But Melkor wanted to dominate all wills directly. In one of the essays published in Morgoth’s Ring Tolkien notes that Sauron was probably in charge of the breeding programs while Melkor was held in captivity in Aman anyway. It stated specifically that the stone-trolls could not be bred with Orcs.Īs for why Melkor would not have bred the Olog-hai, he and Sauron probably had very different strategies for their breeding programs. In The Peoples of Middle-earth Christopher Tolkien quotes a brief bit of text that was excised from the description of the Olog-hai. Again, that battle was fought under the sun. In The Return of the King Pippin slays a green-scaled hill-troll of Mordor. Orcs could endure (and fight in) sunlight but they hated the sun. It could be argued that Morgoth’s will enabled the trolls to endure sunlight but that is a vague expression. In The Silmarillion Hurin killed 70 trolls in the rearguard action he fought for Turgon at the end of the Nirnaeth Arnoediad. There were several different types of trolls, and only the stone-trolls actually turned to stone when exposed to the sun. They spoke little, and the only tongue that they knew was the Black Speech of Barad-dûr.īecause of this passage and the adventure in The Hobbit most readers believe that all trolls turned to stone in sunlight - or, rather, that all trolls were made of stone until the Olog-hai appeared. Unlike the older race of the Twilight they could endure the Sun, so long as the will of Sauron held sway over them. Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race, strong, agile, fierce and cunning, but harder than stone. 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. That Sauron bred them none doubted, though from what stock was not known.
Olog-hai they were called in the Black Speech. Trolls therefore took such language as they could master from the Orcs and in the Westlands the Stone-trolls spoke a debased form of the Common Speech.īut at the end of the Third Age a troll-race not before seen appeared in southern Mirkwood and in the mountain borders of Mordor. But Sauron had made use of them, teaching them what little they could learn, and increasing their wits with wickedness. In their beginning far back in the twilight of the Elder Days, these were creatures of dull and lumpish nature and had no more language than beasts. Troll has been used to translate the Sindarin Torog. But let us start with a citation from The Lord of the Rings, which is the only passage that mentions the Olog-hai: The other part is why didn’t Melkor think to breed the Olog-hai. ANSWER: This is actually a two-part question.