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Originally Posted by davem
Hurin killing 70 trolls seems at first sight 'fantastic' but it is not logically impossible, or, given his reputation, even 'possible but unlikely'. Is it more likely that a chronicler just made it up?
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Again, who recorded the event? If our answer is 'Tolkien,' I argue no further. But in the heat of battle things can become confused, and some men count each enemy head twice, or something.
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It seems to me that if someone was just making up the number they would have gone for a smaller one (to make it more 'acceptable' why not 7?) or a much larger one (to emphasise Hurin's victory - why not 100?). The examples you cite are either logically impossible, or at the very least infinitely improbable.
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That's not evidential. What you or I
believe to be what people would or would not do would be great discussion (of course
), but add not one jot to the stack of evidence. Seventy to me sounds immediately suspicious as it's too 'round' of a number...not 68, 69 but 70? There's that magic number (at least in my culture) 7 again. Was 70 chosen to make some mythic point that escapes more causal readers like myself?
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I'm not. I just got caught up in this one. I can only think that anyone who doesn't, or can't, believe that Hurin killed 70 trolls is going to have a major problem with about 100% of the Legendarium. If you hold Hurin's killing of the Trolls may have been made up, or seriously exagerated, then you put the same question-mark over every single event in the stories - maybe Glorfindel didn't kill the Balrog on his own, maybe Turin didn't take down Glauring single-handedly.......
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Back to one of the origin points is that Tolkien's work rarely makes me think that Hurin could have done otherwise, and that's why it works. To me, what you state does happen, and I'm not using pretzel logic in that that maybe Hurin could have shone the last glint of sunlight off of his huge dwarven axe and turned the seventy to stone, and their heads fell off, and so technically he does behead them with an axe.
When in Arda, I'm a believer.
And just a thought: I find Legolas's count at Helm's Deep actually low.