Note: Authored by David Menconi, this piece has been produced in partnership with Raleigh Arts. Menconi's latest book, "Oh, Didn't They Ramble: Rounder Records and the Transformation of American Roots Music," was published in the fall of 2023 by University of North Carolina Press. His podcast, Carolina Calling, explores the history of the Tar Heel State through music.

This weekend, Oct. 24-25, marks one year since the Thomas Dambo's Trolls took up residence at Raleigh’s Dix Park. They’ve been an unequivocal success, transformative in both quantitative and qualitative ways.

[Event: Flowers Cottage at Dix Park will serve a special birthday cake latte during this weekend, and a crafting event will be held Oct. 25 from 11am-2pm.]

In terms of numbers, Dix Park has historically drawn about 500,000 visitors in the six months from October to April—a figure juiced some years by attendance at rapper J. Cole’s hugely popular Dreamville Festival. There was no Dreamville Festival in 2026, and yet attendance for that period came in at just under 1 million visitors this time around.

“It’s been amazing,” says Anna Golden-Torres, senior marketing and communications manager for the Dix Conservancy. “Even without Dreamville, the combination of the trolls and Gipson Play Plaza helped us draw nearly double the usual attendance. Visitors have come from all 50 states, and nearly all 100 counties in North Carolina.”

As for qualitative changes, in drawing new visitors to Dix Park, the trolls have helped changed the way people use the park in fundamental ways. The five sculptures are scattered across the park, and searching for them invariably leads visitors to discover other things to like about it.

“It really has encouraged people to discover the whole park and not just the new amenities, which is great to see,” says Golden-Torres. “Walk around and you’re almost guaranteed to encounter someone who has never been here before, maybe from California or even out of the country, asking where Mamma Troll or Daddy Troll is.”

After years of planning, Dix Park’s troll project started construction a year ago and took about a month to install. Part of a worldwide network, these troll sculptures are the work of Thomas Dambo, a Danish-born artist who began his career as a musician in a hip-hop collective called Fler Farver.

While he is still a musician, Dambo’s artistic focus gravitated over time toward visual arts, crafting sculptures combining art, storytelling, nature and recycling. He launched his “Trail of a Thousand Trolls” in 2014, placing more than 150 troll sculptures on five continents.

Each sculpture is made of repurposed wood and pallets plus fallen tree branches. There’s also a narrative component, with storylines in hip-hop verse written by Dambo. Millions of people have traveled the world using Dambo’s Troll Map to discover them.

Privately funded through donations, the Dix Park troll project is a partnership between Dix Conservancy, Habitat for Humanity, Raleigh Reclaimed and the City of Raleigh. Some 400 volunteers worked with a dozen members of Dambo’s team from Denmark, putting in 2,200 volunteer hours to help install the trolls. Raw materials included 24 tons of reclaimed wood, 50,000 nails, 204 gallons of water and 40 pots of coffee.

There are five sculptures throughout the park—two near the dog park, two by the cemetery and one near Gipson Play Plaza. Raleigh’s trolls are part of a set of seven in North Carolina that includes additional sculptures in Charlotte and High Point. Collectively, they’re part of a story called “The Grandmother Tree,” which these seven trolls protect.

[Find a map of the trolls, plus info about parking and accessibility, here.]

The sculptures have about a 10-year lifespan, but Dix management hopes to extend that with judicious maintenance and repair. So far, they’re holding up well. And after a year, attendance and interest in them both show no sign of dropping off.

“Anything we put out about the trolls really takes off on social media,” says Golden-Torres. “We still get a lot of influencers and tourists posting about them. And I still get engagement notifications for posts from when they were installed a year ago.”

Dix Park, located at 1030 Richardson Dr., Raleigh 27603—is open sunrise to sunset every day. Free parking is available and the trolls are always free to see. The Dix Park Conservancy just released a documentary on the making of the Dix Park trolls, which you can view above. All photos on this page courtesy of the Dix Park Conservancy.