Art and I recently traveled to Seattle to attend a memorial celebration of a dear friend; but this blog post is about a troll, not the memorial.
Trolls on Parade
In looking through our hotel’s brochures of attractions in the Seattle area, a thumbnail photo of a huge troll under a bridge catches my eye. This monumental cement troll sculpture lurks below the Fremont bridge, a Volkswagen Beetle gripped in his enormous hand. (Apparently he grabbed the vehicle when it passed above him on the bridge?) As a child, I had a wonderful picture book of the The Three Billy Goats Gruff and my mother would read to me. Although, I have misplaced the book, the story of a troll lurking under a bridge and the clever goats that outwitted him, has always been one of my favorites. With friend and family to visit, I doubt that we will have time to make the pilgrimage to visit the Fremont Troll but it is on my list.
Three Billy Goats Gruff – Illustrated by Marcia Brown
On our last day in the Seattle area and on the way home from visiting family in Edmonds, Art asks Siri to take us to a Warby Parker store which by happenstance is in the Fremont district. (Warby Parker sells stylish and well priced prescription glasses and Art’s glasses have recently broken.) As we park, I connect the dots or perhaps follow Hansel’s and Gretle’s bread crumbs and realize that we are in the district where the Fremont Bridge Troll resides. After doing retail damage, Art and I begin our Troll hunt. After a few circuitous wrong turns, we hike uphill below the Fremont bridge and I am delighted to meet the Fremont Troll. There are several other people taking selfies with the troll and after waiting my turn, Art takes photos of me, sitting between the fingers of the trolls gargantuan hands.
Marty and the Fremont Bridge Troll
Since a young girl, trolls have never scared me, only amused and delighted me. My father, a geologist, traveled extensively and my mother and I would accompany him on his adventures. For three months, when I was nine or ten years old, we lived in a thatched cottage in Gilleleje Denmark north of Copenhagen. From there, we took several trips to Norway and Sweden and with money that I had saved, I purchased a large carved wooden troll sculpture. Some fifty years later, my Norwegian Troll, when not exploring in our fern garden, still sits sentry on a high shelf in my office.
Norwegian Troll