Hey! Thomas Dambo is Danish

Sunday, July 19, 2026

We got up for hotel breakfast (no danish. No sweet pastry at all. Weird) then crawled back in bed. We are staying right downtown Aarhus so we can walk around and see the cool. Keith mentioned there is an art museum with a big glass rainbow thing on the roof we could go see. As we were lounging, I dragged my phone over to check a possible fact. Sure enough, Thomas Dambo – the artist that makes the recycled wood trolls, is Danish.

I looked. Sure enough. He has trolls in Denmark. Quite a few actually.

We backed up all the bits of food/snacks we had and headed for the car. The hotel ramp is under construction, so we are a block away at a mall ramp. Once in the car, Keith wondered where the exit was. He asked what I thought Ingang meant. I immediately said entrance. It’s eingang in German. He pondered. “Why would there be entrance arrows inside the ramp?” Mmm. Good question. We followed the many Ingang signs. We went from level 3 to 2 and all around that level, then down the level one. We went around, then up and down aisles. I kept trying to use the translate button on my camera until I realized it is one word!!! Type it in.

Entrance

Ask it what is exit?

No signal.

Of course 🤦‍♀️

Finally! Udgang means exit! There were several Ud signs. The Ingang were for walkers! Ud took us right out, and on to our adventure.

Denmark has about 200,000 more people than Wisconsin and is one third the size. Interestingly, we rarely see people. I’m tapping this out on my phone as we drive home, 17 minutes from downtown of the second largest city in Denmark, and I have not seen a car in minutes.

We arrived where the map told us to go and parked in a gravel lot that had room for two cars. There was a walking/bike path toward the highway and a fire road leading toward a day care. We tried the day care way. We walked around the two buildings and play ground, looking. There were some ball fields and a restroom looking building. We walked on and saw nothing. I was about to saw we should try the walking path when I saw her! Elle!

I was so excited. She was so cool. She is holding a 6000 pound rock. And wearing a pretty necklace.

It was 55° and cloudy with threat of rain. On our way to Vildemil (Wild Emil) it started to rain in earnest. Since we are charmed, it stopped while we searched. The most obvious trail took us to an open field with a big fire/lookout tower. Any other time I would have wanted to go up, but I wanted to find Emil. We tried through the trees, then gave up and went back to the road. After a couple hundred yards, we saw some boulders in a row going into the forest. It was both obvious and could have been easy to miss. We walked into the woods, turned a corner, and there he was!

It was pouring when we arrived at Ask’s parking lot. It was funny, because the directions didn’t say to turn off the highway, just that we were there. Luckily, Keith saw a little gap in the bushes and in we went. Not only was there an actual little parking lot, but there was a restroom building. We parked next to a car where a woman was fighting with a windshield wiper. Keith hopped right out, but she didn’t need any help beyond appreciating an umbrella over her head for a few minutes.

There was really only one way to start going – then a million ways to keep going. The rain either slowed considerably or the trees were covering us. We still needed umbrellas, but it felt like a walk in the mist. We heard voices and saw people coming. There is not a lot of English spoken around here – we haven’t come across any English first language sounding people – but they spoke Danish to us and pointed and we headed farther in. The forest was absolutely BEAUTIFUL. It was such a vibrant shade of greens. Every time I lifted my camera I saw the color just dull in front of my eyes. What?! The same thing happened to Keith. So, here. A dulled green of forest.

I was reveling in the rain and the trees and the green and following Keith, and I didn’t even notice a bunch of twigs making some kind of something. Keith turned and said he thought we were there. He went in and made a happy sound. I wanted to come at it from the front, so I kept going…and just seeing more of a wall of twigs. I turned back and went in.

It was magical. I can’t even describe it. I stepped into the cozy room with Ask asleep in the gentle misting rain and it was pure magic. I wish you could feel it.

The trip to Lotte was the best! Most of our driving today was on two lane country roads, going about 50mph max. We got onto smaller roads for Lotte – then the road turned and we didn’t. We went onto a gravel road. Then the road turned, and we kept going on the grass, next to the corn. The grass between the tire lanes was tall and tickling the bottom of our car. We had to swing out a couple times to stay out of big puddles. Keith looked absolutely gleeful. The grass path started to look more like a car path, then almost a road. At one point, there was a hawk just sitting in our way. Keith couldn’t even slow down for a picture – he was on his way to a troll! We passed a farmhouse – how do they live there? – and then we were on a road again. It said Lotte was coming in 600m, 500m, 250m, here! You are here!

Hmmm. There was no break in the corn on either side of the road.

Where should we stop? Should we walk through the corn? I had no idea that seeing trolls would be such searching for trolls. Keith stopped to the side of the road (there was no side of the road, there was just a road slightly wider than a car. We were on the road to the right side of it. There were no other cars (because apparently there aren’t other cars in Denmark) and studied his phone. He said he found another address and off we went. We went west, then south, then east. There was actually a sign that said parking for troll (in Danish). We were on fire! I think the parking lot was actually very, very near the other side of the corn where we stopped the first time, but just coming from a different direction.

We went on a hike. We went up. We went down. We stayed up. We went upper. We looked down.

We wandered. We walked and walked. (When is it walking and when is it hiking? I do not know. I felt hikey.) After about 25 minutes, we were feeling pretty defeated. Where was Lotte hiding? We found three other people looking for her. They had been farther and had no luck, so we turned around and all headed down. We went the other way from the parking. We went for about 15 minutes and found her! She was worth the effort!

Right down the road from Lotte’s parking lot were a lot of wheels going around in the water. It looked so cool. There were ponies across the road, watching us watch the wheels. One of them wanted to come home with us.

Stig was last. We pulled up to a beautiful lake. A family was eating at a picnic table. We ate up the rest of our takeout hotel breakfast from yesterday (rolls, cheese, ham spread) for our dinner since it was after 8pm. We asked the family where the troll was – across the lake. They pointed the direction they had gone.

We walked by a camping area. When we came back, a different family had a roaring fire. It looked great.

It took about 25 minutes to walk to Stig. He had the best smile! And his eyes didn’t want me to look away. He was terrific and made me so happy.

We saw a lot of Denmark and had the most marvelous time.

We got back to the parking ramp about ten and a half hours after we left. We’ve more trolls lined up for tomorrow on our way to Skagen then on the way to Vandel for night.

There were a couple slugs today. They were even bigger than the last ones. Be careful. There is a slug below. It’s bigger than my finger. Ew.