Wroclaw dwarfs: how a protest joke became the city's mascot

Why does Wroclaw have gnomes at all? The most widely told account starts in the 1980s, under communist rule.¹ Small paintings of a dwarf began to appear on the city's walls: a smiling gnome in an orange cap, holding a flower.^1,15 They were the work of the Orange Alternative, a movement that used humor and dwarfs to mock the absurdities of the system.² A painted dwarf was hard to punish without looking ridiculous, and that was the point. Absurd street happenings answered an absurd reality, and passers-by understood the joke without a word being said.

The movement was led by Waldemar Frydrych, known as Major, and the city's dwarf database still names him as the head of the Orange Alternative.¹⁶ Most of the painted dwarfs appeared on Swidnicka Street, the long promenade that runs south from the Market Square.¹⁷ It was also where the Orange Alternative most often staged its happenings, which is why Papa Dwarf later chose the same street as his home.¹⁸ Walk it today and you are walking the route of those protests.

Some of the bronze figures keep that memory alive in their own backstories. Przodownik, for instance, signed up with the movement, the story goes, once he saw grown-ups in dwarf costume marching down the street in the 1980s.¹⁹ The tone is playful, but the history is real. When you meet a dwarf with a raised fist or a protest sign, it is a small salute to the people who used laughter as a tool at a time when open dissent was dangerous.

The bronze population began in earnest in 2005. That year the city authorities decided to put the first official dwarfs on Wroclaw's streets.⁴ Their designer, the sculptor Tomasz Moczek, took on the job for the city's own promotion department.²⁹ His website names that first commission: a butcher, two dwarfs pushing a ball, a washer, a fencer and a guard, all in place by the summer.⁵ The Sisyphus pair, pushing a ball on Swidnicka Street, date from 2005 as well.²¹ The Promotion Office supplied the first funds, and an advertising agency promoted the idea.³⁰

From there the project grew by invitation. Anyone who wants a dwarf outside a building needs no arrangement with the city at all, only the consent of the landowner.³¹ You then find a sculptor to design and cast the figure, mount it and register it in the city's online database.³² That open door explains the variety. Banks, hospitals, schools, hotels and shops commissioned their own patrons, and the portal notes that more and more companies and private people choose to erect a dwarf of their own.¹²

The city also invented a mythology to match. Visit Wroclaw collects several legends: a prank-playing goblin who arrived on a raft and had to be driven out by dwarfs the city called in for help, and an older tale in which dwarfs helped with chores and crops when Breslau was still a village.^33,34 Another claims that local place names come from dwarfs, so that Biskupin takes its name from Biskupek and Szczepin from Szczepik.³⁵ Nobody expects you to believe it. Everybody hopes you enjoy it.

The dwarfs work because they reward attention. They sit on windowsills, climb lamp posts and lurk at knee height by doorways, so you start looking at the city more closely than you would otherwise. Today the Polish Tourism Organisation counts them among the symbols of Wroclaw.³⁸ Families turn the walk into a game, and adults find themselves crouching on the cobbles for a photo just as often. A dwarf also tells you something about the building it guards. Zyczliwek, the kindness dwarf by the fountain on the Market Square, even has his own day: November 21st is the Day of Kindness and of Zyczliwek.^39,22

Once a year the dwarfs get their own party. The Wroclaw Dwarf Festival is an annual festival for children with a parade on the Market Square and events in the Old Town Park.⁴⁰ It generally lasts 3 days, from Friday to Sunday, usually in the second half of September, and entry is free.^14,8 There is a joint dwarf search around the square for children aged 5-10 that starts at the Fredro statue.²³ Adults get a Dwarf Silent Disco from 9 pm until midnight.⁴¹

Out of festival season, the city keeps the game going with print and audio. A printed dwarf monthly is handed out at the Tourist Information Center at Rynek 14 while copies last.²⁴ There is also a podcast of Dwarf Tales with 8 stories, and a downloadable guide that follows the dwarfs through the city.^42,43 If you prefer company, our guided group walk with an English-speaking guide passes plenty of dwarfs between the square and the cathedral island.