Gnomes
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40 free Gnomes trivia questions with answers — pop culture quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Gnomes have had two lives. In old European folklore they were secretive little spirits of mines and mountains, guarding ore and treasure and playing tricks on anyone who crossed them. Then, in the nineteenth century, potters began turning out small bearded figures for the garden, and the gnome moved above ground for good. This quiz covers both. There are questions on the alchemist who first wrote about gnomes, the mine legends behind them and their Scandinavian cousins. There is garden gnome trivia too: who made the first lawn ornaments, who banned them and who keeps stealing them to send on holiday. The rest comes from films, cartoons, novels, songs and video games in which a gnome steals the scene. It suits pub quiz writers, gardeners with a sense of humour and anyone who has wondered what the little man by the pond is thinking. Every answer comes with a short explanation.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In the Harry Potter books, which family goes easy on garden gnomes, merely throwing them out of the garden?
The Weasleys
The Weasleys put up with the pests that infest wizards' gardens: Rowling's gnomes are small and mischievous, and can bite with sharp teeth.
Q 02In South Park, what do the gnomes with a three-phase business plan sneak into bedrooms to steal at night?
Underpants
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.
Q 03Which former Beatle sits among four garden gnomes on the cover of his 1970 triple album All Things Must Pass?
Harrison
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.
Q 04Which pop star was executive producer of the film Gnomeo & Juliet and filled its soundtrack with his own hits?
Elton John
Elton John also recorded a new duet with Lady Gaga for the film, and the song earned a Golden Globe nomination.
Q 05Which Disney animated film revived the popularity of garden gnomes, which had slumped after World War I?
Snow White
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs reached cinemas in 1937, and soon working-class families wanted bearded little men in their gardens too.
Q 06Which travel booking website launched a bearded Roaming Gnome as its advertising mascot in a 2004 campaign?
Travelocity
Travelocity built the campaign on the travelling-gnome prank, in which a garden ornament vanishes and its owner starts receiving photos from its trip.
Q 07Lampy, the last survivor of the gnomes Sir Charles Isham brought to England in the 1840s, is insured for how much?
£1 million
£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.
Q 08The father of which British prime minister made garden gnomes for a living after a career on the circus trapeze?
John Major
John Major's father, Tom Major-Ball, founded Major's Garden Ornaments in Surrey once his music hall and circus days were over.
Q 09Which 2001 film's heroine steals her father's garden gnome and has a friend mail him photos of it at world landmarks?
Amélie
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.
Q 10Which prestigious London gardening event long banned garden gnomes, lifting the rule in 2013 to mark its centenary?
Chelsea Flower Show
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.
Q 11A gnome stolen from a Sydney garden in 1986 left behind a farewell note signed with which hobbit's name?
Bilbo
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.
Q 12In the 1970s Henry Sunderland photographed his garden gnomes Harry and Charlie on a trip around which continent?
Antarctica
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.
Q 13Which socialite posed with a stolen garden gnome at a gas station in 2005, landing the prank in People magazine?
Paris Hilton
Q 21In which English town do the feuding neighbours of Gnomeo & Juliet keep their rival gardens side by side?
Stratford-upon-Avon
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.
Q 22Which actress voiced Juliet, the daughter of Lord Redbrick, in the animated film Gnomeo & Juliet?
Emily Blunt
Emily Blunt got a part first meant for Kate Winslet, and came back to voice Juliet again in the 2018 sequel.
Q 23Which actor voiced the title detective in Sherlock Gnomes, the 2018 animated sequel about London's garden ornaments?
Johnny Depp
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.
Q 14The Garden Gnome Liberation Front, which steals gnomes to release them in forests, began in the 1990s in which country?
France
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.
Q 15Which British soap ran a travelling gnome plot in 1995, with the Wiltons sent a postcard by their missing gnome?
Coronation Street
Coronation Street had the Wiltons' gnome write home from Eastbourne, six years before a hit film carried the same joke around the world.
Q 16Which Polish city has hundreds of small gnome statues on its streets, a nod to the anti-communist Orange Alternative?
Wrocław
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.
Q 17Which country's Social Democrats lined roads with 20,000 campaign gnomes in 2014, only for 400 to vanish?
Austria
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.
Q 18Which German state is home to Gräfenroda, the pottery village with a museum on the history of garden gnomes?
Thuringia
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.
Q 19Statues of which Roman fertility god, placed in ancient gardens, are seen as a forerunner of the garden gnome?
Priapus
Priapus was also the protector of beehives, flocks and vineyards, so Romans stood his small stone figure among their plants as a guardian.
Q 20In the film Gnomeo & Juliet, the gnomes of Juliet's garden wear red hats, while Gnomeo's side wear which colour?
Blue
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.
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.
Q 24The child stars of Disney's The Gnome-Mobile had earlier played brother and sister in which hit musical film?
Mary Poppins
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.
Q 25In the 1980s cartoon The World of David the Gnome, what job does David do for forest animals and other gnomes?
Doctor
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.
Q 26The 1980s cartoon The World of David the Gnome was produced by BRB Internacional, a studio based in which country?
Spain
Spain's BRB Internacional made the series with the national broadcaster, and Tom Bosley of Happy Days voiced David in the English version.
Q 27The illustrated 1976 bestseller Gnomes, by Wil Huygen and Rien Poortvliet, was first published in which language?
Dutch
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.
Q 28Which children's horror series includes Revenge of the Lawn Gnomes, about two ornaments that come alive at night?
Goosebumps
Goosebumps named the two gnomes Hap and Chip; bought as lawn decorations in book 34 of the series, they cause destruction once darkness falls.
Q 29Among the four elemental spirits of Renaissance alchemy, gnomes were the beings assigned to which classical element?
Earth
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.
Q 30Which Swiss physician and alchemist introduced gnomes to European writing in the 1500s as small underground spirits?
Paracelsus
Paracelsus may have invented the word himself; his gnomes stood two spans tall, about 18 inches, and did not like to mix with humans.