40 Fun Facts About Gnomes

In the Harry Potter books, which family goes easy on garden gnomes, merely throwing them out of the garden?

The Weasleys put up with the pests that infest wizards' gardens: Rowling's gnomes are small and mischievous, and can bite with sharp teeth.

In South Park, what do the gnomes with a three-phase business plan sneak into bedrooms to steal at night?

Underpants are phase one and profit is phase three, but phase two is a blank. The gnomes became a lasting joke about businesses with no idea how they will make money.

Which former Beatle sits among four garden gnomes on the cover of his 1970 triple album All Things Must Pass?

Harrison had bought the Friar Park estate that year, and the four figures on its lawn are often read as a wry comment on leaving his old band behind.

Which pop star was executive producer of the film Gnomeo & Juliet and filled its soundtrack with his own hits?

Elton John also recorded a new duet with Lady Gaga for the film, and the song earned a Golden Globe nomination.

Which Disney animated film revived the popularity of garden gnomes, which had slumped after World War I?

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs reached cinemas in 1937, and soon working-class families wanted bearded little men in their gardens too.

Which travel booking website launched a bearded Roaming Gnome as its advertising mascot in a 2004 campaign?

Travelocity built the campaign on the travelling-gnome prank, in which a garden ornament vanishes and its owner starts receiving photos from its trip.

Lampy, the last survivor of the gnomes Sir Charles Isham brought to England in the 1840s, is insured for how much?

£1 million covers one small terracotta figure: Lampy is the only one left of 21 set out in the rockery at Lamport Hall, the garden credited with starting Britain's gnome habit.

The father of which British prime minister made garden gnomes for a living after a career on the circus trapeze?

John Major's father, Tom Major-Ball, founded Major's Garden Ornaments in Surrey once his music hall and circus days were over.

Which 2001 film's heroine steals her father's garden gnome and has a friend mail him photos of it at world landmarks?

Amélie uses the globe-trotting gnome to nudge her stay-at-home father into touring the world himself, and the film spread the prank far and wide.

Which prestigious London gardening event long banned garden gnomes, lifting the rule in 2013 to mark its centenary?

The Chelsea Flower Show's organisers said gnomes detracted from the garden designs, while fans called the ban snobbery toward an ornament loved in suburban gardens.

A gnome stolen from a Sydney garden in 1986 left behind a farewell note signed with which hobbit's name?

Bilbo was a fitting alias for a homebody off on an adventure: the note, reported by the Sydney Morning Herald, promised the owner it would be back soon.

In the 1970s Henry Sunderland photographed his garden gnomes Harry and Charlie on a trip around which continent?

Antarctica made an unlikely first backdrop for what became gnoming: taking a garden gnome on a trip and photographing it in front of famous landmarks.

Which socialite posed with a stolen garden gnome at a gas station in 2005, landing the prank in People magazine?

Paris Hilton met the gnome's kidnappers by chance on their week-long road trip; they later left it on the owner's porch with a photo album of its travels.

The Garden Gnome Liberation Front, which steals gnomes to release them in forests, began in the 1990s in which country?

France saw the Front claim the theft of hundreds of gnomes, and in 1997 its ringleader was fined over the disappearance of some 150 of them.

Which British soap ran a travelling gnome plot in 1995, with the Wiltons sent a postcard by their missing gnome?

Coronation Street had the Wiltons' gnome write home from Eastbourne, six years before a hit film carried the same joke around the world.

Which Polish city has hundreds of small gnome statues on its streets, a nod to the anti-communist Orange Alternative?

Wrocław put up a monument to the movement in 2001 and began adding the small figures in 2005; by 2024 there were more than 800 for visitors to hunt down.

Which country's Social Democrats lined roads with 20,000 campaign gnomes in 2014, only for 400 to vanish?

Austria's Social Democrats called the figures Coolmen, a joke about being a political dwarf in the Vorarlberg region, and went to the police when hundreds disappeared.

Which German state is home to Gräfenroda, the pottery village with a museum on the history of garden gnomes?

Thuringia and neighbouring Saxony were where the figures first spread from in the 1840s, and two Gräfenroda firms later began turning them out on an industrial scale.

Statues of which Roman fertility god, placed in ancient gardens, are seen as a forerunner of the garden gnome?

Priapus was also the protector of beehives, flocks and vineyards, so Romans stood his small stone figure among their plants as a guardian.

In the film Gnomeo & Juliet, the gnomes of Juliet's garden wear red hats, while Gnomeo's side wear which colour?

Blue belongs to Miss Montague's garden and its rival colour to Mr Capulet's next door; the lovers finally ride off on a purple lawnmower, a blend of the two.

In which English town do the feuding neighbours of Gnomeo & Juliet keep their rival gardens side by side?

Stratford-upon-Avon was Shakespeare's birthplace, and a statue of the playwright turns up in the film to predict a tragic ending for the lovers.

Which actress voiced Juliet, the daughter of Lord Redbrick, in the animated film Gnomeo & Juliet?

Emily Blunt got a part first meant for Kate Winslet, and came back to voice Juliet again in the 2018 sequel.

Which actor voiced the title detective in Sherlock Gnomes, the 2018 animated sequel about London's garden ornaments?

Johnny Depp's detective works beside a Watson voiced by Chiwetel Ejiofor, who is so tired of being taken for granted that he stages a fake case to win some respect.

The child stars of Disney's The Gnome-Mobile had earlier played brother and sister in which hit musical film?

Mary Poppins had cast Karen Dotrice and Matthew Garber as the Banks children three years earlier, and The Gnome-Mobile turned out to be Garber's last film.

In the 1980s cartoon The World of David the Gnome, what job does David do for forest animals and other gnomes?

Doctor David heals his patients with skills that include hypnosis and acupuncture, and at 399 years old he is very nearly the oldest gnome around.

The 1980s cartoon The World of David the Gnome was produced by BRB Internacional, a studio based in which country?

Spain's BRB Internacional made the series with the national broadcaster, and Tom Bosley of Happy Days voiced David in the English version.

The illustrated 1976 bestseller Gnomes, by Wil Huygen and Rien Poortvliet, was first published in which language?

Dutch readers knew the book's subjects as kabouters, the little people of Low Countries folklore, and the English edition spent 62 weeks on American bestseller lists.

Which children's horror series includes Revenge of the Lawn Gnomes, about two ornaments that come alive at night?

Goosebumps named the two gnomes Hap and Chip; bought as lawn decorations in book 34 of the series, they cause destruction once darkness falls.

Among the four elemental spirits of Renaissance alchemy, gnomes were the beings assigned to which classical element?

Earth was home to the gnomes, who were said to pass through solid ground as easily as people walk through air; undines, sylphs and salamanders took the other three.

Which Swiss physician and alchemist introduced gnomes to European writing in the 1500s as small underground spirits?

Paracelsus may have invented the word himself; his gnomes stood two spans tall, about 18 inches, and did not like to mix with humans.

Which metal is said to be named after a mischievous mine spirit that German miners blamed for a poisonous ore?

Cobalt ore sickened miners and would not smelt, so they blamed the kobel or kobold, a goblin of the mines; the metal itself was first isolated in the 1730s.

In Scandinavian folklore, which dish is left out on Christmas Eve to keep the gnome-like nisse or tomte content?

Porridge had to be served just right: in the tales, a nisse whose bowl came without butter grew angry enough to take revenge on the household.

British politicians of the 1960s used the nickname "gnomes of Zurich" for members of which secretive profession?

Bankers in Switzerland were pictured as little creatures counting their riches underground, and a few took to answering the phone by announcing themselves as gnomes.

Which stop-motion heroes face an army of robotic garden gnomes in the 2024 film Vengeance Most Fowl?

Wallace and Gromit's troubles begin with Norbot, a helpful robot gnome that the penguin Feathers McGraw hacks and copies into an army of thieves.

Which singer released the novelty single "The Laughing Gnome" in 1967, only to see it become a hit six years later?

David Bowie and his studio engineer created the gnome's sped-up voice; the single flopped, then reached number six in Britain once he was a star.

J. R. R. Tolkien's early drafts gave the name "Gnomes" to which group of Elves, before he dropped the word?

The Noldor's name means those with knowledge, which the old word was meant to echo; Tolkien dropped it as too misleading, since his tall, proud Elves were nothing like the gnomes of folklore.

Swiss folklore blames gnomes, angered by villagers corrupted by gold, for which 1618 disaster that destroyed Plurs?

A landslide buried Plurs after, the story goes, the gnomes had poured liquid gold into a vein for the villagers, only to watch the new wealth corrupt them.

Which online game's gnomes are exiles who irradiated their own capital, Gnomeregan, in a failed bid to repel invaders?

World of Warcraft casts its gnomes as tinkerers allied with dwarves and humans, and hints that they began as mechanical creations that turned into living beings.

Umbriel, a gnome in Alexander Pope's The Rape of the Lock, later lent his name to a moon of which planet?

Uranus also has moons named Ariel and Belinda after the same poem, in which Umbriel fetches a bag of sighs and a vial of tears from the Cave of Spleen.

In L. Frank Baum's Oz books, the underground Nomes and their king are terrified of which everyday food?

Eggs, the Nome King believes, will poison his people, which lets a hen named Billina outwit and humiliate him in Ozma of Oz.