Get Your Troll On! An Evening of Storytelling and Troll Making

The Cover of Seven Ways to Trick a Troll, by Lise Lunge-Larsen, illustrated by Kari Vick

The Finland Community Youth Program enjoyed an evening of storytelling and troll making with North Shore artists, Kari Vick and Lauri Olson-Hohman this past Thursday, January 25th. 

At Least…Seven Ways to Trick a Troll

The evening began with a slideshow and then a reading by Kari Vick from her and Lise Lunge-Larsen’s newly published book, Seven Ways to Trick a Troll. Kari is a renowned Troll Expert and helped the group with “getting our Troll Eyes on!” The slideshow showed photos of landscapes, moss, trees and rocks taken on a trip Kari made to Norway. Kari showed us how the photos evolved into her amazing illustrations in the book. Of course, the group also discussed how one DOES trick a troll! (Hints: Trolls don’t like sunlight, they can’t swim, and they POP if they get angry enough.)

THEN. . . . Lauri Olson-Hohman led a workshop on “How to Draw Trolls.”  To the left are some drawings she made of the troll versions of herself (young and old). The group discussed how everyone has an “inner troll” – a part of yourself that is fearful and maybe a little mean or crabby. Participants were encouraged to try to illustrate what their inner trolls might look like – warts and all. 

Finland Community Youth Program Troll Display

As you can imagine, the kids LOVED the evening’s activities. They paid utmost attention while Kari talked about how to spot trolls in the landscape, and then they went to work with gusto constructing their own trolls with Lauri. At the end of the evening, we created a display of trolls in the hallway of the Clair Nelson Center so that other community folks will get to see and enjoy the kids’ trolls. Stop out and see it if you have a chance!

There are many more fun photos of the evening here: https://photos.app.goo.gl/92oSBCOBsdip6Db82

Coming Soon: Laskiainen 

Another exciting upcoming opportunity for our Youth Program kids and the whole community is that we will once again be making our outing to Palo, MN on February 3rd to the Laskiainen Finnish Sledding Festival! This community outing is sponsored by North Shore AGE to Age. 2 buses will be going, one from Finland and one from Silver Bay. All ages are welcome. Call 218-353-0300 to sign up!