As folks gather to spruce up their yards and plan rooftop garden parties for this summer, thoughts turn inevitably to the familiar elves who have made lawn art one of their most lucrative business ventures since the 1970s. Who are these guys? Where did they come from? And why are they so stinkin’ cute?
1. Garden Gnomes are thought to have originated in 19 th -century Germany with a jolly little fellow named Rumpelstiltskin. According to lore, there was once an evil dwarf who invited two young millers to dinner and spun straw into gold for them—in exchange for the young man’s first-born child (talk about a bad date!). The boy tricked Rumpelstiltskin by agreeing to give him his child, but cleverly traded him a single bean in return. When he later revealed to the dwarf that the “bean” was actually a cow with an enormously long tail, the enraged little man clutched at it and tore himself in two.
2. The first garden gnomes were carved from turnips!
3. If you own a garden gnome, chances are it’s loaded with radiation. A geiger counter will show that many of them absorb up to 450 millirems per hour—seven times the average background rate. That might not seem like much…except for the fact that garden gnomes emit 40% more gamma and beta radiation than uranium ore!
4. The world’s largest garden gnome is a hundred feet tall, almost as big as all four lead characters in The Walking Dead combined. It was built by the village of Kimswerd in The Netherlands and has its own post office and credit union.
5. Garden gnomes started out as symbols of fertility… and then got creepy. The first ones were fashioned in the 19 th century with big noses and beards to resemble ancient depictions of woodland elves, dwarves, and other nature spirits associated with fertility rites. But after World War II, German manufacturers began depicting them wearing lederhosen and drinking beer—a marketing ploy to celebrate the country’s return to normalcy.
6. Gnomes are often used in team-building exercises, wherein one person must remove the gnome from its base without touching it while another tries to catch him by throwing a towel over his head. To win, you have to “unfreeze” the gnome—that is, change the orientation of his body so that he’s standing upright.
7. The lead singer of KISS made a pop album in 2010 called “The Horror of it All” and used garden gnomes as his band. He also wrote a book with the same title.
8. They’re big business! Disney theme parks sell more than 2,000 garden gnomes per month.
9. Gnomes are increasingly becoming part of the insect world. Mateusz Dybała of Empik Media & Fashion Group in Poland recently introduced a line of T-shirts with photos of garden gnomes sporting tattoos on their biceps , chests, and faces. The gnomes also have their own social networking site called GnomeBook , which already has more than 100,000 users!
10. As for the future of garden gnomes, according to one store owner in New Jersey, “People are getting tired of the traditional lawn jockey.”
So was this article helpful to you? Did it tell you something new about garden gnomes that you didn’t know before? If so, please share it on “Social Media”.
Thank you for reading 10 Facts About Garden Gnomes . We hope you enjoyed it!
Leave a Comment