Maybe I'm pushing interpretation of canonical works to the limit in this article! But it shouldn't be worse than the "Half-trolls", or similar legendary creatures. ;-) --Morgan 18:22, 15 November 2010 (UTC)
Ettin
It would be great if we could verify the statement on wikipedia that Ettin historically/traditionally are described as two-headed monsters (see List of Narnian Creatures at Wikipedia (accessed 15 November 2010)). I will keep it in the background of my head (the reading head, not the other one...) when reading traditional fairy-tales , to see what comes up.--Morgan 18:51, 15 November 2010 (UTC)
- Being an old D&D player, I always think of Ettins as being two-headed trolls myself. I looked around on the 'net for something that showed that Ettin is a two-headed giant in mythology, but I couldn't find anything. --Pinkkeith 18:59, 15 November 2010 (UTC)
- It honestly seems that the "two-headedness" came purely from D&D and propagated other media from there. Gygax is notorious for borrowing names from Tolkien and Gandalf's notion about two heads is probably what lead to the idea... --Olthar 01:59, 12 February 2020 (UTC)
- Just to add, I'm not a big fan of referencing the other wiki, either. --Mith (Talk/Contribs/Edits) 19:31, 14 February 2020 (UTC)
Questions
1) Article: ...as Gandalf once said that "I am afraid trolls do behave like that, even those with only one head each." – I think we should take Gandalf outta here. These would be narrator's words, not Gandalf's.
2) As a matter of fact, we do not know if these polycephalic trolls had two heads: we are only informed that not all trolls had just one head. --Tik 15:46, 12 February 2020 (UTC)
- You are right, but that would seem way too exotic. Besides, in the non-canon adaptations the polycephalic trolls who appear don't have more than 2 heads. Sage 09:47, 28 February 2020 (UTC)
Possible merge with Trolls
I believe that the this page could probably be merged onto the Trolls page. To start with, it isn’t stated in Tolkien’s works that two-headed trolls were an actual specific race of trolls, but just mentioned as a general characteristic of some trolls. If the whole statement wasn’t just a figure of speech, this means that any type of troll (Cave-trolls, Hill-trolls, Olog-hai, etc) may have had more than one head. Secondly, The page name is misleading as it implies that multiple headed trolls never had more than two heads, which is never stated by Tolkien. The whole page could thus be added to the characteristics, inspiration, and adaptations sections of the main trolls page.Dour1234 (talk) 23:09, 2 July 2024 (UTC)