Bruun Idun is a giant wooden troll sculpture, built entirely from recycled materials by Danish artist Thomas Dambo, tucked into the forest above the beach at Lincoln Park in West Seattle. She’s shown mid-song, playing an enormous flute out toward the water, and finding her requires a short hike through the park’s trails down to the shoreline near Colman Pool.
If you’ve heard whispers about a troll hiding somewhere near the Puget Sound and pictured something like the Fremont Troll under a bridge, recalibrate. This one lives in the trees, facing the tide, and she’s got a backstory tangled up with orcas, Norse mythology, and a Muckleshoot Tribe artist who carved her instrument by hand.
Who Is Bruun Idun, Exactly?
The troll goes by the name of Bruun Idun and was created entirely out of recycled materials by Danish sculpture artist Thomas Dambo. She’s often called just “Idun” for short, and it’s pronounced like “Eden,” and the troll is nestled among the trees playing an enormous flute to call home the native Orcas.
The name itself is a little tribute. As West Seattle Blog pointed out after her unveiling, Idun is named for the Norse goddess of youth — as long as the old gods ate her apples they stayed young forever, and she was the wife of Bragi, the god of poetry. The “Bruun” half of her name isn’t mythological at all — it’s personal. “Bruun” was chosen in memory of Jens and Inger Bruun, a nod folded quietly into the sculpture’s identity.
Her instrument has a story of its own. Her flute was made by artist John Halliday, aka Coyote, from the Muckleshoot Tribe. During the build, Dambo and Coyote actually swapped creative visits — Coyote traveled to Denmark, where he painted a killer whale on Dambo’s house. That’s a real cross-continental collaboration baked into one sculpture, not just a decorative flourish.
Why Is She Playing a Flute Toward the Water?
This is the detail that makes Bruun Idun different from a lot of roadside troll art — she’s not just posed, she’s performing. Dambo said the Lincoln Park troll is displayed playing an orca song on two flutes, asking them where they have all gone. One flute came from far away and one from close to home: “We have made a big flute from a dead piece of wood in Denmark and a big flute from a dead piece of driftwood here in Seattle,” Dambo explained.
Every troll in this series comes with a short poem, and hers gets read aloud during her lore. Part of it goes: “At the night there was a storm, there at the beach where she was born. And Idun felt a feeling wrong, and so she walked there in the dawn.” The gist is simple even if the verse is whimsical: the Southern Resident orca population has been vanishing from Puget Sound, and Idun’s song is a call for them to come back.
The rest of her look leans into that coastal setting too. Her hair is made from madrone branches, and she’s mostly decorated with bark and shells. Visitors have picked up on the theme and started leaving their own offerings — people often find shells at her feet that visitors have brought her as gifts.
Where Exactly Is Bruun Idun Located in Lincoln Park?
She’s not hiding in some obscure corner — but she is a genuine walk, longer than most of her sibling trolls around the region. Her spot at Lincoln Park is right behind Colman Pool. She’s found at the tip of the nose-shaped bluff looking out at the water, with forest at her back.
Getting there depends on which lot you park in. The easiest route is to park in the Lincoln Park #2 Parking Lot and follow the mostly paved trail toward Colman Pool — about 0.3 miles from the lot to the troll. If that lot’s full, you’ve got another option: you can park at the main Lincoln Park parking lot on Fauntleroy Way Southwest and hike down to the beach through dirt and gravel forest trails, about a mile each way. One travel blogger who’s tracked all six trolls put it plainly: Bruun Idun is the longest walk among the Pacific Northwest trolls. Wear real shoes, not sandals.
How Does She Fit Into the Bigger Troll Project?
Bruun Idun isn’t a standalone piece — she’s one chapter in a much larger project called Northwest Trolls: Way of the Bird King. The project features six giant hand-built troll sculptures by Danish environmental artist Thomas Dambo, publicly accessible around the Pacific Northwest, where each whimsical troll sculpture is part of an underlying environmental story. It’s meant to celebrate the human experience of art by amplifying the connections of cultural heritage between Coast Salish tribal communities and Scandinavian traditions.
She arrived third in the lineup. This is one of six trolls Dambo made from recycled materials for the Northwest — the first was in Portland, then Bainbridge Island, then West Seattle, with Issaquah, Vashon Island, and Ballard still to come. The whole rollout took a while to get going, too. The installation had been four years in the making, largely because, as Dambo told West Seattle Blog, this was all intended to happen a few years earlier, but the pandemic interrupted the timeline.
She was officially unveiled on August 25, 2023, with a ceremony that drew real civic weight behind it. Artists, including those from the Muckleshoot Tribe, and city leaders unveiled the giant, hand-built troll, with Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell speaking at the grand unveiling. Dambo’s studio confirms the date meant even more than a ribbon-cutting: on August 25th, the Mayor of Seattle declared it “Bruun Idun Day,” a recognition celebrating Bruun Idun’s and the trolls’ contributions to environmental stewardship and water protection.
What Is She Actually Made Of?
Nothing about Bruun Idun came from a lumberyard. Dambo described the materials himself: “In this one, we used 150 recycled pallets, and the feet and the head were made back in my studio in Denmark of scrap wood we had back there and the head is made of logs of Douglas Fir we got over on Vashon.” Local volunteers helped raise her, too — organizations like Sawhorse Revolution worked the build site, and noted that the screws were all sized in millimeters, and the wood was salvaged from buildings and pallets, with even her “troll hair” put together with driftwood from local beaches.
Don’t expect her to sit there forever, either. Seattle Parks and Recreation, which hosts the sculpture, treats it as a temporary installation — at some point the site host will decide when to dismantle it and recycle its components. Even the wood has a second life planned. There’s no announced end date, but it’s worth knowing this isn’t a permanent monument. It’s meant to return to the earth eventually, just like the story it’s telling.
Is Bruun Idun Worth the Walk?
If you’re already a Lincoln Park regular, the troll is a fun excuse to walk a stretch of trail you might normally skip. If you’re coming from across the city just for her, know what you’re signing up for: real trail time, limited parking, and a payoff that’s more atmospheric than dramatic. She’s not roaring or looming over a highway. She’s quiet, forested, facing the water, mid-song — which honestly fits the story she’s telling a lot better than something flashier would.
Bring water, wear shoes you don’t mind getting dusty, and maybe bring a shell for her collection at the base. Just don’t touch up her paint job — she’s already been vandalized once, with crews having to power-wash graffiti off her legs and stomach not long after she went up. She’s a piece of public art on loan from the forest. Treat her like it.
NOTE TO THE ADVENTURER: This guide is meant to spark curiosity for what lies beyond the horizon — not to serve as a guarantee. Roads fall into disrepair, buildings are torn down and rebuilt, and properties change hands; 'tis your responsibility to do your own research before setting out. Always heed local and regional law, and always respect ground that isn't your own. Take every entry here as a suggestion, not a decree. This guide's contents were gathered with the aid of artificial intelligence, and like any scout, it will from time to time lead you astray. You assume all risk in following its counsel, and neither this blog nor its author is liable for any loss, injury, or misfortune that results.
