Trolls and Sunlight.

[Otaku-sempai]

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.

Yes. Point taken.

The awareness and bickering of Bill, Bert and Tom, though, does seem antithetical to the view of them as essentially just puppets animated solely by Sauron's will (like the Dwarves before Eru gave them true life?). Perhaps the very first Trolls were just that simple, but later Morgoth and Sauron experimented with improvements such as melding the physical beings of the Trolls with evil spirits, giving them at least a bit more independence and limited intelligence. Giants or Ogres might have been part of those experiments. We know that Sauron went on to develop the Olog-hai late in the Third Age.

[DavetheLost]

William, Tom, and Bert do come to us from the pen of Bilbo, who may just have embelished things a bit for a better story...

[Arthadan]

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.

Yes. Point taken.

The awareness and bickering of Bill, Bert and Tom, though, does seem antithetical to the view of them as essentially just puppets animated solely by Sauron's will (like the Dwarves before Eru gave them true life?). Perhaps the very first Trolls were just that simple, but later Morgoth and Sauron experimented with improvements such as melding the physical beings of the Trolls with evil spirits, giving them at least a bit more independence and limited intelligence. Giants or Ogres might have been part of those experiments. We know that Sauron went on to develop the Olog-hai late in the Third Age.

Not Sauron's but Melkor's. Think of Stone Trolls as stones with a permanent spell to animate them as a mockery of life, but under the pure light of the Sun (the last fruit of Laurelin), suck tricks are revealed as what they truly are and the Sorcery spell vanishes.

But at the end of the Third Age a troll-race not before seen appeared in southern Mirkwood and in the mountain borders of Mordor. Olog-hai they were called in the Black Speech. That Sauron bred them none doubted, though from what stock was not known. Some held that they were not Trolls but giant Orcs; but the Olog-hai were in fashion of body and mind quite unlike even the largest of Orc-kind, whom they far surpassed in size and power. 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-dur.
However, we know Olog-hai can resist the sun and they were smaller and smarter.
Lord of the Rings Appendix

But what about the other Troll races? We have Mountain-trolls pushing Grond, Snow-Trolls which are only mentioned in the story of Helm, Hill-Trolls fighting at the Black Gate and Cave Trolls. I leave out intentionally the Troll-men as I think is a metaphor ("black men like half-trolls").

As stated before, only the Olog-hai "unlike the older race of the Twilight they could endure the Sun, so long as the will of Sauron held sway over them". That means that there is only one "race of the Twilight" and so all that are not Olog-hai belongs to the Twilight race. Then Mountain, Hill, Snow and Cave Trolls would be all from the same stock, named after the place they live in, and not able to endure the Sun. However, this "rule" does not seem to apply to Stone-Trolls. In my opinion they are the oldest Troll race and the first try and they are litterally made out of stone.

Then we have Mountain-trolls pushing Grond and Hill-trolls fight at the Black Gate. In both cases it was daytime but the sky was darkened and being major battles Sauron's will was focused there (explicitly so in the Black Gate).

Could it be that Sauron's granted some degree of endurance to sunlight to Twilight Trolls and complete endurance for the Olog-hai? That's one way to take it. The other way is, given that there are only two races, those Mountain and Hill Trolls were in fact Olog-hai. This theory is strongly supported by the fact that the term "Olog-hai" does not appear in the Lord of the Rings (only in the Appendix) and it only makes sense that Sauron used the Troll race he bred for war in the main battles.

[Glorelendil]

The sentence "unlike the older race of the Twilight they could endure the Sun, so long as the will of Sauron held sway over them" does not necessarily mean that all other trolls are of the "older race of the Twilight". It's probably what he meant, imo, but it's not implicit in the grammatical construction.

As for the differences between Mountain, Hill, Cave, etc., it might not be racial differences so much as regional/tribal/etc. More like breeds. That is, Melkor didn't create different types of trolls, but after a couple of millennia living and breeding and different conditions they developed different characteristics.

By the way, I personally do like the interpretation that in The Hobbit we are hearing Bilbo's voice, with the "truth" somewhat colored by his re-telling. Not just in the case of the trolls, but throughout. Tolkien himself apparently regretted trying to write for children, which works well with the Bilbo interpretation, who would have been writing for sensible, peaceful folk back home.

[Arthadan]

The sentence "unlike the older race of the Twilight they could endure the Sun, so long as the will of Sauron held sway over them" does not necessarily mean that all other trolls are of the "older race of the Twilight". It's probably what he meant, imo, but it's not implicit in the grammatical construction.

Good point! I've been thinking about that and I find the name intriguing. Closest thing that comes to mind is the division of Men according to Gondorians: they were the Men of Light, then the Haradrim and other peoples serving Sauron were Men of Darkness and all the rest were Men of Twilight.

Now, that criterion of good/neutral/evil would make no sense for Trolls. But what if the Trolls of Twilight would be named so because they could resist dim daylight (as in the twilight)? The we would have Trolls of Darkness (Stone trolls and Cave trolls) who could not endure/were destroyed by daylight and Light Trolls able to endure daylight (Olog-hai). That makes sense in my opinion. What do you think?

[zedturtle]

Well, the other interpretation is that Twilight refers to the very beginning of the First Age. Remember, the Sun is relative late-comer to the astronomical party... Elves woke up under only the Stars and lived without the Sun for a long time.

There were many monsters that they feared however... one of those monsters (wrought by Melkor?) might have been what we call Stone Trolls... their weakness to the Sun being a non-factor in the perpetual twilight of star-light only.

[Stormcrow]

Well, the other interpretation is that Twilight refers to the very beginning of the First Age.

This is what it means. The Twilight is the time of the stars before the Sun first rose. Creatures "created" by Morgoth at this time cannot bear the Sun's light. This is a flaw in their designs; Morgoth simply didn't anticipate the Sun. Notice that dragons, which were bred later, don't have this problem.

[Arthadan]

To be fair, this is what you think it means. Your arguments are very valid, but then we have Men of Twilight and "twilight" in this case does not make any reference to the time before the Sun was created. In fact, does Tolkien call that period by that name? In Aman those are the Years of the Trees and part of it is named The Age of Stars (when the Elves awoken).

Out of curiosity, do you have any quote for the Years of the Trees being called Twilight?

[doctheweasel]

It's kind of hard to make any definitive argument about Trolls when Tolkien's own account is "I'm not sure."

[Glorelendil]

But speaking of that pre-First Age era of Twilight...we need more adversaries based on Morgoth's early experiments.