A gigantic wooden troll sitting in the woods of South Londonderry is taking a hiatus from hosting visitors after fans ended up disrupting local traffic.
The landowners paused public viewing of the sculpture on Sunday evening — several weeks after Danish artist Thomas Dambo finished the commissioned piece on July 5.
Lost Finn, which measures 30 by 7 feet, is Dambo’s 117th troll sculpture worldwide and his first in Vermont. Made with reclaimed wood, the artworks have drawn considerable public interest.
Visitors have been trekking to the South Londonderry property to see Lost Finn since it was completed, said Londonderry municipal treasurer Tina Labeau. She said there was a break in visits after the area dealt with historic flooding in July, but they picked back up in recent days.
So many people came by last weekend that a designated parking area — which could accommodate nearly 10 vehicles — ran out of room. Labeau said visitors ended up parking on Winhall Hollow Road even though the landowners had posted a sign asking them not to. Town officials identified the property owners as Tim and Elizabeth Dugan.
Vermont State Police received a couple of complaints last weekend about vehicles blocking traffic in the area along Winhall Hollow Road, said agency spokesperson Adam Silverman. When troopers arrived Saturday, he said, one vehicle was in the process of being moved; on Sunday, they found one car that was not impeding traffic.
On Sunday evening, in a Londonderry community group on Facebook, Elizabeth Dugan said they’re closing the trail that provides public access to Lost Finn.
“We had hoped this would be a quiet and peaceful place for members of our community to visit alone or in small groups,” she wrote. “We certainly did not expect an overwhelming volume of vehicles parking along, and blocking, Winhall Hollow Road. This creates a safety hazard and places an unfair burden on the town and our neighbors.”
Dugan said they will try to resume public access to Lost Finn but didn’t provide a timeline. She asked that, for the time being, people respect that the sculpture is on private land.
Dambo, who is now working on troll sculptures in Washington state, told VTDigger he is disappointed that Lost Finn is temporarily off-limits to visitors. He said the property owners wanted to provide a fun sculpture outdoors that community members could enjoy.
“It’s really, really sad because I know that Tim’s intent of convincing me to do the sculpture was to give something to the local environment,” Dambo, 43, said in a phone call Monday. “He’s put all this effort and energy and money into creating this on his private land, and then, it actually ends up backfiring because it becomes so popular.”
Tim Dugan declined to comment.
Lost Finn brings to mind a sculpture that Dambo created in Breckenridge, Colorado, in the summer of 2018. Town staff members dismantled Isak Heartstone, a 15-foot troll, a few months after it was created because of safety concerns brought by large crowds of visitors, local media reported. Dambo rebuilt it in a new location the following year.
Dambo said he hopes Lost Finn, which is part of his U.S. series “Way of the Bird King,” can be reopened for public viewing. He said his sculptures — made of scrap wood, pallets and twigs — show that discarded materials can create something that brings people together.
The artist assembles his gigantic trolls with the help of dozens of people. In South Londonderry, Dambo said, he had a team of 50 people who worked for two weeks, including volunteers.
Each sculpture costs anywhere from $50,000 to $500,000, he said, a price that depends on factors such as the country, the sculpture’s size and its location.
