Trolls and Sunlight.

[Glorelendil]

“Gothmog the lieutenant of Morgul had flung them into the fray; Easterlings with axes, and Variags of Khand, Southrons in scarlet, and out of Far Harad black men like half-trolls with white eyes and red tongues.”

I wonder if Tolkien knew, when he chose that word "like", the battles he would incite decades later.

[DavetheLost]

It is all the fault of the editors at Unwin. The original text reads "men, like half-trolls, you know"

[Arthadan]

Quick note here, to be precise we know Stone Trolls turn to stone (Bert and company were Stone Trolls) but Hill-Trolls seem to endure daylight as they fought in battle of the Black Gate.

Light conditions of the battle:

The wind blew, and the trumpets sang, and arrows whined; but the sun now climbing towards the South was veiled in the reeks of Mordor, and through a threatening haze it gleamed, remote, a sullen red, as if it were the ending of the day, or the end maybe of all the world of light.

And here they come!:

Then even as he thought these things the first assault crashed into them. The orcs hindered by the mires that lay before the hills halted and poured their arrows into the defending ranks. But through them there came striding up, roaring like beasts, a great company of hill-trolls out of Gorgoroth. Taller and broader than Men they were, and they were clad only in close-fitting mesh of horny scales, or maybe that was their hideous hide; but they bore round bucklers huge and black and wielded heavy hammers in their knotted hands.

Maybe Sun was not intense enough or maybe the power of Sauron was over them, or it's even possible that Hill-Trolls are more resistant to sunlight than Stone-trolls. I'll be pragmatic and say bit of everything.

[DavetheLost]

This is at least a certainty that some trolls can be above ground and out of doors during the hours of sunlight without turning to stone.

William, Tom, and Bert are likewise certain proof that some trolls turn to stone at the first touch of the sun.

I have long thought that the hill-trolls out of Gorgoroth were definitely a different breed to the stone trolls in the Hobbit. The cave troll in Moria seems more like the Gorgoroth trolls.

I don't recall the reference to snow or ice trolls at all.

[Otaku-sempai]

This is at least a certainty that some trolls can be above ground and out of doors during the hours of sunlight without turning to stone.

William, Tom, and Bert are likewise certain proof that some trolls turn to stone at the first touch of the sun.

I have long thought that the hill-trolls out of Gorgoroth were definitely a different breed to the stone trolls in the Hobbit. The cave troll in Moria seems more like the Gorgoroth trolls.

I don't recall the reference to snow or ice trolls at all.

We can guess that the trolls at the Black Gate were protected by the haze and also by Sauron's will.

Snow-trolls only get a very brief mention in LotR Appendix A when Helm Hammerhand is compared to one. I'm not sure, but I think that Tolkien also used snow-trolls in his Christmas Letters, which is where the idea that they turned to icy slag when caught in sunlight might have been introduced.

[DavetheLost]

I haven't read the Father Christmas Letters in decades. Off to reread Appendix A for the bit about snow trolls there. Such a rich resource that appendix is.

Sauron's servants certainly seem to grow in power as the War of the Ring progresses, the orcs at the Moranon also seem rather untroubled by the sun. The idea that they were sutained by Sauron's will is supported by the {SPOILER} way the armies break and run at the destruction of the Ring.

[Glorelendil]

Just found this in Tolkien's Letters:

“I am not sure about Trolls. I think they are mere ‘counterfeits’, and hence (though here I am of course only using elements of old barbarous mythmaking that had no ‘aware’ metaphysic) they return to mere stone images when not in the dark. But there are other sorts of Trolls beside these rather ridiculous, if brutal, Stone-trolls, for which other origins are suggested.”

[Otaku-sempai]

Just found this in Tolkien's Letters:

“I am not sure about Trolls. I think they are mere ‘counterfeits’, and hence (though here I am of course only using elements of old barbarous mythmaking that had no ‘aware’ metaphysic) they return to mere stone images when not in the dark. But there are other sorts of Trolls beside these rather ridiculous, if brutal, Stone-trolls, for which other origins are suggested.”

Tolkien might be only referring to the Olog-hai here, and maybe to the debatable "half-trolls" if they were even meant to be real. Even here, he seems very ambivalent about the origins of Trolls in general.

[Stormcrow]

Just found this in Tolkien's Letters:

THAT'S where I heard it!

[Glorelendil]

He at least makes allowance for an interpretation that only some trolls turn to stone.

In other words, a wide range of interpretations can be considered canonical. Or at least non-anti-canonical.