Troll (Middle-earth)

Trolls are fictional characters in J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth, and feature in films and games adapted from his novels. They are portrayed as large humanoids of great strength and poor intellect. In The Hobbit, like the dwarf Alviss of Norse mythology, they must be below ground before dawn or turn to stone, whereas in The Lord of the Rings they are able to face daylight.

Trolls
Information
Created dateFirst Age
Created by fictional beingMelkor
Home worldMiddle-earth
Base of operationsTrollshaws, Moria, Mordor
Sub-racesOlog-hai

Commentators have noted the different uses Tolkien made of trolls, from comedy in Sam Gamgee's poem and the Cockney accents and table manners of the working-class trolls in The Hobbit, to the hellish atmosphere in Moria as the protagonists are confronted by darkness and monsters. Tolkien, a Roman Catholic, drew back from giving trolls the power of speech, as he had done in The Hobbit, as it implied to him that they had souls, so he made the trolls in The Silmarillion and The Lord of the Rings darker and more bestial. They were supposedly bred by the Dark Lords Melkor and Sauron for their own evil purposes, helping to express Tolkien's combination of "fairy tale with epic, ... bonded with the Christian mythos".[1]

Appearances

The Hobbit

In The Hobbit, Bilbo Baggins and the Dwarf company encountered three trolls on their journey to Erebor. The trolls captured the Dwarves and prepared to eat them, but the wizard Gandalf managed to distract them until dawn, when exposure to sunlight turned them into stone. They had vulgar table manners, constantly argued and fought amongst themselves, in Tolkien's narrator's words "not drawing-room fashion at all, at all",[2] spoke with Cockney accents, and had matching English working-class names: Tom, Bert, and Bill.[T 1][3] Jennifer Eastman Attebery, a scholar of English, states that the trolls in The Hobbit "signify the uncouth".[2]

The Lord of the Rings

As the Fellowship of the Ring made their way towards Rivendell through the Trollshaws, after Frodo had been stabbed by the Nazgûl with a Morgul-knife, they came upon the three trolls that Bilbo and the dwarves had encountered many years earlier, and had seen turned to stone at daybreak. Sam Gamgee recited a comic poem, "The Stone Troll", on the supposed dangers of kicking a troll, who has a "seat" which is "harder than stone", to cheer everyone up.[T 2][4] The poem appears also in The Adventures of Tom Bombadil. In the Tolkien critic Paul H. Kocher's words, it achieves a certain "grisly slapstick".[4]

Olog-hai they were called in the Black Speech. That Sauron bred them none doubted, though from what stock was not known... Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race, strong, agile, fierce and cunning, but harder than stone. Unlike the older race of the Twilight they could endure the Sun, so long as the will of Sauron held sway over them. They spoke little, and the only tongue that they knew was the Black Speech of Barad-dûr.

Tolkien's description of the trolls in Appendix F "Of Other Races" in The Return of the King[T 3]

Cave trolls attacked the Fellowship in Moria. One had dark greenish scales, black blood, and a hide so thick that when Boromir struck it in the arm his sword was notched. However, Frodo was able to impale the "toeless" foot of the same troll with the enchanted dagger Sting.[T 4] The Tolkien scholar Charles A. Huttar writes that the trolls' presence, alongside orcs and the Balrog, means that "Moria not only houses inert obstacles but active monsters".[5]

Mountain trolls wielded the great battering ram Grond to shatter the gates of Minas Tirith.[T 5] They fought using clubs and round shields at the Battle of the Morannon.[T 6][6] Sauron bred mountain and cave trolls,[6] and developed the more intelligent Olog-hai that were not vulnerable to sunlight.[7]

Snow trolls are mentioned only in the story of Helm Hammerhand. When Helm went out during the Long winter clad in white to ambush his enemies, he was described as looking like a snow-troll.[T 7]

The Silmarillion

Morgoth, the evil Vala, created trolls in the First Age of Middle-earth.[T 8] They were strong and vicious but stupid; as in The Hobbit, they turned to stone in sunlight.[6] During the wars of Beleriand, Gothmog (the Lord of Balrogs) had a bodyguard of trolls. During the Nírnaeth Arnoediad, the Battle of Unnumbered Tears, in which Morgoth defeated the united armies of Elves, Men, and Dwarves, the great human warrior Húrin faced Gothmog's trolls to protect the retreat of the Elven king Turgon. Morgoth's order to Gothmog to capture Húrin alive allowed Húrin to kill all the trolls.[T 9] Many trolls died in the War of Wrath, but some survived and joined Sauron, the greatest surviving servant of Morgoth.[T 10][T 9]

Origins
Further information: Troll
In Norse mythology, the god Thor talked to the dwarf Alviss to prevent him from marrying his daughter Þrúðr; at dawn Alviss turns to stone. Drawing by W. G. Collingwood, 1908

In Germanic mythology, trolls are a kind of giant, along with rísar, jötnar, and þursar; the names are variously applied to large monstrous beings, sometimes as synonyms.[8][9] The idea that such monsters must be below ground before dawn dates back to the Elder Edda of Norse mythology, where in the Alvíssmál, the god Thor keeps the dwarf Alviss (not a troll) talking until dawn, and sees him turn to stone.[10][11][12] Tom Shippey, a Tolkien scholar, writes that The Hobbit's audience in 1937 were familiar with trolls from fairy tale collections such as those of Grimm, and Asbjørnsen and Moe's Norwegian Folktales; Tolkien's use of monsters of different kinds - orcs, trolls, and a Balrog in Moria made that journey "a descent into hell".[12]

Attebery notes that trolls came into English first through Asbjørnsen and Moe's 1841 collection of traditional Norwegian tales, Norske-Eventyr, but that this was followed by Scandinavian retellings with reimagined trolls. Trolls thus moved from being grim Norse ogres to more sympathetic modern humanoids.[2] In her view, Tolkien's trolls are based on the ogre type, but with two "incarnations": ancient trolls, "creatures of dull and lumpish nature" in Tolkien's words,[T 11] unable to speak; and the malicious giants of strength and courage bred by Sauron with "enough intelligence to present a real danger".[2] The scholar of English Edward Risden agrees that Tolkien's later trolls appear far more dangerous than those of The Hobbit, losing, too, "the [moral] capacity to relent"; he comments that in Norse mythology, trolls are "normally female and strongly associated with magic", while in the Norse sagas the trolls were physically strong and superhuman in battle.[13]

Christina Fawcett, a scholar of English, writes that Tolkien synthesises materials from different eras, so his writing and his creatures can take on different qualities, from playful to monstrous; his hill-trolls "while still threatening, are primarily comic and slow-witted".[7] On the other hand, when Gandalf outwits them, these same trolls are seen as "monstrous, a warning against vice, captured forever in stone for their greed and anger."[7] All the same, Fawcett cautions that Tolkien uses tradition selectively.[7] Fawcett writes that Tolkien transferred the more positive attributes of Norse trolls, including being rich and generous, to hobbits.[7]

Reception

Trolls in The Hobbit
Tolkien based details such the trolls' tiredness with mutton on William Morris's travels in Iceland.[14] Drawing of Morris cooking in Iceland c. 1870 by Edward Burne-Jones

Shippey criticises Tolkien's class-based depiction of the trolls and goblins in The Hobbit, writing that the trolls were too close to labourers, just as the goblins were to munitions workers. Shippey notes, too, Tolkien's storytelling technique here, observing that making the troll's purse (which Bilbo attempts to steal) able to speak blurs the line between the ordinary and the magical.[15]

Marjorie Burns, a medievalist, writes that the trolls' tiredness with eating mutton every day matches the fantasy writer and designer William Morris's account of his travels in Iceland in the early 1870s, one of many Middle-earth features that follows Morris, including the existence of trolls: Morris mentioned visiting places called Tröllakirkja ("Trollchurch") and Tröllahals ("Trollneck"). Burns notes, too, that the adventure with the three trolls combines Bilbo's fear of being eaten with the temptation of the "fine toothsome smell" of roast mutton.[14]

The critic Gregory Hartley notes that while in The Hobbit, Tolkien's trolls were still much like those of Norse mythology, "archetypal, stereotypical ... basking in unexamined sentience",[1] in The Silmarillion and Lord of the Rings, "Tolkien undertook the difficult task of melding fairy tale with epic, which was in turn bonded with the Christian mythos. Characters and creatures began functioning on a multiplicity of registers."[1] The entertainingly "light-hearted informality" of The Hobbit's Cockney-speaking trolls thus gave way to the "more bestial trolls" of the later works.[1] Hartley comments that the redaction effort that Tolkien threw himself into for his legendarium was driven by the way he had composed The Hobbit; and that the resulting "rich, curious roles" that trolls and other beasts play in Middle-earth would not have existed without it.[1]

Speech, sentience, and souls
Tolkien's wordless trolls have been compared to Grendel, a monster in Beowulf.[7] Illustration by J. R. Skelton

Fawcett suggests that Tolkien's "roaring Troll" in The Return of the King reflects the Beowulf monster Grendel's "firey eye and terrible screaming."[7] Noting that Tolkien compares them to beasts as they "came striding up, roaring like beasts ... bellowing", she observes that they "remain wordless warriors, like Grendel", although they are sentient, with intelligence and a single language, unlike the varied tongues of Tolkien's orcs.[7]

Critics including Fawcett and Hartley note that by making all the beasts in The Hobbit talk, Tolkien, a devout Roman Catholic, had created a serious problem for himself: if trolls and other monsters were supposed to be sentient, they would in Christian terms have souls and be redeemable rather than wholly evil.[7][1] Tolkien acknowledged this keenly-felt question: "Of course ... when you make Trolls speak [Tolkien's emphasis] you are giving them a power, which in our world (probably) connotes the possession of a 'soul'."[T 12] Fawcett distinguishes the approach of Tolkien's narrator, who treats trolls as "wholly monstrous", from his "translator's notes" which take "a slightly more balanced view".[7] She states that Tolkien adopts a similar multiplicity of viewpoints on the in-fiction creation of trolls: Frodo tells Sam that the Shadow cannot create "real new things of its own", but all the same, she writes, the "stone-bred mockery" seems very much alive. This is, Fawcett writes, in contrast to Tolkien's intelligent dragons, which are straightforwardly a created species with the power of speech, but certainly monsters; and in contrast to orcs which, as corrupted elves, do have souls. She concludes that Tolkien's linking of souls to speech "complicates these monstrous races".[7]

Tolkien had another conceptual problem with the existence of evil creatures, as he believed that while good could create, evil could not. So he considered whether his evil creatures could have been corrupted from sentient beings, and whether they could breed, writing various and contradictory explanations of their origins.[7][16] In The Two Towers, the leader of the Ents, Treebeard, remarks that trolls were "made ... in mockery of Ents", as Orcs were of Elves.[T 13][T 13][17][T 12] Friedhelm Schneidewind, writing in the J. R. R. Tolkien Encyclopedia, states the precise origin of trolls "perhaps from giant apes but possibly from Men, Orcs, or 'Spirits'" is not given by Tolkien, but like Orcs, trolls were bred by Melkor and Sauron for their own evil purposes.[18][7]

Defeat of evil

Burns notes that with the destruction of Sauron, trolls, like the rest of Sauron's minions, were scattered in defeat, though some survived by hiding in the hills. In Burns's view, this makes Tolkien appear both optimistic, since evil can be defeated, and pessimistic, as that defeat is never absolute.[19]

Adaptations

Film
A cave-troll in Peter Jackson's The Fellowship of the Ring

Rankin/Bass' animated 1977 adaptation of The Hobbit depicts Bilbo's encounter with the trolls. In this film, the trolls are presented with tan-colored skin, large bulbous noses, and tusks. As in the book, they turn to stone when exposed to sunlight. The trolls were voiced by Paul Frees, Jack DeLeon, and Don Messick.[20]

Ralph Bakshi's 1978 animated version of The Lord of the Rings follows the book faithfully in its depiction of the encounter with the troll in the Chamber, though the troll's foot has toes. Glenn Gaslin, reviewing the film on Slate, describes a clip from the film as "of ravenous trolls, [and it] does no justice to Tolkien's darker elements".[21]

Trolls appear in Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings film trilogy. In The Fellowship of the Ring, Bilbo Baggins recounts his altercation with the three stone-trolls and later on, the four hobbits and Aragorn are shown resting in the shelter of the petrified trolls. The location used was Piopio, Waitomo District, in New Zealand.[22] In the mines of Moria, a single cave troll, animated in software, is among the attackers.[23][24]

A troll approaches Aragorn during the Battle of the Morannon in The Return of the King

In The Return of the King, trolls fight in the Battle of the Pelennor Fields,[25] and Aragorn fights a troll in the Battle of the Morannon, a departure from the book;[26][27] Jackson had at one stage intended Aragorn to fight the Dark Lord Sauron in person, but "wisely" reduced this to combat with a troll.[28]

In The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey the three stone trolls appear as in Tolkien's book. The trolls are portrayed through voice and motion capture. Bert is played by Mark Hadlow, Tom by William Kircher, and William by Peter Hambleton.[29] In The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies, some of the trolls have catapults mounted on their backs.[30]

Games

Trolls have featured in many video games set in Middle-earth, including The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-earth,[31] The Lord of the Rings: The Third Age,[32] and The Lord of the Rings: Conquest.[33] In The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-earth II: The Rise of the Witch-king, the Angmar faction has a troll hero named Rogash,[34][35] and an Olog-hai named Brûz the Chopper is important to the plot of Middle-earth: Shadow of War.[36]

Middle-earth trolls have appeared in tabletop role-playing games; for example, the core book for Middle-earth Role Playing, published by Iron Crown Enterprises, included rules for Normal Trolls, Olog-hai (or Black Trolls), and Half Trolls,[37] and the publisher released an adventure module called Trolls of the Misty Mountains.[38] Middle Earth Strategy Battle Game includes trolls, while Games Workshop produce a selection of troll miniatures.[39][40][41][42][43]

gollark: You can get UV LEDs, can't you?
gollark: But why?
gollark: Is it reasonable to think about epidemics in % of population terms, though?
gollark: A combination of bizarre regulation and mishandling by the CDC/FDA meant they basically couldn't (legally) do any testing for ages.
gollark: That's not an excuse for their government entirely messing up everything.

References

Primary
This list identifies each item's location in Tolkien's writings.
  1. The Hobbit, ch. 2 "Roast Mutton"
  2. Fellowship of the Ring, book 1, ch. 12, "Flight to the Ford"
  3. The Return of the King Appendix F "Of Other Races"
  4. The Fellowship of the Ring, book 2, ch. 5 "The Bridge of Khazad-dûm"
  5. The Return of the King, book 5, ch. 4 "The Siege of Gondor"
  6. The Return of the King, book 5, ch. 10, "The Black Gate Opens"
  7. The Return of the King, Appendix A. II "The House of Eorl"
  8. Return of the King Appendix F, "The Languages and Peoples of the Third Age", "Of Other Races"
  9. The Silmarillion, ch. 20 "Of the Fifth Battle: Nirnaeth Arnoediad", p. 195
  10. The Children of Húrin, ch. 2 "The Battle of Unnumbered Tears"
  11. Return of the King, Appendix F, I, "Of Other Races", "Trolls"
  12. Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, #153, to Peter Hastings, September 1954.
  13. The Two Towers, book 3, ch. 4, "Treebeard"

Secondary
  1. Hartley, Gregory (2014). "Civilized goblins and Talking Animals: How The Hobbit Created Problems of Sentience for Tolkien". In Bradford Lee Eden (ed.). The Hobbit and Tolkien's mythology : essays on revisions and influences. Part III: Themes. McFarland. ISBN 978-0-7864-7960-3. OCLC 889426663.
  2. Attebery, Jennifer Eastman (1996). "The Trolls of Fiction: Ogres or Warm Fuzzies?". Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts. 7 (1 (25)): 61–74. JSTOR 43308256. The comedy is conveyed chiefly through the trolls' lower class British dialect and their clumsy handling of little Bilbo
  3. Stevens, David; Stevens, Carol D. (2008). Harold Bloom (ed.). The Hobbit (PDF). J. R. R. Tolkien. Bloom's Modern Critical Views. Bloom's Literary Criticism, an imprint of Infobase Publishing. pp. 17–26. ISBN 978-1-60413-146-8.
  4. Kocher, Paul (1974) [1972]. Master of Middle-Earth: The Achievement of J.R.R. Tolkien. Penguin Books. pp. 190–191. ISBN 0140038779.
  5. Huttar, Charles A. (1975). Lobdell, Jared (ed.). Hell and The City: Tolkien and the Traditions of Western Literature. A Tolkien Compass. Open Court. p. 125. ISBN 978-0875483030.
  6. Krege, Wolfgang (1999). Handbuch der Weisen von Mittelerde. Klett-Cotta. p. 348-349. ISBN 3-608-93521-5.
  7. Fawcett, Christina (February 2014). J.R.R. Tolkien and the morality of monstrosity. University of Glasgow (PhD thesis). pp. 29, 97, 125–131.
  8. Simek, Rudolf (2005). Trolle (trolls) [Middle-earth: Tolkien and Germanic Mythology]. Mittelerde: Tolkien und die germanische Mythologie (in German). C. H. Beck. pp. 124–128. ISBN 978-3-406-52837-8.
  9. Orchard, Andy (1997). Dictionary of Norse myth and legend. Cassell. p. 197. ISBN 978-0304345205.
  10. Shippey, Tom (1982). The Road to Middle-Earth. Grafton (HarperCollins). p. 69. ISBN 0261102753.
  11. Burns, Marjorie (2007). "Old Norse literature". In Drout, Michael D. C. (ed.). J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia. Routledge. pp. 473–479. ISBN 978-0415969420.
  12. Shippey, Tom (2001). J. R. R. Tolkien: Author of the Century. HarperCollins. pp. 12, 19–20. ISBN 978-0261-10401-3.
  13. Risden, Edward L. (2015). Tolkien's Intellectual Landscape. McFarland. p. 141. ISBN 978-0-7864-9865-9.
  14. Burns, Marjorie (2005). Perilous Realms: Celtic and Norse in Tolkien's Middle-earth. University of Toronto Press. pp. 84, 159–161. ISBN 978-0-8020-3806-7.
  15. Shippey, Tom (2005) [1982]. The Road to Middle-Earth (Third ed.). HarperCollins. pp. 85–87. ISBN 978-0261102750.
  16. Shippey, Tom (2001). J. R. R. Tolkien: Author of the Century. HarperCollins. p. 265. ISBN 978-0261-10401-3.
  17. Hammond, Wayne G.; Scull, Christina (2005). The Lord of the Rings: A Reader's Companion. HarperCollins. pp. 76, 389. ISBN 978-0-00-720907-1.
  18. Schneidewind, Friedhelm (2013) [2007]. "Biology of Middle-earth". In Drout, Michael D. C. (ed.). J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia: Scholarship and Critical Assessment. Routledge. p. 66. ISBN 978-0-415-86511-1.
  19. Burns, Marjorie (2005). Perilous Realms: Celtic and Norse in Tolkien's Middle-earth. University of Toronto Press. p. 176. ISBN 978-0-8020-3806-7.
  20. "The Hobbit (1977)". IMDb. Retrieved 11 April 2020.
  21. Gaslin, Glenn (21 November 2001). "Hobbits on Film". Slate. Retrieved 10 April 2020.
  22. Plush, Hazel (21 September 2017). "10 epic Middle Earth locations that really exist in New Zealand". The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 10 April 2020.
  23. Sibley, Brian (2006). "Quest for the Ring". Peter Jackson: A Film-maker's Journey. HarperCollins. pp. 329–387. ISBN 978-0-00-717558-1.
  24. Doyle, Audrey (February 2003). "The Two Towers". Computer Graphics World. 26 (2): n.s. Retrieved 16 April 2020.
  25. O'Hehir, Andrew (18 December 2003). ""The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King"". Salon.com. Retrieved 16 April 2020.
  26. Evans, Willy (3 March 2018). "15 Secrets You Didn't Know Behind The Making Of Lord Of The Rings". Screenrant. Retrieved 16 April 2020.
  27. Leitch, Thomas (2009). Film Adaptation and Its Discontents: From Gone with the Wind to The Passion of the Christ. Johns Hopkins University Press. p. 2. ISBN 978-0-8018-9187-8.
  28. Bogstad, Janice M.; Kaveny, Philip E. (2011). Picturing Tolkien: Essays on Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings Film Trilogy. McFarland. pp. 65–66. ISBN 978-0-7864-8473-7.
  29. "The Hobbit Then and Now". The Insider. 2 January 2019. Retrieved 10 April 2020.
  30. Gilsdorf, Ethan (19 December 2014). "Peter Jackson Must Be Stopped". Wired. Retrieved 10 April 2020.
  31. IGN Staff (12 November 2004). "Battle for Middle-Earth - Mordor, Part 2". IGN. Retrieved 19 April 2020.
  32. IGN Staff (21 October 2004). "The Third Age: Forces of Evil". IGN. Retrieved 19 April 2020.
  33. McCarthy, Dave (16 January 2009). "Lord of the Rings Conquest UK Review". IGN. Retrieved 19 April 2020.
  34. Barratt, Charlie (23 August 2006). "LOTR: The Battle for Middle-earth II: The Rise of the Witch-king". GamesRadar. Retrieved 19 April 2020.
  35. Adams, Dan (4 November 2006). "The Rise of the Witch-king Hands-on". IGN. Retrieved 19 April 2020.
  36. Graeber, Brendan (15 March 2019). "Shadow of War's Nemesis System Took Things Way Too Far". IGN India. Retrieved 19 April 2020.
  37. Charlton, S. Coleman; Ruemmler, John D. (1986). Middle-earth Role Playing. Ice Crown Enterprises. pp. 17-18. ISBN 978-0915795314.
  38. Cresswell, John; Cresswell, Mike (1986). Trolls of the Misty Mountains. Iron Crown Enterprises. ISBN 978-0915795499.
  39. "Mordor Troll Chieftain". Games Workshop. Retrieved 18 April 2019.
  40. "Cave Troll". Games Workshop. Retrieved 18 April 2019.
  41. "Mordor Troll". Games Workshop. Retrieved 18 April 2019.
  42. "Half Trolls". Games Workshop. Retrieved 18 April 2019.
  43. "Hill Troll Chieftain Buhrdur". Games Workshop. Retrieved 18 April 2019.
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