the giant troll and brought back the artist to reconstruct Isak piece by piece. Dambo said it will look a little different this time.
The city of Breckenridge will construct a new trail around Isak when he is complete. Dambo and his crew moved up their construction work to fit into a window of nice weather. Summit County is forecast to get hit with another winter storm next week.
Dambo said it will only take a few days to complete the troll's rebuild, but it will take about a month to complete the trail around him. Breckenridge hopes to open it back up to the public sometime in June.
Dambo said he's made 50 other trolls around the world, and the purpose of his art is clear and clean.
“I do my art to make people understand how much value there is in our trash, and why it’s important to recycle,” said Dambo.
Dambo said that Isak's head was made in Denmark out of shelves he found in a dollar store in Copenhagen. The skin and fur are made of scrap wood and pallets he found at the Breckenridge Golf Course, and behind various stores in Summit County. And his hair is made of downed tree branches along the path where he is being rebuilt.
Dambo said he was very disappointed with the way people treated the previous location of Isak Heartstone, because the recycled troll sculptures he builds are supposed to represent cleanliness and respect of nature.
He asks visitors this summer to be on their best behavior.
“If you behave good and treat nature good, and you don’t litter all over, the trolls they will embrace you, but if you behave badly, and treat nature bad, then the trolls will catch you, and snatch you, and eat you,” said Dambo."
Author: Cory Reppenhagen, Published: 8:44 PM MDT May 5, 2019; Updated: 7:43 PM MDT May 12, 2019 (from (
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Previous location:
"Breckenridge International Festival of Arts begins Friday, featuring musical performances, movies and a wooden troll by Jefferson Geiger, August 9, 2018
Like Tokodi's and Banowetz's work, interested parties will have to go on an adventure to find Dambo's wooden troll. The roughly 15-foot-tall sculpture sits among a pile of rocks near French Creek along the East Wellington Trail. There, the troll stacks stones into a cairn in praise of the mountain landscape and invites others to create cairns nearby.
Dambo grew up in Odense, Denmark, and has always loved crafting pieces from recycled material such as plastic and wood. He originally studied to be a carpenter but sought a more creative outlet and attended the Kolding School of Design in 2005. He opened his own workshop in Copenhagen shortly thereafter to begin his international upcycled sculpture career.
Approximately four years ago he started the series of trolls installed out in the wild. According to Dambo, every time he cut wood for a different project he would be left with remnants he didn't know how to dispose of lying in a bucket at the end of his workbench. Inspired by Danish mythology, he decided to recycle his own trash instead of others' and the fragments became the trolls.
The Breckenridge troll is made out of scrap wood and pallets along with pine sourced from the trail. Rather than affix the wood together solo, Dambo has employees, friends from Denmark who made the trek and local volunteers assisting with constructing. Aside from dealing with jetlag and altitude, the approximately 10-day construction went smoothly. When completed, Dambo named the troll "Isak Heartstone," partly due to a heart-shaped stone that was given to the artist by local children from the Wellington neighborhood.
Dambo always honors someone involved with the project by naming the troll after them. In San Juan, Puerto Rico, for example, the piece "Wilson's Car" has a troll smashing a red sedan donated by a local named Wilson.
"It's about seeing value where there is no value," said Dambo on why he names them after real people. "I could name it 'Troll Number 39' or Thomas Dambo's 'Magnificent Troll XXYY,' and then it would only have value to me … It makes one person really appreciative and there are so many situations in our daily life where we can optimize the situation."
That message of bettering the world is prevalent in Dambo's work. He believes we are drowning in our own waste to the detriment of nature. As someone who handles trash on a daily basis while creating artwork, he hopes to motivate people to recycle more and change the negative connotations associated with something often foul smelling and filthy.
"No one wants to hear their children say 'Mama I want to work with trash at the landfill.' We view trash as something that has no value and the people who work with trash has the lowest income. They're at the bottom of the social scale. If we can change some of that perspective … that's going to change the people who just throw things out."
In Dambo's narrative of the series, trolls were the first inhabitants of the earth. They existed in peace for centuries until aliens, i.e. humans, landed on the planet. The trolls tried to teach them to live in harmony with nature but the humans instead acted selfishly, destroying the environment.
The story of conservation fits into Summit County life and history as the Heartstone troll ponders why humans destroyed the mountains in search of gold. Breck Create commissioned Dambo and though he had a general concept in mind before reaching Breckenridge, he took elements from the surrounding nature into consideration to create something new and elevated. However, Dambo knows his wooden sculpture has to compete for attention with the nearby creek and mountains. He wants people to understand that it's more about the journey than the destination and he sees the trolls as carrots on sticks, drawing the public away from more traveled areas.
"For me the main part of the experience is that people will leave their car, hike a little bit, find this, and otherwise come to a place that they wouldn't have come to. One troll can't be a full-day experience, but many of us don't just go for a walk. They need to have a destination to leave their triangle of the house, job and supermarket."
With multiple trails in the vicinity, Dambo wishes people will explore more once they arrive or perhaps stumble upon the troll by accident as they set upon unexplored areas. He says the surprise creates a unique experience and can't be replicated in a trip to a museum with painting-lined hallways.
This is Dambo's 39th troll and the first he has installed in the western United States. Before coming to Breckenridge, he made five in Korea and six in Chicago. Following the theme of conservation, the trolls in Chicago are now upset about the urbanization of the land. Instead of peacefully sitting in the landscape, they are posed eating people or trapping them under a cage using a golden gas can as bait.
Other trolls are more playful in nature. For example, in the Danish town of Horsens he has "Troels" holding a swingset while "Laura and Julian" keep a slackline taught. Next, Dambo will install another mountain-themed troll in Tennessee and he has already started constructing the head.
Fictionally, Dambo's trolls live for millennia, though an art piece in the wild likely won't last as long. Yet that doesn't bother him and Dambo in fact prefers it.
"I would rather have my art out in the public space where a lot of people could see it and last for a short amount of time than inside a museum where less people would see it and last for a longer time."
The troll is expected to remain in its habitat for a few years, provided it isn't vandalized. Dambo is optimistic it won't be. He says that at each new location residents tell him someone will destroy it in a couple of weeks, however, Dambo has yet to witness it.
"That tells me a really sad story about us people," Dambo said. "We all think we live in the worst place in the world. But we don't. All of us live in the best place in the world. It's just about taking the right glasses on and seeing everything from a bigger perspective." " (from (
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NOTE: The local residents have been complaining about the traffic in the area to see Isak, so he has been removed and will be reinstalled elsewhere in Breckenridge next Spring (2019). When that happens, I will get updated coords and photos.