Friday, September 11, 2009

The Troll Bikes

The Family


I met an interesting family at Vegabaren during the Easy Rider Festival. They are mad about trolls! The man in the family, Johan has even taken it as his second name! He is now called Johan Trollet Schalander. Together with his girlfriend Carola (it was her I spotted first), and their young daughter Teresia, he has two Honda Goldwings. There is also a camper that is one big bed. And a trailer that is packed with a big tent and what have you. Both bikes, one of them has a side car, the camper and the trailer are covered with spray paintings of trolls! The artwork was made by a well known spray painting artist. The original troll design comes from the botanist and painter Rolf Lidberg who was Johan's favourite painter. For the last eight summers the family has been travelling around Europe to many motorcycle meets and won countless awards for their bikes. And wherever they come they are the centre of attention! Johan told me that they must have spent around one million Swedish kronor on their machines. That is a lot of money. The more I looked at the bikes, the more trolls I saw. So I decided to photograph as many as I could and make a flickr set so that you could all see them. So just press the white arrow below and sit back and watch the slideshow.


13 comments:

Lowell said...

Those have to be the most ornate bikes I've ever seen! Just beautiful!

Love the trolls.

One wonders where he gets the money to do all of this?

Stefan Jansson said...

Sorry, I should have added that in the description. He works as an electrician and as a plumber.

brattcat said...

I can see why you were drawn to Ms. Troll. She is so very beautiful. And the three together make such an enchanted and enchanting family. The troll paintings are the icing on the cake and what delightfully rich icing.

Leif Hagen said...

Great family of trolls to photograph on their bikes! I guess you're always trolling for good photos, right?

PIXPICK said...

oooohh watta bike... no wonder they won many awards with this...
and well... I think one has to be a crazy mechanic too to take care of these monster bikes... :-)

pixpick.blogspot.com

Don and Krise said...

The greatest part of the whole thing is the fact that they do it as a family. They must have so much fun. Glad you posted the slideshow Steffe.

Olivier said...

la moto est superbe avec tous ces dessins

Pat said...

These people are cool, and I really love trolls in general.

Tinsie said...

These photos are amazing! I totally love the main one with the family standing next to their bike, it's so interesting!

It's my dream to own a Goldwing - and these ones are the best I've ever seen.

B SQUARED said...

Life is full of interesting people.

Lois said...

What a beautiful little family! I love the troll paintings.

Luis Gomez said...

What a beautiful work. Great images and info. Love your way around people.

Anonymous said...

Amazing!
I've never seen one of those!
Great story and photographs!