Trolls

"The Three Trolls are turned to Stone" by J.R.R. Tolkien (coloured by H.E. Riddett)
Race
Trolls
General Information
Other names	torog (S; singular) olog (BS; singular)
Origins	Devised or corrupted by Morgoth in the First Age (believed by Treebeard to be "made in mockery" of Ents)
Locations	Beleriand Southern Mirkwood Mordor Ettenmoors Trollshaws Moria
Affiliation	Originally Morgoth; later Sauron
Rivalries	Ents
Languages	Black Speech (Olog-hai) Debased form of Westron
People	See below
Members	William Huggins Tom Bert
Physical Description
Lifespan	Unknown
Distinctions	Strong beasts with limited intellect
Average Height	Large; some being at least twelve feet tall (3.66 meters and above)
Skin	Dark, with greenish scales
Gallery	Images of Trolls

Trolls were a race of large humanoid creatures of limited intellect. They were strong and vicious, but some of them could not endure sunlight and turned to stone when exposed to it, which rendered them permanently lifeless.

History

First Age

Origins

Morgoth devised or corrupted Trolls during the First Age ("twilight of the Elder Days"). Their exact origins are unknown, though Treebeard believed that Trolls were made by the Dark Lord "in mockery of Ents", similar to the belief that Orcs were a twisted parody of the Elves. Whatever their exact origins were, Trolls were dull and lumpish, and at least in their beginning, were as inarticulate as animals.

Nirnaeth Arnoediad

Troll guard by Joel Kilpatrick

The participation of Trolls in the War of the Jewels was not recorded in the tales of the Elder Days until F.A. 472, when the Battle of Unnumbered Tears took place.

The hosts of Angband attacked and killed all of the rearguard of the brothers Húrin and Huor and the remnant of the Men of the House of Hador from Dor-lómin except Húrin at the river Rivil.

When Húrin was the last man standing, he threw away his shield and gripped his axe with both hands. A song tells that his axe smoked in the black blood of the Troll-guard of Gothmog, the Lord of Balrogs and the High-captain of Angband until at last he was taken alive by Orcs by Morgoth's command, being bound by Gothmog and dragged to Angband.

Second and Third Ages

Later on, Sauron taught them the little that they were able to learn and increased their intelligence with wickedness. As a consequence, the Trolls learned as much language as they could from the Orcs. In the Westlands Stone-trolls spoke a debased form of Westron. The Olog-hai only spoke the Black Speech of Barad-dûr.

Since days before memory Trolls settled in the north of the Misty Mountains, in particular near the Ettenmoors. The realm of Angmar was founded in their area, and while it lasted (c. T.A. 1300 – 1975) the Trolls' numbers increased, as did their wickedness. After the fall of Angmar, the Trolls retreated to the east of the Misty Mountains, but 300 years before the War of the Ring they returned to Eriador. They managed to make dens in the hills as far west as the North Downs despite the efforts of the Rangers of the North to watch the area.

In the time of Arador, the 14th Chieftain of the Dúnedain, a band of Trolls threatened his house in the woods near the river Hoarwell north of the Trollshaws. In T.A. 2930 hill-trolls captured Arador in the north of Rivendell and killed him.

In the Third Age, Sauron bred a new race of Trolls, which were called Olog-hai in the Black Speech. In contrast to the older race of Trolls from the First Age the Olog-hai could bear exposure to sunlight as long as they were controlled by the will of Sauron. They were cunning, strong, agile, fierce, harder than stone and spoke little. The Olog-hai were first seen at the end of the Third Age in southern Mirkwood and in the mountain borders of Mordor.

The Quest for Erebor

Bilbo and the Three Trolls by Justin Gerard

In T.A. 2941, Thorin and Company encountered Bert, Tom and Bill, three Trolls who had come down from the mountains and eaten a number of Men equivalent to village and a half, who probably stopped there on their way through the area, as well as sheep.

The trolls captured Bilbo and the Dwarves, but Gandalf returned in time to keep the trolls go on arguing how to cook the Dwarves by impersonating the voices of the Trolls from a place of hiding until the first lights of the morning sun came over the hill and turned the trolls to stone. Afterwards Thorin and Company discovered the cave of the trolls and took the swords Glamdring and Orcrist, the knife Sting, gold coins and food from the cave.

It is not known how the trolls had gotten the swords, but Elrond guessed that the Trolls had robbed other robbers or had found them in a hold in the mountains as remnants of old robberies.

The War of the Ring

When the fiftieth birthday of Frodo Baggins was getting near, probably early in the year T.A. 3018 rumors had reached the Shire that Trolls were abroad, more cunning than normal and armed with dreadful weapons. By T.A. 3018 when Aragorn and the Hobbits were attacked on Weathertop the land east of Weathertop was uninhabited and had been deserted, because Trolls sometimes came down from the northern valleys of the Misty Mountains. At that time Trolls still lived in the Ettendales, the valleys of the Ettenmoors, which ran up to the foothills of the Misty Mountains far north of Rivendell.

On 18 October T.A. 3018, Aragorn and the Hobbits found a path in the Trollshaws, which had probably been made by the three Trolls, followed it and discovered that it led to the cave of the trolls and then on to the clearing in the woods not far below the cave where the three trolls that had been turned to stone still stood.

Troll slayer by Jan Pospíšil

On 15 January T.A. 3019, the Fellowship of the Ring was attacked in the Chamber of Mazarbul by a cave-troll and Orcs. When Boromir hewed at the arm of the troll which came through a gap in the door with his sword, his sword was notched, glanced aside and fell from his hand. However the troll retreated when Frodo stabbed it in the foot with his sword Sting.

In the early hours of 15 March T.A. 3019, in the siege of Minas Tirith mountain-trolls walked behind the great hundred-foot long battering ram Grond to the Great Gate of Minas Tirith and swung Grond four times against the gate until the gate broke.

On 25 March T.A. 3019, at the beginning of the Battle of the Morannon the Army of the West consisting of forces of Gondor and Rohan was attacked on the Slag-hills before the Black Gate of Mordor by a great company of hill-trolls from Gorgoroth with huge round bucklers and heavy hammers. Pippin managed to fell the chief of the Trolls by stabbing him with his Barrow-blade when the troll tried to bite the throat of Beregond who had fallen down after having been stunned by the monster.

Legacy

Troll sat alone on his seat of stone by Matěj Čadil

A Lonely Troll by Amani Warrington

While it is unknown what happened to Trolls after the Downfall of Barad-dûr, the hobbit Samwise Gamgee composed two poems that had Trolls in them. The first one, called The Stone Troll, was recited by Samwise Gamgee to Aragorn, Frodo, Merry, and Pippin during their stay near the Troll Ridge. The second poem, called Perry-the-Winkle, also composed by Sam, featured a Lonely Troll as one of the main characters. However, unlike other trolls, the Lonely Troll was friendly and good-natured.

Characteristics

”

Yes, I am afraid trolls do behave like that, even those with only one head each.

Roast Mutton

Trolls were taller and broader than men with a height of twelve feet or more. They had dark skin with greenish scales, large flat toeless feet and knotted hands with claws. Their blood was black.

Some Trolls might have had more than one head, which is fleetingly suggested in The Hobbit, commenting on William wiping his lips on his sleeve. If this statement was not merely a way of speaking, perhaps there were indeed Trolls in Middle-earth that, unlike the Stone-trolls, had more than one head and behaved even worse.

Regular Trolls turned back to stone from which they had been created when exposed to the sunlight, but the Troll race called Olog-hai that appeared at the end of the Third Age could tolerate sunglight as long as they were controlled by the will of Sauron.

Trolls lived in different terrains and were known as cave-trolls, hill-trolls or mountain-trolls. They did not build buildings, and slept in caves or holes. It is possible that the term Stone-trolls was used for regular trolls who turned back to stone when exposed to the sunlight.

Potential types of Trolls

• Cave-trolls
• Half-trolls
• Hill-trolls
• Mountain-trolls
• Olog-hai
• Stone-trolls
• Snow-trolls

Other names

The Sindarin word for a "troll" is torog. The Black Speech equivalent is olog.

The name Rhudaur is translated by Tolkien as "Troll shaw", with rhû translated as "evil, wicked".

Other versions of the legendarium

Early legendarium

In an early chart of different creatures, Trolls are given the Qenya name maulir. Patrick H. Wynne and Christopher Gilson have suggested that maulir is possibly related to Qenya maule ("crying, weeping"), thus perhaps "referring to cries made by these monsters or to the weeping of their victims".

In the Lay of Leithian Canto XIII (Beren and Lúthien in Angband), as Beren and Lúthien descend into the depths of Angband, among other horrors "huge shapes there stood like carven trolls enormous hewn of blasted rock to forms that mortal likeness mock; monstrous and menacing, entombed, at every turn they silent loomed in fitful glares that leaped and died."

Later legendarium

In the drafts of The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien considered trolls to be living stones that were possessed by the spirits of goblins.

In an earlier version of what would become the Appendix F it was also mentioned that the evil Power had crossed their breed with that of larger Orcs.

In an unpublished note on the origin of the Orcs without any indication of the date when the note was written, Tolkien stated that the Elves would have considered the Trolls to be Orcs in character and origin, though they were larger and slower, and that it would seem evident they were corruptions of primitive human types.

Inspiration

Trolls were originally a part of the Norse mythology (as a negative synonym for jötunn, "giants") and Scandinavian folklore (as ugly, large creatures of remote wildlife areas). J.R.R. Tolkien used elements of old barbarous mythmaking that Trolls returned to stone when they were not in the dark.

Helen Buckhurst, a friend and colleague of J.R.R. Tolkien presented a paper titled Icelandic Folklore in 1926 in which she stated that Icelandic Trolls in the Sagas and in more recent tales were huge, mishappen and ugly creatures who generally lived in caves in the mountains, were almost always evil, often raided outlying farms at night to take sheep, horses, children, men and women and ate them in their homes in the mountains. She also mentioned that some kinds of Trolls must stay in caves during the day, because the light of the sun turns them to stone.

Commenting on the possibility of Trolls having more than one head, John D. Rateliff has noted that trolls "with multiple heads appear in many stories", especially pointing to George Webbe Dasent's "Soria Moria Castle". C.S. Lewis mentioned the Ettins of Ettinsmoor in Narnia, some of which have two heads. In many later fantasy settings, but also some adaptations of Middle-earth, there are two-headed monsters, which usually are called "ettens" (q.v.).

Other fiction

In Sir Gawain and the Green Knight there are mentions of the "wood-trolls" (translated by J.R.R. Tolkien from the manuscript word wodwos). The latter word is related to the Woses.

Portrayal in adaptations

Trolls in adaptations

• 

  A "Groan" in The Hobbit (1967 film)

• 

  William, Tom and Bert in The Hobbit (1977 film)

• 

  A cave-troll in The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring

• 

  A troll in The Lord of the Rings: War in the North

• 

  William, Tom and Bert in The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

• 

  Concept art of a troll for The Lord of the Rings: The Treason of Isengard

• 

  Stephen King - "Two-headed" Troll, card art for Middle-earth Collectible Card Game.

Films

1967: The Hobbit (1967 film):

The three Trolls' position in the narrative was taken by two creatures called "Groans". They had wooden, bark-like skin, and, instead of stone, turned into dead trees when exposed to sunlight.

1978: The Lord of the Rings (1978 film):

The troll that attempts to enter Balin's Tomb is depicted as a shadowy creature with dark green fur. Unlike in the novel, its feet have toes. It is the only troll seen in the film.

Games

1982-97: Middle-earth Role Playing:

An individual monster called Skessa, a cross-breed between a troll and giant, has two heads.

1995-8: Middle-earth Collectible Card Game:

"'Two-headed' Troll" is a Warrior Ally for evil players.

1998-2004: Middle-earth Online:

Ettins, a race of two-headed trolls, was intended to be included in the game.

2002-5: The Lord of the Rings Roleplaying Game:

Ettens resemble the Hill-trolls, but they possess "not one but two long heads". The solitary creatures, a result of an ancient experiment by Morgoth, live almost exclusively in the Ettenmoors.

2002: The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers:

Like in the film adaptation of The Fellowship of the Ring, a Cave-troll serves as the boss of the "Balin's Tomb" level. A pair of Cave-trolls also serve as the bosses of the "Hornburg Courtyard" level. Also unique to this game are a new breed of troll known as "Forest-trolls", which appear in several levels including "Fangorn Forest" and "Breached Wall".

2003: The Hobbit:

In addition to the three Stone-trolls from the book, a Cave-troll was intended to appear during the "Over Hill and Under Hill" level in the PC and console versions, where it would have served as the level's boss. Even though the encounter was cut from the final version of the game, Bilbo still mentions the troll to Gandalf when he reunites with Thorin and Company, and Kili informs Bilbo that Trolls are known to live in the Misty Mountains, and hopes Bilbo didn't encounter any while he was separated.

Third-party trainer programs for the PC version allow the boss battle to be reintegrated into the game. Like the three Stone-trolls, the Cave-troll would have been capable of speaking Westron, as shown during its introductory cutscene where it complains about having a toothache. Defeating it would have yielded the Troll Key which, in the final version of the game, instead lays on the floor for Bilbo to take without having to kill any of the creatures that guard it.

2004: The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-earth:

Trolls are a playable unit in the game. You can play as either a mountain troll or drummer troll. When the mountain troll levels up, it receives armor. Their designs are based off of the Peter Jackson film series.

2006: The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-earth II:

Trolls are a playable unit like in the previous game. In the expansion, The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-earth II: The Rise of the Witch-king additional units of trolls can be played called the snow trolls and hill trolls. The campaign features a named troll called Rhogash which helps the Witch-king lead his assaults on Arnor.

2011: The Lord of the Rings: War in the North:

Compared to other enemies, Trolls are much stronger. Trolls first appear in Fornost, where one traps Eradan, Andriel and Farin. Another troll appears at the end of the level, where Eradan, Andriel and Farin have to protect Elladan and Elrohir. When this troll is killed, the player is able to enter the Citadel to confront Tharzog and Agandaûr.

2014: Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor:

The Udûn and Sea of Nûrnen regions of Mordor are inhabited by large troll-like creatures known as "Olog Graugs". According to their Nature article in the Appendices menu, Sauron intends to use the Graug to crossbreed with ordinary Trolls, and create a new breed of "hill-trolls" that can withstand direct sunlight. Graugs are very rare in the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions of the game due to technical limitations, but are more abundant in the PS4, PC, and Xbox One versions.

2017: Middle-earth: Shadow of War:

The Overlord of the Núrnen region of Mordor is an Olog named Az-Harto, who poses as a two-headed Troll. In reality, the second head is that of the Uruk Ratbag the Coward, who is riding on Az-Harto's back and wearing a large helmet to conceal his identity.

2018: The Lord of the Rings Online:

Two-headed Trolls are among the evil creatures of Gundabad and can be found among the Grey Mountains.