I think we need to introduce the world to Toloff. Most people see a simple stuffed animal or a goofy looking troll with unbelievably wild hair, but really he’s a magical troll from the mystical land of Norway with powers that allow him to control the weather. Also, he’s quite the little scamp.
We first introduced to Toloff when we were at the orphanage for trolls that were looking for “forever homes” in the corner of a gift shop in Flam, Norway. As it turns out, Norway is really overrun with trolls of all kinds. They have mountain trolls and forest trolls; big trolls and little trolls; mean trolls and helpful trolls. Basically Norway is ground zero for anything troll, as illustrated by the dozens of troll statues scattered about every single Norwegian city, town, and village.
Now, back to Toloff, the troll in the gift shop orphanage that caught our eye with his goofy nose but million dollar (that’s what the dental bill was going to be in order to fix it) smile. We fell in love right away, filled out the paperwork (signed the credit card receipt) and he was ours! Prior to adopting him, the weather on our trip had been quite poor for photography and filled with overcast gray skies, rain and mist. Once Toloff started traveling with us, we noticed that the sun would peek out just at the right time to get “the shot”, as highlighted by the Besseggen Ridge hike.
After this happened a couple times, we sat Toloff down and asked him if he was responsible for any of this. Being bashful, he didn’t confess right away, but soon enough he came to us and confessed that he was the one helping to improve the weather. He did apologize for Besseggen, and we found out that to open the clouds so we could get the photo we were looking for, he backed up the storm which made it much more intense than it would have otherwise been. This was the reason he didn’t want to let us know right away as he was afraid that we would send him back to the orphanage.
It took a while to convince him that he did the right thing and we even made a deal with him that if he would continue to help us out with the weather like he did on Besseggen Ridge, he would get to come with us on all our trips and ride in the front seat of the car.
Once Toloff felt safe with us, we got to see just what a little scamp he really was. We would wake up to him streaking naked across the hotel room, stowing away in the camera bag for hikes, and even taking the steering wheel of our car and driving it around! That’s when we found out he had a second magical property, and that was his antics, he would keep us from killing each other as we struggled to keep our sanity traveling across this foreign country on minimal sleep and subsisting on peanut butter and Doritos.
Never again will a trip happen without our little buddy coming with, so keep an eye out for more stories from our little scamp Toloff.