Garden Gnome Liberation Front - Garden Gnome Liberation

Garden Gnome Liberation

As modern-day garden gnome folklore developed and their popularity increased, the objects became the target of pranks, known collectively as gnoming. Gnoming activity includes the theft of garden gnomes for the alleged purpose of returning the inanimate garden gnomes "to the wild." In 2008, a 53-year-old French man in Brittany was arrested on suspicion of stealing as many as 170 garden gnomes.

The goal of Gnome Liberation is to help set gnomes back into their natural environment.

The practice of stealing garden gnomes is also sometimes referred to as "gnome hunting." Some kidnapped garden gnomes have been sent on trips around the world (the travelling gnome prank). This variation on "gnoming" was popularized by the motion picture Amélie, in which the main character persuaded her father to follow his dream of touring the world by stealing his garden gnome and having an air-hostess friend send pictures of it from all over the world. The traveling gnome theme later became the basis for Travelocity's "Where is my Gnome?" advertising campaign. The travelling gnome has also been used as a recurring Easter egg in the 2004 simulation game Sim City 4, in which a gnome sprite reveals itself in the game's buildable landmarks. And in the 2007 game Half-Life 2: Episode Two, players received a special achievement if they carry a garden gnome throughout most of the game, and place him into a rocket which in turn would launch him into space.

In an extension of the prank, several so-called garden gnome liberation organizations have been formed for the stated purpose of freeing the ceramic creatures from forced labor in gardens. Some of the organizations satirically argue that the inanimate gnomes are captured, sold, and kept as slaves, ripped from their Northern Woodland homes, stripped of their freedoms, and forced to tend to the gardens where they are set. Garden gnome liberation groups claim that they strive to protect the "freedoms" of these silent creatures in various ways, ranging from sending petitions to the owners and the government, to stealing and "liberating" them. Liberationists have often repainted the "freed" garden gnomes to make them unidentifiable, and taken them to wooded areas or sanctuaries where liberationists contend they will be "free from a life of miserable solitude."